Almost 5,000 New Zealanders have taken to the polls and their votes have declared Mallowpuffs Original the nation’s favourite biscuit as part of Griffin’s ‘Bikkielections’ campaign. This result marks the first time in the poll’s four-year history that Mallowpuffs has featured as one of the nation’s top three biscuits, let alone won the entire event. But is an elaborate election-themed campaign around election time even legal?

John Oliver has torn strips off everything from native advertising to Tony Abbott in his HBO show Last Week Tonight, and he’s been getting plenty of online love as a result of his entertaining opinions. And now New Zealand has come under his microscope, with a clip discussing the National Party’s run-in with Eminem over the track it used in its election ads and Steven Joyce’s description of its use as “pretty legal”.

Back when newspapers (and, to a lesser degree, magazines) were happily floating down their rivers of gold, the church and state of editorial and sales were kept very separate. But desperate times call for what some may see as desperate measures and as publishers search for new revenue streams, many of them are increasingly offering their skills to help tell the stories of businesses. Now APN has joined that club with the launch of Brand Insight.

Although no Kiwi agencies picked up a Grand Clio at the 55th edition of the prestigious American Awards show, the list of nine winners in the various categories provide a concise summary of another fantastic year of creativity from across the world. Of all the agencies to pick up one of the big gongs, only Harvey Nichols’ ‘Sorry I Spent’ and British Airways’ ‘The Magic of Flying’ won across more than one category. And There were also several winners that carried their Cannes success across the Atlantic, with Chipotle’s ‘The Scarecrow’ and Volvo’s ‘Live Test Series’ collecting the major gong at the Clios.

Interbrand was riding high after its work for the New Zealand AIDS foundation won a TVNZ-NZ Marketing Award in the not-for-profit category and a global Interbrand Best Work Award for verbal identity. But that was fairly shortlived because and it has lost the Love Your Condom (LYC) brand, a government-funded prevention campaign encouraging condom use among all gay and bisexual men, the most at risk demographic for contracting HIV, to bcg2.

MediaWorks’ channel Four is continuing along the same lines as its The Home of Not Rugby during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, with the current campaign with Special Group of ‘The Home of Not Election’. It has been promising an “entertaining escape from the political coverage dominating other media to Election Day and beyond: an invitation to take a break from the Judith Collins saga, and enjoy the brand new season of America’s Next Top Model; to get excited about upcoming new fast tracked episodes of [various shows].”

Our weekly collection of good things, funny things, weird things and other things from inside the intertubes.

The final lead up to the national election gives the citizens of the country the unique pleasure of being able to see politicians dressed in formal attire standing in the rain, feigning smiles and waving at all the cars driving by. It’s unclear whether such seemingly desperate measures have any sway over the location of the ticks on election day, but they are entertaining nonetheless. Traditionally, these last-ditch efforts by political parties have been limited to doing impersonations of brand mascots on street corners, but in a digitised world they are becoming more sophisticated. These days, politicians recognise that political messages have the capacity to reach a wider audience if they are delivered online. And for this reason many the nation’s parties have taken to the internet to consolidate their street-based efforts.

The Old Spice mandroid’s fraught romantic adventures have brought much joy to the StopPress towers, although some have wondered whether it’s sexist or a parody of sexist ads featuring the product as an aphrodisiac. Now he (it?) is back with a new sports talkshow. Plus: the wonders of the Late Night Big Breakfast.

Interactive is an expanding piece of the ad spend pie here and around the world, and Magna Global has predicted it will overtake TV in the US by 2017. Facebook is a big part of that ecosystem and it reckons it can offer both scale and granularity. So we caught up with Facebook head of New Zealand Stephen Scheeler to find out what’s happening here and how House of Travel has harnessed the social network and is moving away from traditional media.

Despite Steve Jobs’ antipathy towards big screens, Apple launched the 14cm iPhone 6 Plus (and a couple of other things) last week. And Samsung, no stranger to taking swipes at its main mobile competitor, responded with a series of ads showing some disappointed Apple staff. Now it’s followed those up with another feisty spot that talks about the initial negative response to its big, “more productive, more innovative, more fun” Galaxy Note and the ensuing scramble from other manufacturers to follow suit.

In an effort to make the trend of second-screening a bit more interactive, a team of tech geniuses at MIT has developed a system that allows a smartphone user to interact with a laptop or tablet screen with a second device. And while the technology is still in its infancy, there are undoubtedly a few marketers around the world who are thinking up ways that it could be used in a campaign.

It’s a classic—albeit fairly rare—tale: someone has an idea for a business. Their friends, families and potential investors tell them it’s ridiculous. A few years later, it’s a runaway success. And if that happens to you, a new ad for the oft-controversial domain name company GoDaddy via Barton F Graf shows how inspirational business owners should react with humility and grace.

Architectural design firm Jasmax is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, and, in keeping with the marketing zeitgeist, it asked punters to join in the fun by creating a short video showing “how architecture impacts and facilitates our everyday lives” (and at least one Jasmax project). And Jason Dobbs and his skateboarding son Cato took the $5,000 prize with a clip called A2B.

While The Civilian Party is jokingly proposing Hamilton become independent from New Zealand as part of its election campaign, Scotland actually gets a chance to decide whether to stick with the Brits or go it alone. No prizes for guessing which side Groundskeeper Willie is on. Plus: John Oliver’s plea for unity.

Mobile content aggregator Snakk Media plans to tap into social conversations to build a sense of how to sell at the right time, to the right people.

AJ Park patent specialists Anton Blijlevens and Jillian Lim touch on an interesting patent to look out for on the shelves.