Barnes, Catmur & Friends seems to have taken a page of the stage magician’s handbook in new spot for the New Zealand Heart Foundation, which uses a distraction strategy to make its point.

Whether it’s the housewife who smiles while cleaning the toilet, or the teenage boy who gets the girl after putting on some deodorant, advertising is renowned for showing unrealistic situations. But the latest campaign from Trade Me Jobs might just take the cake.

NZME confirmed through a release sent out today that it will not be renewing its licence with Pacific Magazines to produce New Idea, Girlfriend and That’s Life. The existing deal runs until 30 September 2015, and NZME chief operating officer Phil Eustace says that NZME will cease publishing the three magazine titles from that date.

Coca-Cola has gone the cinematic route with a new online ad called ‘Steampunk Coke’, which looks like a scene straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Much like in New Zealand, mobile phones are ubiquitous in Mexico. Over 90 percent of people living in the Central American country carry the devices in their pockets on a daily basis, and the nation’s arm of Redcross saw this as an opportunity to save lives. Given that many people don’t wear their medical tags, the Redcross invited citizens to send in their medical details to a their mobile phones. All this information was then stored on a database, which can be accessed by emergency workers when needed.

There’s a new marketplace on the block, which believes in the sentiment “sharing is caring” and it’s called Ourthings. A rental website which encourages communities and businesses to share wealth between them by renting out their goods.

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

In a new series, StopPress talks to a range of newsmakers currently trying to shine lights into dark places while also keeping their own lights on and looks at whether commercial realities are leading to editorial compromise. Next up, Damien Venuto talks with Hive News founder Bernard Hickey.

WWF has created a potent ad campaign via Geometry Global Copenhagen around endangered animals, creatively using YouTube to spread its message.

Marketers have so many tools available to them to target customers and personalise communications. But they still need to bear in mind how people arrive at the front door in the first place, says Andrew Lewis.

In New Zealand and in many other places, the female nipple is commonly censored among mainstream media outlets. Social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram are guilty of removing images of women with bared breasts. But now women have been illustrating the absurdity of the idea of a mere areola making something rude by photoshopping male nipples onto their breasts, while the results are pretty funny, they also make a bold statement.

Two Twitter evangelists, head of communications Nathan Burman and international revenue manager Olly Wilton, are currently making the agency rounds in New Zealand as part of a push to increase the scale of the social media company’s business in the local market. Over the course of the last week, the pair have met with various agencies and media outlets to discuss why it’s worthwhile to shift ad spend to the network.

Justin Bieber has made headlines again. And no, not for peeing in mop buckets or destroying hotel rooms or dangerous driving, this time it’s for… his butt.

Lorde once said that all the internet is “ … is doing your own PR”. And in modern times this rings truer than ever. We curate the material we put on our social media accounts, crafting the image of ourselves that we want to present to others. You could say we are our own brand and social media is how we market ourselves, and while most of us get paid in ‘likes’ or ‘followers’, some social “influencers” are teaming up with brands and getting paid in cold hard cash. And on that note, here are the top ten followed Instagram accounts in the country and how a few of these media personalities are racking up the dollars from doing what they do best.

With over two million Kiwis on Facebook and 100s of thousands on Twitter, social media offers a means by which to increase the reach of a campaign. This week, AdRoll’s Ben Sharp looks at why social should be key to your programmatic marketing strategy.

Vodafone, Semi-Permanent and Kiwibank share the podium this week.

The days of wallets being crammed with loyalty, bank and business card might soon be coming to an end. In fact, wallets themselves could well be headed for obsolecence if Semble has anything to do with it. The company has already been facilitating contactless mobile phone payments across the country, and it has now announced that it’s expanding into public transport. The expansion is part of Semble’s plan to become a one-stop mobile shop for every card in a person’s physical wallet, chief executive Rob Ellis says.