Following its identity change on Friday, Spark released its first ad campaign over the weekend. Dubbed ‘never stop starting’ and created by Saatchi & Saatchi NZ, the campaign’s first 60-second TVC brings the imagery used in the teaser posters to life by featuring a protagonist walking toward and talking to the camera. As the ad progresses, the actor takes on a variety of different characters and speaks about the importance of starting anew.

We took a quick look at the popularity of slow TV in Norway.

With Spark livery freshly stamped over those of the corporate we used to know as Telecom, the organisation is expanding its Givealittle fundraising platform from charity to individual projects. Spark My Potential will pick out some of the projects listed on Givealittle and give them crowdfunding coaching and in some cases match pledges dollar for dollar.

Technology allows us to do many things, such as detect monsters, take a horse’s heartbeat or stop drunk dialling. And a creative athlete from San Fran has found another use: puerile but entertaining GPS art.

With Telecom spreading its wings as Spark today, we decided to look at a few other rebrands of varying quality from here and around the world.

As Spark’s Jason Paris said in this story, the biggest part the rebrand “is valuing our existing customer base and turning them in to advocates so they become an acquisition channel in their own right”. So before the launch of the new brand, Spark set a series of Automatic Thanking Machines loose on the nation to do just that. And while it calls it a world first, perhaps there’s some morphic resonance/independent multiple discovery at play, because just this week TD Canada Trust had a hit on its hands with its own benevolent machine.

27 years ago, Telecom was given its name. Today it’s officially giving itself a new one. As one of the country’s biggest ever rebrands rolls off the production line, we talk internal enthusiasm, teaser campaigns, customer sentiment, competitive responses and man-hole covers with Spark’s general manager of home, mobile and business Jason Paris and Spark Digital’s general manager services and solutions Jo Allison.

Big Pipe, Telecom Digital Ventures’ naked broadband offering, officially launched a few months back and, to draw attention to its offer, it recently asked its followers to have a bit of fun with its logo for the chance to win some loot. Here are some of the results.

Tango is moving away from being a full services agency creating brand campaigns to a marketing services company that will provide digital services to medium-sized businesses who want to grow. And managing director Boyd Wason says it’s more than just tinkering with a logo.

Whether it’s TV, taxis, travel or titillation, the world is becoming increasingly ondemand. And Flossie.com is aiming to tap into that trend with a new smartphone app aimed at the hair and beauty industry that connects willing buyers with willing sellers.

As Telecom poises to jettison its three-syllable moniker for the punchier Spark title, it’s worth looking at Vodafone’s 1998 rebrand that saw the company change its nationwide identity almost overnight, a move that is today considered by some as one of the best examples of rebranding in the nation’s history.

At the 2014 Cannes Lions there were over 3,000 entries into the activation category alone. And, anecdotally, at least, brands in this market are spending more of their budget on real-life experiences that can then be amplified with digital and social tools. Here are a few local examples.

Shakira’s new ‘La La La’ music video, which doubles as three-and-half-minute advertisement for Activia yoghurt, has officially become the most-shared spot on the internet, knocking VW’s ‘The Force’ off its perch after three years.

On 2 August, Facebook went down for what was reported to be about 19 minutes. And while no one in New Zealand seemed to pay much attention to this catastrophe of social media breakdown, the rest of the world responded with a combination of fear, confusion and downright madness.

On Monday, APN Media launched TrueCommercial, a digital hub dedicated to commercial property and ‘businesses for sale’ listings. For the most part, the initiative serves as an online extension of the Herald’s Commercial Property section, which has until now been published twice a week. The section, which according to Nielsen has a readership of approximately 138,000 Kiwis, will now also be rebranded TrueCommercial from 6 August to give the offering uniformity across the print and digital channels. But how does it differ from the services already offered by Trade Me and RealEstate.co.nz. Updated with additional comments from TrueCommercial brand manager Maria Zolezzi.

Since Antonio Navas first arrived in New Zealand in 2011, there have been murmurings about his impending departure. “I heard that Antonio is leaving” almost became as common a phrase as “integrated cross-channel marketing initiative” in conversations between those in the industry (they had to get it right eventually). And despite this speculation, Navas just shrugged it off and focused on what he came here to do in the first place: create ads that get noticed. Here are a few thoughts from Navas on his time in New Zealand.

There’s been a whole heap of discussion about the rise of native advertising recently. Some see it as the future of marketing; a way to insert relevant commercial messages into editorial content. Others see it as subterfuge; the advertising equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb. John Oliver appears to be firmly in the latter camp, so, as he says in typically comical fashion, if you can insert an ad into news, why can’t you insert news into a product?

Touchcast will work with Tourism New Zealand to zjush up TNZ’s digital brand asset management platform that helps all New Zealand’s various tourism activities appear unceasingly epic to the world. TNZ has large image and footage libraries online that currently tourism industry businesses can apply to use, as long as it is used to promote New Zealand as a holiday destination, is mostly be distributed outside of New Zealand, and is not used in paid advertising. In the last year over 65,000 downloads were made from the system.

The Sunday edition The New York Times featured a full-page ad promoting medical marijuana, following state legislators’ passing of the Compassionate Care Act, which allows doctors to prescribe marijuana to people with serious ailments. This change in law does not however mean that thick plumes of Mary-Jane are going to be obscuring the view of the digital billboards at Time Square any time soon, because the legislation only permits the prescription of non-smokeable forms of marijuana.