Visible across almost every media channel, the name Annabel Langbein has become a brand in its own right. We chat to the woman behind it to find out how she created a media empire that now has its eye on the US market.

Our weekly wrap of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from inside the intertubes.

The corporate world has long looked to professional athletes and coaches for guidance on how to perform better, how to create a positive culture and, if they’re being honest, how to grind their opposition into the dust. And ASB has looked to the All Blacks—or, more specifically, the team behind the All Blacks—to provide some pearls of wisdom for Kiwi businesses.

While most retail advertising released today features little more than price, product and sale shouted through every available megaphone, there are also some examples of retailers returning to a more creative approach when it comes to their advertising. And the most recent example of this is the new Farmers brand ad. PLUS: should marketers focus on the emotional or the rational? Should they be doing more brand or retail ads?

VNO has launched a thermo label on its white wines that that tells the consumer when it’s the correct temperature for drinking. And to give its thermo-labelled wine some personality, it’s released a radio ad where the wine is personified by a breathy, sultry man urging the VNO owner to drink the wine.

Korean car manufacturer Hyundai has made an impression on the Instagram scene with its latest marketing attempt. A quiz spanning 18 accounts and close to 400 images determining which vehicle best suits the user’s lifestyle, the Tucson, Santa Fe, or Santa Fe Sport.

The rise of the digital has disrupted many aspects of life: from the way we research, to the way we contact one another, to the way we lock our houses. The disruption of newspapers and magazines is common knowledge, and this in turn has affected the way cartoonists work. Over the years the Sunday funnies page has had less space allocated to the funny and often thought-provoking illustrations and many cartoonists have headed over to the digital realm. One of these is Toby Morris, a cartoonist for RNZ and The Wireless. He tells us how his craft has changed, and how this isn’t such a bad thing. We also chat to fellow cartoonists award-winning Anna Crichton and long time cartoonist Brendon Boughen for their perspective.

Designworks chief executive Sven Baker was at good odds to get one of his designs through to the final four of the Flag Consideration Project given he had five make the first cut. Alas, it was not to be, and after the decision was announced a few days ago, there’s been no shortage of commentary about the chosen options, with ‘lost opportunity’ being the prevailing theme among the design community and the opinionated folk of social media. But rather than wallow in self-pity at the injustice of it all, he decided to make the best of a bad situation. And what better way to drown a few design-related sorrows than with a nice vintage.

Just over a year ago, various journalists across the industry had a TV dinner delivered to to their homes. In addition to providing a night off cooking for many, this unusual delivery served to announce the launch of Spark’s subscription video on-demand streaming service Lightbox. Since then, TV dinners have been removed from the menu, and Kiwi viewers have instead been feasting on the content offered by service, clocking in 12 million hours of streaming time via the service. The company’s chief executive Kym Niblock talks about the journey thus far.

Seeing someone smile at you is one of life’s great pleasures. And those who can see take that completely for granted. But Listerine and JWT London wanted to find a way to give those who can’t see warm fuzzies (and sell more mouthwash), so it created an app that plays a sound or vibrates when it detects a smile.

McDonald’s is having a reasonably rough time of it at the moment, with falling sales in some of its bigger markets and more trouble brewing with those pesky, transparency-seeking, provenance-loving, fast-casual fans known as millennials not really lovin’ it as much as they once did. But it’s trying to change and, as a recent campaign in Australia shows, it’s trying to be ‘very unMcDonald’s’, whether it’s through the launch of premium burgers, new branding, clever packaging or global days of creativity. It’s also looking to recruit digitally savvy staff as it aims to bring “a start-up mindset to one of the world’s largest and most iconic brands” and, in an ad on LinkedIn, it seems to have attempted to illustrate what it thinks those staff might look like.

For those of you who spot an alien-like, mirrored box structure that has planted itself in Auckland’s Britomart preccinct, do not fear. It isn’t a UFO, a force field, or time machine (although that would be pretty cool), it’s The Heineken Light Club.

Uber, the ultimate disruptor, proven perhaps by the increasingly frequent reference of other tech innovations being dubbed as “The Uber of [insert tech innovation]”. And, it’s easy to see why. Recent results show Uber for business travel is doing extremely well with several companies jumping aboard the Uber bandwagon/cab.

During the Cricket World Cup, ANZ used its Dream Big initiative to get cut-through the marketing noise during the Cricket World Cup. Rather than focusing exclusively on the event, the bank brought its Black Caps sponsorship to life by travelling around the country showing its support for grassroots cricket by upgrading the facilities at various grounds around the country. And now, with the Rugby World Cup fast approaching, ANZ is at it again, this time renovating Waitemata Rugby Club in a new video posted to Facebook. The difference in this instance is that ANZ isn’t even a sponsor of Rugby New Zealand, the All Blacks or the Rugby World Cup.

We all have those friends or know at least one person who only smokes when they drink, who’s a “social smoker” or who will only buy a pack in the weekends. 72and Sunny released an ad tackling the issue of social smoking called ‘It’s a Trap’.

Today the Flag Consideration Panel announced the shortlist of the flag designs consisting of four, which eligible voters will rank in the first binding postal referendum later this year. Twitter responses on the matter range from ambivalent, to angry and some of them are, from our view, quite funny. The somewhat heated responses reminds us of other flag designs and national symbols which people loathed to begin with before they became beloved national icons. We take a look at a few examples after sharing some of our favourite tweets on the shortlisted designs.

Pacific Magazines has confirmed that the Kiwi iterations of New Idea and Girlfriend will be discontinued and that it will not have any staff on the ground in New Zealand. And this has led to NZME serving termination notices to seven contractors and 15 staff.