When most people think of the coupling of gin and music, more readily to their minds probably comes an image of drinking gin while listening to it. But Rogue Society Gin has come up with another idea, partnering up with Loop Recordings Aot(ear)oa, distilling gin while music is playing to create the “world’s first music-infused gin”. Part-PR stunt and part-absolute madness, even the makers themselves can’t tell us whether the gin actually tastes any different.

To get Channing Tatum adorers ready for the upcoming launch of Magic Mike XXL, Fuse and OMD ran an activation to help support its other media by mass-producing some takeaway coffee cups with thermochromatic artwork with the Magic Mike cast on the front. And guess what happens when the cups get hot?

Mass media used to have all the power. But the rise of social media has meant that many individuals are now gaining huge audiences for themselves and stealing some of that power away. And brands around the world are increasingly leaning on them to help spread their messages. In this part of the world, they don’t get much more popular than Jamie Curry, who hit ten million Facebook fans last year and has 1.5 million followers on YouTube. So, after working with Coca-Cola and Netflix, she’s now signed up with Kiwibank to create The KB Series, a six-part series that will follow Curry on her journey from Napier to Auckland as she moves out of home and pursues her career in acting and producing entertaining content for her legion of fans.

In conjunction with winning the marketing account for the Skycity Breakers, content creation company Frontside has launched a new service called ‘Frontside InHouse’ which, as you might have guessed, brings all of Skycity Breakers content production in house.

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

You may have noticed there’s a rugby game on this weekend. And you may have noticed that there is usually a whole heap of inane chat before, during and after each match. But Guy Montgomery and Fasitua Amosa have shown us what a post-match should be like with a clip on Squiz, a site that calls itself “New Zealand’s home of short-form video content”.

While the world is becoming increasingly cashless, there are rare occasions where dollar bills are required. And ANZ, which has already got a far bit of marketing mileage out of adding some character to a few of its high-profile money dispensers, has just launched its second Matariki-inspired design.

Brands are normally seen as the bullies; corporate monsters taking advantage of the little guy. But they aren’t just a logo, a uniform or an ad. They are made up of multiple individuals working in different branches on different levels. And often it’s the people lower down the chain who bear the brunt of angry customers, as any front of house hospo worker or call centre operator or social media manager will know. So in light of the Harmful Digital Communications Bill passing its third reading, and following some recent anger directed at the likes of Nestle, Cadbury, Ticketek and many others, we decided to ask a few New Zealand companies with ‘passionate’ followers a potentially stupid question: have they ever felt like they’ve been bullied online?

Many studies have proven that consumers care more than ever about a brand’s social responsibility when shopping, but businesses are still tentative over whether being sustainable has monetary gain. Conscious Consumers wants to show businesses how highly shoppers value ethical companies with the Good Spend Counter.

The Good Spend Counter is a way for consumers to show the causes they support through both an app and a website.

Modern parents are at times ill-equipped to face these challenges—such as cyber bullying, screen addiction, inappropriate selfies and unsavoury browsing—in that they have no prior experience in dealing with issues like these. They are essentially new challenges for a new generation of parents. So, given the treacherousness of the online landscape, Vodafone has in conjunction with NetSafe and The Parenting Place launched a new suite of services that help parents navigate their way through some of these challenges. At a press even hosted at the Vodafone headquarters in Auckland today, Vodafone consumer director Matt Williams unveiled Digi-Parenting.co.nz, an online hub of articles, videos and printable guides offering practical advice for parents in the digital age. PLUS: the new campaign video hits viewers in the feels.

Unskippable pre-roll video ads, according to a recent study by Ad Block Plus and Page Fair, are among the most annoying of all ads. But marketers and agencies are trying their hardest to make them slightly more bearable, with efforts by Colenso and BK’s anti-preroll and Geico’s unskippable pre-roll campaigns standing out recently. Volvo and Grey Canada have also joined in the fun, and, rather than making one pre-roll ad, they linked 60 of the XC60’s new features to the six billion hours of YouTube content that is typically viewed in a month in an effort to tailor them to the videos people were watching.

Tulips, hearts, ferns – these are just some of the “basics” in the world of latte art. Now, you can produce all of that and more, with the Ripple Maker.

Soon, your face will be useful for more than just looking pretty. MasterCard is developing a new programme that lets you approve online purchases with a simple blink of the eye. And it believes this will cut down on fraud.

Self-service is common in supermarkets, petrol stations and at buffet restaurants, but not so much when it comes to producing content marketing pieces for publishing on a major website. And yet, this is exactly what Yahoo has been facilitating to certain selected clients over the last few months through the beta version of new native ad in-feed platform that it has recently made available to the wider market.

Wellington-based craft beer brewery Garage Project has grown from humble beginnings since Pete Gillespie, brother Ian Gillespie and Jos Ruffel started out in 2011 using a 500 litre “glorified home brew kit” to moving to a 2000 litre tank and say a large part of their success is not just the quality of the beer, but also its unique branding approach, hiring different artists to design the labels for individual beers. The brewery has also been a frontrunner in the canning of its craft beer, much to the scepticism of some. But it has worked. Demand is strong, and over 140 beers later, a slew of awards and a team that’s grown from three to about twenty, it’s showing no signs of slowing down yet.

Using the premise that small, seemingly insignificant moments carry enormous gravitas when viewed in retrospect, the Danish Road Safety Council attempts to illustrate how a simple breath of air pushed out of your lungs could make a massive difference.

StopPress lifts a glass to DB Export, the Co-operative Bank and Q Card this week.