“Orcon is shining the spotlight on bandwidth throttling used by big telcos, including Vodafone and Spark, in a new campaign that encourages Kiwis to look at the fine print before signing up to broadband plans that could unnecessarily be slowing then down,” touts the media release from Orcon that accompanies the launch of its new campaign featuring a plum-dressed dictator of ambigious origin removing the wig of what is meant to be the chief executive of a major telco (seemingly Spark, if the colour scheme of the faux promotional material is anything to go by). UPDATE: ASA confirms that complaints have been lodged.

While trying to buy the latest Ken Ring book, StopPress inadvertently put a thoroughbred on the company credit card instead. So help us give it an appropriate name and the best suggestion will win two tickets worth $95 to the Melbourne Cup festivities at Ostro on November 4.

Volvo has the honour of creating what many view as the best truck ad ever made with Epic Split. But two can play at that surreal game and Mercedes has decided to let a couple of its creations get freaky in a Dirty Dancing-inspired ad for the Vito van.

MyRepublic, a new internet service provider offering ultra-fast fibre broadband, has touched down in New Zealand in its big purple rocket, and it’s using William Shatner to communicate with us slow-internet users.

A while back Swedish hair brand Apolosophy got plenty of attention for its creative use of subway advertising. And a Swedish cancer charity has added a little more emotion to that idea.

BNZ is getting involved in the world of forums by launching BNZ Community, a social hub “where New Zealanders can give, and get, guidance on all things banking and money-related”. Coinciding with the start of Money Week, BNZ’s director of retail and marketing Craig Herbison says that BNZ Community will help make it easier for New Zealanders to talk about money and banking. BNZ Community has two main components: a forum where users can post a query, start up a conversation and search out the best answers to questions; and the separate ‘Good with Money’ blog, where BNZ’s staff will be providing information on how customers can be smarter with their money.

MediaWorks is playing the Paul Henry card next year and moving him to a hybrid TV/radio/digital breakfast show that will spell the end of The Paul Henry Show, Firstline and Marcus Lush on RadioLive. MediaWorks says his show was a success. So you can judge for yourself with a comparison to the last year of Nightline from Nielsen’s TAM ratings. PLUS: Firstline vs. Breakfast.

Customer backlash has forced Sealord to cast its latest ad, starring reality TV star Heidi Montag, to Davy Jones’ Locker. After screening the new campaign for less than two weeks, Sealord has pulled the ads from YouTube and television.

Wellington’s Ocean Design has been around for 26 years, but it’s been content to float under the radar. Now, after adding some new business to its list of very longstanding clients and bringing a few new staff onboard, managing director Blair Mainwaring pipes up.

ANZ is understandably keen to get more Kiwis buying, building and renovating, so it’s bringing Kevin McCloud, design expert and host of the British home renovation show Grand Designs since 1999, to visit New Zealand to offer some inspiration to property lovers. He’ll talk about the highs and lows of the show (MediaWorks is currently looking for houses for a New Zealand version of the show) and offer his thoughts on how that relates to New Zealand at a one-off speaking event on 22 October at the Viaduct Events Centre. And we’ve got a couple of tickets to give away, so post a link to the coolest/funniest piece of design you’ve seen recently and to the winner shall go the spoils.

The expression ‘a third wheel’ and the oft-used phrase ‘two’s company, three’s a crowd’ are usually employed to describe a situation whereby a third participant somehow ruins the dynamism between a couple. However, DDB doesn’t agree with this sentiment. In a trio of new TVCs, which aim to draw attention to Lotto NZ’s new game called 3 Play, DDB attempts to show that ordinary activities are way better when done in a group of three.

Next’s annual Woman of the Year awards took place last night, with Sita Selupe, founder and principal of Rise Up Academy and chief executive of Rise Up Trust, taking the supreme and education awards, Lisa Carrington taking the sport category, Miranda Harcourt taking the culture gong, My Food Bag co-founder Cecilia Robinson taking the business category and psychologist Sally Merry earning the health and science winner. So sit back, grab a saveloy from the Friday snack table and check out some glamour shots from the night.

Hey look! There’s Lorde!

There are plenty of critics who, as this brilliant story in The Atlantic shows, believe that there has been a dumbing-down of news, a rise in entertainment and a focus on celebrity. Because we now have the technology to see what’s being read and watched, some feel it has become a vicious cycle of banality. But the research of George Gallup from almost 90 years ago on what people read in their newspapers shows that this isn’t a new phenomenon, that native advertising was always effective and that “readers are liars”.

Want to know what the future looks like in 20 years? What technology you’ll be using? What your house, car or even your kids will be like?

As Mashable wrote last year, all start-up videos seem to look the same (including Xero’s, which appeared on its list of cliched techniques twice). So they’re ripe for taking the mickey out of. And Canada’s Invoke Media has done that with a pitch video for an amazing new start-up called Carrot.