There has been a lot of talk and hype about virtual reality in recent times. And just in the past month we’ve had a few sets of cardboard virtual reality goggles sent to the office from PR companies, which shows it’s very much in the public consciousness. One brand, which jumped onto the VR trend early in a marketing capacity, is Contiki. We had a chat to Contiki’s global CEO Casper Urhammer to find out more about the travel brand’s use of it. PLUS: with the amount of research and development going into virtual reality, is it better to wait?

Airline JetBlue has encouraged a bit of petty theft in a recent campaign where its ad posters urged passers-by to take their ads ‘literally, literally’.

Following on from its last campaign ‘It’s a trap’ where Truth pointed out that social smoking is still smoking, it is again effectively pointing out the obvious that if people continue to buy cigarettes, tobacco companies continue to roll in the money.

Peer-to-peer lending site Harmoney launched last year in the Kiwi market with an ambigram as its logo and a quirky cartoon TVC by Barnes, Catmur & Friends that compared conventional loan agencies to sharks. However, this launch identity—and the creative approach that accompanied it—is history now, as Harmoney has changed both its creative direction and its logo in a new ad campaign, which makes the company look more like a conventional loan company than an industry-disrupting startup.

Bouquets for Hyundai, Tip Top, Paspaley, Bay Audiology and Valspar this week.

That shiny rectangle in your pocket is an amazing piece of technology. But there’s a growing sense that we’re becoming far too attached to our phones, to the point where we seem to be happy to sacrifice real human interaction for a poke, a scroll and a quick game of information pokies. And Hallertau Brewery in Riverhead has taken a stand against the use of these magical cubes of distraction at its establishment and is aiming to promote actual conversation.

Hyundai has launched a new campaign for its latest Tuscon model with a TVC featuring a young girl who urges Kiwis to ‘Get lost’ in New Zealand. Hyundai is blowing the same horn it has for a while, pushing its family-sized vehicles by promoting family-fun time.

The radio survey results period has over the year come to be typified by a markedly partisan response from NZME and MediaWorks, heavy drinking by the ratings winners and, quite often, even heavier drinking by those who weren’t as lucky in the results. And given that the NZME-funded T1 survey didn’t have the backing of MediaWorks, tonight’s results party is poised to be a big one. But this tradition of two massive annual blowouts (only one this year) is set to change, as results reports will be released more regularly from next year. We look at some of the biggest losses and gains in the latest survey.

Ads for universities have always been a bit cringey, but the Universtiy of Melbourne has helped break the cycle with a creative spot about ‘What happens when minds collide’.

When newspapers published images of two-year-old Aylan Kurdi, drowned, lying facedown, the world was stirred and finally realised—or perhaps remembered—the horror of the Syrian conflict. But this isn’t the first time images have significantly changed public discourse. As the following five images collated by Getty Images’ Stuart Hannagan show, images have time and time again laid bare the uglier side of life. (Warning: this article contains material that may offend some).

We have cars that can drive themselves, fridges that know when we’re out of milk and sensors that can tell if your elderly relatives have taken their pills. Now, for those who also want their binge watching smartened, Netflix has given the world a button that can turn on your TV, dim your lights, silence your phone and even order food.

Spanish clothing and accessories retailer Paul & Bear has launched an innovative that has been created through the musical efforts of six bands across the world. To kick off the initiative, Paul & Bear approached Australian band Sheppard to create an exclusive song to feature in the campaign. Thereafter, the retailer commissioned six different bands, all in different locations, to produce covers of the song—and this content was then spread through social media.

Until now, retargeting campaigns have proved challenging on Apple Safari browsers because cookies are disabled by default. So, in a bid to overcome this issue, AdRoll announced a new product earlier this week that the company’s managing director for the ANZ region Ben Sharp says will give advertisers the ability to retarget via Apple devices.