To celebrate the impending release of the latest movie in the franchise, the Google has launched a pair of quirky digital activations that will almost certainly appeal to fans across the world.

A new public health campaign is asking young people to creatively and anonymously condemn those who smoke by sending images through Snapchat.

Walk around the streets of many of New Zealand’s urban centres and you’re more than likely to see people on the streets, in stores and sometimes even on sports fields clad entirely in the latest activewear from the likes of Puma, Adidas or Nike. Viewed from a distance, it would be easy to mistake these individuals as veritable fitness freaks, doing the hard yards to get abs on abs. However, upon closer inspection, it quickly becomes apparent that activewear serves broader purposes than just exercising. In fact, as illustrated in a recent satirical video by content creators the Van Vuuren Bros, activewear is often used for purposes quite contrary to getting fitter.

Last week, Stolen Spirits raised a toast after selling a controlling interest in the company to US-based venture capital funds Liquid Asset Brands and Spirits Investment Partners for NZ$21 million. Before this premium vodka 42Below became a global brand when it was sold to Bacardi. And a number of other Kiwi craft spirits appear to be following close behind.

Mountain Dew has been banging the practice makes perfect drum for a few years as part of its long-running “to get to easy you have to go through hard” campaign. And now, along with Garage TV it’s calling on athletes to submit clips of themselves getting extreeeeeeeme for a weekly half-hour TV show called Easy is hard.

Here’s a psychic skeptics will struggle to debunk: IBM has developed an app that trawls customer conversations on the internet to help retailers and shoppers to understand which products will be popular. And it has already picked which items will be hot commodities for Christmas 2015.

The ideas have been dreamed up, the work has been displayed, the sucking up to creative leaders has been done, the leftover nibbles have presumably been wrapped up in napkins and taken home, and another bunch of advertising students have learned a few tricks to help them into gainful employment. Here are some of the highlights from AUT and Media Design School.

A kiwi app combines the tangible with the digital in collaborating with Warehouse Stationery to let New Zealanders print photos from their phones.

Around 17 years after it all began, Trade Me is on track to reach its one billionth listing in early December. And the online trading company plans to celebrate this milestone by through a range of activations over the next few weeks.

Every year, UK retailer John Lewis blows its budget to tell epic stories in its Christmas ads, and company usually claims the accolade for most memorable ad of the year. However, this time, it faces some strong competition from the Spanish National Lottery, which has released tear-jerking ad that has media companies around the world proclaiming it the most sentimental spot of the year.

Honda’s new demo video by RPA combines three different stories to show off the Civic’s features. Each one follows the same series of events, a man picking up a woman for their first date, but as it unfolds the viewer has control of how the date is going. Will he greet her with a high-five or some flowers? You decide.

If the top five ads of 2015 (so far) are anything to go by, then agencies might want to rethink the rule of working with animals.

the team at South Park has added a bit more hilarity to the discussion on advertising and news through a new skit that shows the character Stephen contrasting the clean reading experience of student newspaper to the advertising labyrinth encountered online. If anything, Stephen’s ramblings to his wife provide a pretty strong argument for the enduring appeal of print. As he explains: “This is just news. And I don’t get lost in all the bullshit.”

Humans love a good origin story. And, in the business world, the power of the overnight success narrative often means the extremely difficult period of starting and growing a business is conveniently overlooked in the mythology. The latest Kiwi business to join that club is Stolen Spirits, which was started around five years ago in a bedroom in Mt Eden and this week sold a controlling interest to US company Liquid Asset Brands and Spirits Investment Partners for $21 million. And it’s another great example of a Kiwi business that has understood the power of marketing to create a huge amount of value in a short amount of time.

Bcg2 and Mediacom have won the competitive pitch for realestate.co.nz’s creative and media accounts, fewer than 18 months after Contagion won the real estate site’s business in July last year.

Last night, as the action unfolded at the 50th edition of the Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards, this new media opportunity was clearly at work as Kiwis across the nation contributed to over 200,500 story views of content uploaded to the Vodafone Snapchat handle during proceedings—an experience far removed from that of fans 50 years ago, whose could only have seen the talent of the day if they were actually in attendance at the event.

Alastair Thompson, editor and co-founder of Scoop Media says the online news organisation now has a “fighting chance” after reaching a crowd-funding target of $50,000 on Pledge Me to establish the Scoop foundation for public interest journalism. But the longevity of the project is far from guaranteed at this point.

In and around Auckland’s CBD, parking is becoming a business in itself. Since Parkable launched in August, some hosts have already started earning over $1000 per month, for spaces previously unused. And now retailers are also trying to cash in on the copious space they have available.