Strea.ma, the cloud-based web app that aggregates and displays social media activity – developed by Hawkes Bay digital marketing agency Mogul – will take centre stage in San Francisco early next month. Not bad timing with fever around a certain boat race series hotting up.

What if Labour leader contender David Cunliffe’s speech had been made in a gladiatorial arena? Wonder no more, thanks to Radio Live.

Kiwi marketers have a chance to efficiently target their marketing across an array of screens consumers now use to access media. But that doesn’t mean they should get all creepy about it, an expert panel says.

Whether it be fake press releases about donating polar bears or satirical websites or staged PR disasters, Greenpeace has gone to great lengths to try and stop Shell from drilling in the Arctic. And it managed to piss Shell off again recently after smuggling in two remote controlled banners—one featuring the words “Arctic Oil? Shell No!” and the other “Save the Arctic.org—to the Belgian grand prix, an event Shell sponsors.

Shopping mall chain Westfield has paired with retail ad agency IdeaWorks to launch a new campaign to highlight its fashion offerings on Pinterest. The ‘Repin It’ campaign encourages Pinterest users to use the repin button – similar to using the retweet button on Twitter – to share Westfield products with their followers on the social network.

Kiwi tech companies aren’t just world famous in New Zealand, by the looks of a recent Forbes article.

Japan has a well-earned reputation for making batshit crazy ads like this, this or this. So, as part of the Comedy for Cure Kids on TV3 last week, Corey Jane punk’d some of the All Black newbies and tricked them into thinking they were filming an ad for the Japanese market.

When Terry the Bi Bipolar Polar Bear first appeared online five years ago, he “was a minor internet hit amongst bi’s, bipolars and bears”. And now, thanks to creator/writer/performer Jeremy Dillon, Pukeko Pictures and Yukfoo Animation, he’s back—and he’s better than ever.

So Miley Cyrus’ raunchy Twerking at the VMAs drew hordes of viewers. Has grabbing eyeballs come to this? Frankly, yes.

Kiwi mobile advertising company Snakk Media’s revenue has continued its upward trajectory as more Kiwis get mobile devices and use them to get online.

Bungee jumping? Pfff. There’s no reason to rely on gravity and elastic alone when you’ve got machinery to assist. And Mountain Dew and Devin Graham have joined forces to create some whiplash-related entertainment.

Insurance provider Sovereign has chosen four-year-old agency Tenfold mostly for print and design work. Sovereign’s general manager of marketing David Drillien wouldn’t say who else was in the running for the business, but said it chose Tenfold because it could be a “decent size client” for the agency and because its specialisations fitted with what Sovereign needed.

After waiting for the dust to settle following the Christchurch earthquake, NZI has launched a big animated campaign that tells the story of the ‘devil’s chair’—and aims to show that the company will be there to help New Zealand businesses when the unexpected inevitably happens.

Richard Stevens, now managing director of BrandWorld, plans to rejuvenate the company’s mastheads as founder Bill Peake and former shareholder Mike O’Sullivan dip a toe into retirement.

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

Last night at the Hopetoun Alpha, a bunch of finely tuned, very well-dressed and alcohol-infused athletes from the marcomms sector took part in the 2013 Global Beer Pong Championship of New Zealand Advertising, an event put on by MediaWorks Radio and supported by Faux Beer. And it was team NWA (Gerhard Simanke and Mark Banbrook from The Radio Bureau) took out the title after a fiercely contested final against Team Cock (Simon Teagle and Rachel Leyland, DraftFCB).

It’s Restaurant Month in New Zealand, and new Auckland restaurant Atico Cocina is celebrating with StopPress by giving away an $80 voucher.

Powershop has a thing for dictators. The company’s previous ad campaigns have featured Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong-Un. The company apologised for offending people with its ‘Chairman Mao’ campaign, which featured Mao Tse Tung, a man who had millions of people killed.

Tourism New Zealand has found a way to tempt visitors thinking of a premium activity based holiday, as well as those whose appetite has been whetted by the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with a new-look 100% Middle-earth, 100% Pure New Zealand campaign.

Greenpeace got its hoax on last year with a fake website called Arctic Ready, which asked users to come up with their own Shell-related ads and aimed to draw attention to the company’s desire to drill for oil in the region. The best one, ‘You can’t run your SUV on cute. Let’s go’, was put on a massive billboard and erected outside Shell’s HQ in Houston. The organisation continues to fight against the proposed drilling and a ‘press release’ about Russian company Gazprom and Shell delivering a polar bear to Auckland Zoo that was sent to the media and published by stuff.co.nz seems to bear the mark of Greenpeace as well.

So Shearer’s been shorn. Bad headlines have been written. And since his resignation bombshell earlier this afternoon, Twitter lit up with reaction and people touting successors (our favourite: ‘We’ll never forget you Damon Shearer!’).