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News
Too much wolf?
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Given this eternal struggle of finding a shirt that exposes just enough chest hair, men’s shirt brand Johnnie-O has released a hilarious spot that provides a guide of what’s just the right amount to show.

Features
Future Tense (part 2): MediaWorks’ Mark Weldon on bilateral markets, the unnecessary complexity of ratecards and the importance of ‘co-opetition’
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MediaWorks’ announced its unified news brand Newshub last Friday and, in the eyes of chief executive Mark Weldon, the multi-million dollar, nine month project to give its radio, TV and digital news assets more coherence is a big step on the journey to create “New Zealand’s leading integrated multi-media company”. He talks to Ben Fahy about how he intends to do that, why it needs to move past selling airtime and why collaboration is the answer.

News
Nike celebrates snow days
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Here at StopPress headquarters in Auckland, we unfortunately don’t have the promise of snow days during winter to get us excited for a few unexpected moments away from office. However, various states across the US get covered in a white blanket so thick during the colder months that it renders it virtually impossible for citizens to get to work or school. And rather than mourning the confinement that often coincides with snow days, Nike has decided to celebrate the freedom these moments offer in a new spot by Wieden + Kennedy.

News
Boundary Road’s Brewniversity offers a bachelor of beer
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With hefty student loans and a growing consensus among international businesses that undergraduate degrees aren’t necessary for entry-level jobs, some are beginning to question whether dedicating three years to a single certificate is really worthwhile. Fortunately, Boundary Road’s Brewniversity offers an alternative. And the best part is that it only takes five minutes to complete the exam.

Features
Beyond the Page: Woman’s Day, Spark PHD and Unilever clean up with paid, owned and earned media strategy
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To launch a new Unilever product called Persil Ultimate in New Zealand, Bauer was briefed to help show busy mums how using it could save them time to focus on the important things. To do that, it combined editorial endorsement from Woman’s Day, offered advice from food columnist Chelsea Winter and created an online hub where readers could share time saving tips. And, as Ben Fahy writes in the final instalment of the Beyond the Page series, the Moments that Matter campaign worked a treat for all parties and took out the best sales solution at the Magazine Media Awards.

News
Ben Goodale on the future of JustOne
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With last week’s news of Ogilvy’s Paul Manning shifting across to .99 to take up the reins as the agency’s new managing director in early 2016, there were some question marks over what this meant for current managing director Ben Goodale. After the news broke, Clemenger Group sent out a release saying that JustOne and .99 would become disparate agencies (still within the Clemenger Group), with Goodale and Manning leading them respectively. We chat to Goodale about what the future holds for the agency he started just over a decade ago.

News
Media Munchies: Paul Ego
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When he’s not lending his voice to Pak ‘n Save’s Stickman, Paul Ego is mocking Jeremy Corbett on 7 Days or performing on the stand-up circuit across the country. And when not entertaining the masses with his brand of dry and often self-deprecating humour, Ego likes to engage in some very risqué use of the fax machine.

News
Contact Energy and JWT give trick or treating an interactive twist
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It’s Halloween tomorrow, and plenty of Kiwi brands are jumping on board the ghost train. Some campaigns are spookier than others, but Contact Energy’s ‘Trick or Treat’ pre-roll ad on YouTube takes the opportunity to let viewers choose their own adventure. PLUS: the rise of Halloween as a retail event in New Zealand.

News
The Big Game: Hallertau’s special wake-up call
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Mr Whippy is often licked, he can never be beaten (at least when it comes to puns). But we have a late contender for the final instalment of The Big Game, a prestigious award dished out by StopPress to the best example of desperate euphemism usage from non-sponsors hoping to ride the rugby attention train. We’ve already seen Moa sneak into the stands of the Rugby World Cup with its fairly blatant ‘Four More Years’ brew. And while actual sponsors ASB and even Steinlager are promoting the consumption of hot beverages while watching the game, Hallertau Brewery has crafted a specially made breakfast beer ahead of Sunday’s final. Let’s hope David Seymour gets his hands on one.

News
New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year winners announced
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Last night, the rain didn’t stop the New Zealand Geographic team from distributing the awards for the Photographer of the Year competition. This is, after all, an annual event celebrating a group of people who during their careers have grown accustomed to weathering the elements—and a bit of water falling from the heavens didn’t seem to bug anyone in attendance. This year there were more than 5,800 entries, which the New Zealand Geographic team eventually whittled down to 28 finalists, from which nine winners were chosen.

News
Gif and bake
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Everyone loves a good .gif. There are even awards to celebrate the art form. And now gif hunting site Giphy has created a fairly mad ad that riffs on classic cooking programmes to show people how to make one.

News
Don’t skip just yet
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While the knee-jerk reaction to a pre-roll is generally an attempt to hit the skip button as quickly as possible, this isn’t always the case. Not all pre-rolls are created equal—and Mountain Dew and the Wall Street Journal are showing why a bit of creativity pays when it comes to producing these ads.

News
I can feel it coming out of the air tonight
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While there are many exciting uses for drones, the most consumer-friendly use of the technology is film. Many birds don’t take too kindly to the space invaders. Privacy advocates don’t like them much either. And, as a clip that got picked up yesterday from Kor Creative showed, neither do schoolkids from Rosmini College. So in honour of the destructive kick, here are few other drone-based clips.

News
Let the panting begin: ten Kiwis get ready to ‘run down’ their home loan rates at the ASB Auckland Marathon
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ASB previously put its clients to work by getting them to accumulate as many likes as possible in return for lower mortgage rates. And for its latest campaign, the bank is again giving some of its customers control of how low their interest rates might go—but this time they have to sweat for it. As part of its ‘Run Down Your Rate’ competition, the bank has selected ten customers who will be able to run down their interest rates during the ASB Auckland Marathon.

News
Into the bosom: student directors tell the tale of 95bFM
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As Paul Casserly’s excellent documentary Radio Punks showed earlier this year, the story of student radio in New Zealand is full of interesting twists, turns and characters. And up-and-coming student directors Olly Clifton and Benjamin Zambo, who are currently in year 13 at Western Springs College in Auckland, have added to the oeuvre by giving their take on bFM, which started as a capping stunt in 1969 under the moniker Radio Bosom, grew into one of the most vibrant media brands in the country in the ’90s and is now attempting to compete against consolidation and a proliferation of other media options now available to the young’uns.

News
‘One in five people are likely to drop their Sky subscription in the next 12 months’ – Lightbox chief executive Kym Niblock
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At a presentation held yesterday, Lightbox chief executive Kym Niblock said that recent research conducted for the SVOD provider indicated that a fifth of current Sky subscribers said they were likely to leave the service after the Rugby World Cup and one in four are likely to add a streaming service in the near future. But Sky’s director of communications Kirsty Way thinks these figures will come to fruition.

Opinion
Those who tell the stories can change the world
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Claudia Batten is currently on the Better by Design Study Tour in the US along with a number of other Kiwi overachievers and she says the success of Contently—and the attitude of its founder Shane Snow—shows that marketing now needs to come from a place of integrity and sincerity.

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