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Beyonce does haka, goes viral—UPDATED
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After her October 19 show, Beyonce was treated to a haka performed by a local crew. Rather than cowering in fear like an international rugby opponent, Beyonce enthusiastically joined in and even gave a great Miley Cyrus impersonation at the end.

News
Magazine readership and circ numbers a mixed bag, industry aims to change the conversation
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Once again, Nielsen’s latest readership results and the ABC’s circulation numbers don’t make for particularly pleasant reading for the magazine sector, with all weeklies charting declines deemed significant on the same time last year, plenty of other significant declines and a rare few increases. And, perhaps not surprisingly, the MPA and the various publishers are hoping to change the conversation from a one-dimensional discussion about quantity, to a multi-dimensional discussion about the quality of engagement across a number of platforms.

Movings & Shakings
Affinity ID celebrates its fifth birthday, adds two big names to help drive growth—UPDATED
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Affinity ID kicked off in 2008 when Geoff Cooper and Angela Day took the agency into private ownership from the Clemenger Group. It began life with 27 staff and has grown to almost 80 digital specialists across a range of disciplines. And it has added two more big names to its board and senior management team, with Nigel Tutt joining as group general manager and Roger Shepherd joining as an independent director.

News
Vodafone and Telecom pull out all the stops for iPhone launch, grease up FOMO-suffering Apple acolytes
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Sometimes you just can’t escape lining up. The portaloo at the festival, the cashier at the supermarket, the coolest new bar. But no-one really likes doing it, so it is fairly hard to fathom why anyone would do it for a new phone. Plenty do, of course (even though they don’t actually know why). And the companies selling them go to great lengths to butter these strange tech fiends up and ensure they don’t get queue fatigue, as evidenced by Vodafone and Telecom’s launch festivities for the new iPhones.

News
All Blacks continue to aim global with first-ever YouTube broadcast
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New Zealand Rugby conducted something of an experiment last week when the Bledisloe Cup test between the All Blacks and Australia was streamed live and made available on-demand on www.youtube.com/allblacks to more than 45 countries where the digital rights hadn’t been allocated exclusively to a broadcaster. So how did it go? And should Sky be worried?

News
MediaWorks puts receivership behind it, oozes confidence at new season launch—UPDATED
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Last night, in a big shed down on the docks of Auckland town, Jeremy Corbett and Hillary Barry helped launch MediaWorks new season line-up. And, with the return of most of its local shows, some big-rating new international numbers and a couple of new branded content initiatives, director of sales and marketing Liz Fraser is confident it can continue its solid run of form in 2013 next year.

News
Searching for sexism
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Google is basically the nervous system of the modern world, and that’s best evidenced by the screen in the Googleplex showing the real-time search queries from around the world (minus the dirty ones, apparently). The auto-complete feature aims to predict what you’re going to ask about based on other popular searches and usually the results are either relevant or quite funny. But a new campaign for United Nations Women by Ogilvy & Mather Dubai has used this democratic online function to show how endemic sexism still is around the world.

News
Sony’s impressive trip down video game memory lane
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Pizza boxes, bad clothes, poster-laden walls, staying up way too late mashing buttons and trying to clock games … Ahh, the memories. All of this—and much more—has been chronicled by Sony and Drum in an effort to chart the history of the PlayStation ahead of the launch of PlayStation 4 later this year.

News
After ringing the changes, The Warehouse challenges the doubters with DDB’s instore experiment
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The Warehouse has transformed its offering in recent times, allocating $430 million over five years to refit its stores, improve the customer experience, increase the number of staff on the floor, stock a better range of products and brands and communicate the offer more effectively with the market. That’s led to nine consecutive quarters of profit growth and an increase in sales to $1.55 billion. But while its regular customers were aware of all the improvements, those who had written it off years ago still had some engrained negative perceptions. So, with the help of DDB, it’s faced up to them with The Warehouse Challenge.

Movings & Shakings
Movings/Shakings: 22 October
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Alana O’Neill joins MediaWorks, a shock for Jock, Jo Jalfon shifts from phones to food, NZDM Awards judges announced, Kelly Millier heads to NZ Lotteries, its Les Mills for Lwindi Ellis and Thick as Thieves adds Michael Duignan to its roster.

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