What happens when engineers and artists come together? No, it’s not engineer/artist babies, it’s creative new products. Sony wants to show us that hardware is all about feelings.

Some of us like to ask friends and family before we buy something, others spend hours browsing websites and catalogues before they hit the shops. Now furniture retailer Ikea has an alternative with an app that uses the Chinese signs of the Zodiac to make recommendations.

Jucy is rewarding hopeless romantics for their creative and quirky displays of public affection on social media. It’s launched a competition that offers a week of glamping, the sophisticate’s version of what traditionalists used to know as camping.

Apple is harnessing the value of poetry in a new ad that aims to promote the iPad Air. The 90-second spot couples an excerpt spoken by Robin Williams in the Dead Poets Society with video footage that showcases the splendour of human endeavour. PLUS: see which other brands have dabbled in verse to flog products.

Samsung Singapore has released a new app that stops phones from receiving phone calls, text messages or social media notifications when people are travelling at faster than 20 kilometres per hour. PLUS: check out the Yellow Jacket (stun gun) iPhone case.

Last year, Barnes Catmur and Friends finally ended Aussie dominance at the Campaign Asia Pacific Awards by becoming the first Kiwi agency to win the Australia/New Zealand Independent Agency of the Year category. In addition to this, the consistent indy team won the Battle of the Ad Bands, showing that its creative streak also extends into other disciplines. Given that the agency spent 2013 moving from strength to strength, it comes as no surprise that managing partner Daniel Barnes was positive, albeit laconic, in his assessment of the year.

Procter & Gamble and Wieden + Kennedy decided to celebrate mothers’ roles in the creation of world-class athletes in a campaign that ran as part of its sponsorship of the London Olympics. And it’s back with another earnest spine tingler focusing on winter sports for the upcoming Sochi games in Russia. P&G-owned brand Old Spice also released an ad about mothers recently, although the musical ode to those who can’t let their teenage boys go is quite a bit different from that of its parent company.

Entrepreneur and Snow Park founder Sam Lee is hunting a US$50,000 kickstart for MeMINI, new wearable tech designed to record the moments we don’t want to miss.

Since the ectoplasm of 2011’s ghost chips was starting to wear off, Clemenger BBDO decided to give Kiwis something equally memorable in 2013. The agency put three talented kids into a car, gave them an infectiously creative script and once again proved that serious issues don’t have to be presented in an overly didactic way. Here’s what managing director Andrew Holt thought of the year.