Powershop Australia has been forced to pull a billboard campaign, featuring a power socket as Darth Vader, due to a complaint from LucasFilm. This is the second time Powershop has used the Dark Lord’s image in vain – in 2011 they also pulled an ad referencing Darth Vader after copyright scares.

Sam Finnigan, a polite accountant hailing from Kohimarama, has won back at least some of the nation’s pride by defeating super villain and defending America’s Cup winner Jimmy Spithill in a Samsung smartphone-controlled sailing race.

Hell’s pizza-and-fireworks campaign has proved to be sales dynamite, with the company recording its busiest week ever over Halloween and Guy Fawkes.

After worming its way into the pockets of well over one million New Zealanders, 2degrees has been focusing on adding the more lucrative business and post-pay customers to its ledger in recent months, with its latest campaign featuring endorsements from Geoff Ross, Dion Nash, Al Brown and Kate Sylvester. But in keeping with the other major telcos and their various marketing partnerships, 2degrees has struck up a deal with Google Play and its long-serving mascot Rhys Darby is promoting it through the wonder of dad dancing.

Earlier this year, Bruce ‘Pic’ Picot’s one-millionth jar of peanut butter came off the production line in Nelson, serving as statistical proof of the love the Kiwis have for his product. And since good news travels, it comes as little surprise that the Aussie supermarkets have signed a deal with Picot to stock his product on their shelves. We chat to the purveyor of nutty goodness about expanding his empire, combining poems with peanut butter and being a Kiwi success story.

​​Google’s Chrome experiments are generally cause for nerdish celebration as they push the browser to strange and creative places. And now, as The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies gets sets for launch, it’s updated the interactive map of Middle-Earth it launched around one year ago with a host of new tricks.

On 15 October, The High Court at Auckland placed The Magazine Marketing Company (TMMC), which was founded in 2008 by Stuart Shepherd, into liquidation for failing to meet payment obligations, which included overdue GST, PAYE, KiwiSaver employee deductions, KiwiSaver employer contributions, student loan employee deductions and income tax. KPMG, which was appointed as the company’s liquidator, released its first report on 19 November, revealing additional details about the process thus far.

After thirteen months and 5.95 million tweets, the Chorus Gigatown campaign is now playing its closing scenes, and there can only be one winner. Next Wednesday the long-awaited Gigatown victor will be announced.

Getty’s latest edition of Creative in Focus, a lookbook for the photography industry and a guide to the changing realm of visual culture, sees the breakdown of gender roles, profiling of positive leaders of industry, and a lust for the amazing things our Earth has to offer as the key trends of 2015.

Stretchmarks, acne and cellulite are all selling points of the new children’s doll on the market, sent to replace Barbie. And not only are they selling points, the acne for the Lammily, which went on sale this week, will actually cost you more.

If you believe the headlines, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. But if you believe some of the data (or Bill Gates), things have never been better, with fewer wars, more wealth and better health. Auckland University talked to New Zealand secondary school students about a range of things in 2001, 2007 and 2012 and here’s how their behaviour is changing.

From Drawing Dicks on the Herald Sun to the Mars Rover to GPS Art, the comedy value of phallic art seems to know no bounds. So if you’re stumped for a Christmas gift for your more immature friends and family members, have we got the site for you.

Since the first days of the internet, those online have experimented in creating behavioural chain reactions. Most often, these early attempts involved little more than sending out an email that contained a promise of all types of misfortune if the message wasn’t forwarded. And invariably, there would always be a few recipients who found the electronic promise of impending doom as sufficient impetus to send the message on. And while this achieved little more than cluttering the embryonic email accounts of early adopters, the principle underpinning these chain letters is still relevant in today’s social media age in the sense that if you give people a good enough reason to share something, then they will pass it on. StopPress looks at how muesli brand Hubbards has been trying to create a chain reaction of its own through a campaign called ‘Keep the good going’, which encourages Kiwis to participate in random acts of goodness.

Speight’s comically masculine southern man campaign idea had a long and very successful run, and its previous agency Shine attempted to bring the idea into the modern era with the ‘Knowing What Matters’ campaign. DDB took over late last year and, in one of its first major campaigns, it’s moved it even further away from ‘Good on ya mate’, with its ad for Speight’s Alchoholic Ginger Beer featuring some major self-deprecation from ex-Shortland St star Karl Burnett and a massive pun.