It has been a big year for Goodfolk, with some notable hires, new accounts and an office refit to boot.

Earlier this month, the team at Wellington Airport added a third giant, Tolkien-inspired character to its collection of statues that currently greet tourists. Joining Gollum and the Great Eagles is Smaug the Magnificent, considered to be the last of the great dragons in Middle Earth.

After two delightfully insane adverts that illustrated that retail advertising doesn’t always involve the same tropes, the New World marketing team has reeled it in bit for its Christmas campaign, which features a mild-mannered employee named Noel, who may or may not be Santa in an admittedly average disguise.

Chief executives as the front-person in ad campaigns have been a long-held staple in the advertising space, but the majority are often boring and overused, with voiceovers set to a kitschy hipster montage or “walk-n-talk’s” directly addressing the consumer (shout to to Chanui). But here are a few that over-the-top/down right dangerous stunts that don’t fall into that trap.

When marketing a wine region to prospective travellers, you could show a few shots of beautiful vines, happy couples clinking glasses and the odd landscape. Or you could just show off a bunch of dirt. Yes, dirt.

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

Lorde hasn’t had too much trouble selling records, but, given what’s been happening to the music industry in recent years, the labels could always use a bit more revenue. And Universal Music and BBDO Argentina devised a great way of drawing attention to/selling more copies of her album Pure Heroine by asking fans to imitate her unique dance style and giving them a discount based on how closely they matched.

For the first time in New Zealand, Spark and Spotify have teamed up to bring together #MyFestivalStory, which will provide those going to Rhythm & Vines or Rhythm & Alps with a personalised digital snapshot of their experience through RFID technology.

If horror films are anything to go by, then the restrooms of petrol stations aren’t necessarily the best place to visit—not so much because of the boogeymen lurking in the shadows, but more so because thought of bringing bare buttocks into contact with the toilet seat is genuinely terrifying. So, in an effort to make the pitstop experience slightly more enjoyable, independently owned fuel chain Gull has refurbished 14 of its petrol stations, giving them themes that would be more congruent with a quirky hotel than a petrol station.

What do you get when you combine two guys with a passion for ski racing—one an urban planner with a PhD and the other an art photographer and fashion designer? The unlikely answer is a start-up company with a mission to develop sexy (and dry) underwear for the incontinence market—and a penchant for doing lots of research.

With the trials and tribulations of Quickflix and Ezyflix, the arrival of Premier League Pass and Lightbox, the impending arrival of Sky’s Neon and murmurings that Netflix will launch in Australia next year, there’s plenty of action in the subscription video on-demand market at the moment. And that’s good news for content consumers. But one of the major impediments to uptake is the hassle—or perception of hassle—in getting that content on the main TV. So, following in the footsteps of Quickflix and the free-to-air broadcasters, Lightbox has launched an app that offers its service through Samsung Smart TVs.

Compulsive hoarders are often reviled for allowing themselves to be buried under the assortment of junk that they’ve collected over the course of their lives. And while extreme examples of this problem make for fascinating trash TV, in reality the tendency of humans to collect isn’t unique to those who can’t see the floors of their homes. As evidenced by the continued popularity of collectibles—with Z Energy’s Blokhedz a recent example—even ordinary Kiwi families can at times indulge in the pleasure that comes with collecting things they simply don’t need. All Good Bananas is another brand that has recently launched its own version of collectibles campaign, which comes in the shape of stickers that are attached to bananas.

Steinlager’s latest ambassador is freediver William Trubridge, whose upcoming world record attempt in the Bahamas is being screened on Breakfast on December 3. At the launch of the new campaign, senior brand manager Michael Taylor said there were plenty of creative suggestions about how to promote the event and he even mentioned the possibility of a 102m high billboard. We haven’t noticed any of those around as yet, and they probably don’t come cheap, but we did notice a clever media idea that has put a lift in the Auckland CBD to good use.

Adobe has been beating the accountability drum recently, with some great spots for its ‘do you know what your marketing is doing?’ campaign that show the perils of not basing your decisions on good data. And its latest effort has perfectly sent up the insatiable demand for clicks by equating a marketer with a junkie on the hunt for their next fix.