Unilever’s Old Spice has been ratcheting up the new product development recently, with new scents, sprays, soaps, shaving gel and hair products, all of them launched in typically absurd and generally very entertaining fashion by Wieden + Kennedy. Now Terry Crews, the long-time sinewy, shouty ambassador, is back to launch a new range of electric razors.

Quite often, when companies operate across both the Australian and New Zealand markets, advertisers create generic marketing messages that are applicable across the board. But rather than adopting this cost-saving approach for its latest OPSM spot, the creative team from Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney took a flight across the ditch to produce content that was aimed specifically at the Kiwi market.

Cavan Huang, an associate creative director at Interbrand in New York, recently published an article on the Getty Images website on the effectiveness of point-of-view videos and how they can be used to tell brand stories.

When clients shack up with a new agency there’s a tendency to torch the previous work and start afresh. 2degrees and its new partner Special Group certainly took a different approach with their recent business push, but it’s kept Rhys Darby on as the frontman and maintained the quirky, colloquial and self-reflexive style of the previous work for the pair’s first big brand ad.

Those working in the persuasive arts often get a rough time from ‘normal people’, who are quick to trivialise the work of this industry and regularly call into question its ethics. But, as this glorious piece from McSweeneys entitled ‘I should get the first lifeboat because I’m in advertising’ points out, it’s time those tireless creative souls were acknowledged for their massive contribution to society.

Vodafone has renewed its naming rights sponsorship deal with the Vodafone Warriors until 2018, taking the partnership, which started in 1999, to 20 years and making it the longest of its kind in New Zealand. And the Herald has also followed suit by renewing its deal with the team until 2016.

A couple of years ago, New Zealand men’s fashion brand Working Style launched a DIY print campaign that focused on New Zealand men who were making their mark overseas. Now it’s gone the other way, enlisting one of the world’s best male models, Aiden Shaw, to star in its latest campaign.

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

For the past week, Contagion’s Tom Bates has been hangin’ with the geeks and soaking up the knowledge at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. And while he was there he caught up with a few expat Kiwis doing big things. First up, Sarah Robb O’Hagan.

In the middle of the polar vortex that held North America in its icy grip last winter, Toronto-based Cossette gave Canadians a Duracell-powered incentive to remove their hands from their pockets.

DDB NZ’s digital creative director Haydn Kerr shares five more digital nuggets from his last day at SXSW Interactive.

Freeview is set to launch Worldnet TV, the niche Asian-focused channel, free to viewers using home broadband. Freeview says the channel is technically ready to go, with launch timing to be determined by WorldNet.

Some of the best examples of content marketing tend to sneak up on readers/viewers/participants, many of whom don’t know it’s an ad and don’t seem to care either. That’s certainly the case with First Kiss, a clip for clothes brand Wren that shows 20 ‘strangers’ in a room locking lips and captures the initial awkwardness and eventual passion. Plus: parodies galore.

Ever since the first Terminator film was released, the question of mankind’s ability to survive against a robotic rebellion has been mooted in popular culture. And now, using this concern as the premise for its new ad, Munich-based Sassenbach Advertising has pitted a Kuka robot arm against German table tennis legend Timo Boll.

Lawyers have the reputation of being officious scumbags that are interested in little beyond overcharging clients. So, in an effort to show solidarity with the average person on the streets, criminal defence lawyer Daniel Muessig has created a bizarre promotional video that features a series of actors engaged in a variety of crimes.