Town branding is a difficult nut to crack, with many attempts coming off as desperate and nigh-on dishonest. But for the past few years since launching its new gothic identity via Projector Media, Dunedin has been doing a pretty good job of it. And, as part of its new push to become ‘one of the world’s great small cities’ within ten years, the next phase of its campaign consists of showcasing some of the city’s under-the-radar business success stories.

#Flashbackfriday seems to be a thing on Twitter. And a few socially-aware brands are joining in the fun so we can laugh at the past. For example, this quality Air New Zealand ad from the ’60s imploring New Zealanders to fly south and do the twist on a mountain-top, or ANZ’s classy, fashion-forward print ad.

We speak to Premier League Pass co-founder Tim Martin about the business of sports in New Zealand and the technology behind the new sports broadcasting platform competing with Sky TV’s virtual monopoly.

​Current Idealog editor and ex-roving adland reporter Hazel Phillips has just released her new book Sell: Tall tales from the legends of New Zealand advertising. It’s a triumph, a tour de force, a gripping romp, and it tells the story of how the local ad scene came to be and the characters who helped create it (keep an eye out for an extract in the July/August edition of NZ Marketing magazine). We’ve got a couple of copies to give away, so go back into the mists of time and post your favourite Kiwi ad in the comments section. The two commentors with the best taste will get the literary spoils.

Frucor’s V brand has pushed a number of marketing envelopes in the New Zealand market and, given it’s at the head of the field in the energy segment, that seems to have paid off. Frucor also has global ambitions for the brand, and it’s looking to climb the ladder in Europe with a campaign centred around internet trolls.

Our weekly round-up of good things, strange things, funny things and other things from the intertubes.

Powershop has managed to find a solid niche in New Zealand’s energy market as a cheeky challenger brand that gives its more than 50,000 customers additional information about their energy usage, lets them buy power online and shows them plenty of love. And now the Meridian-owned business is taking that model to Australia.

Levi Hawken had his five minutes of fame when Nek Minnit started doing the pop cultural rounds. He’s milked it a bit since then, with cameos on TV3 with the likes of Food in a Nek Minnit and New Zealand’s Top Nek Minnit, but the opportunists cashed in on the phrase as well, selling a range of t-shirts and paraphernalia. So what do you do when the flames are petering out and the zeitgeist has moved on? You do an innuendo-filled ad with local ‘glamour model’ Kelly Windsor to spruik berry-flavoured lube, of course. Feels Delicious indeed.

New Zealand is basically the Canada of the South, with a loud, obnoxious neighbour, a passion for wood chopping and a strange combination of pride and self-doubt. So PopPress is confident this passport-based experiment by Canadian beer brand Molsons will be right up Kiwis’ alleys.

We love taking voyeuristic journeys into the lives of people lucky enough to be on Google’s Glass Explorer programme.
This time we see through the eyes of professional tennis player Bethanie Mattek-Sands as she prepares for Wimbledon.

Airmail app is Sim Ahmed’s new go-to productivity tool. It’s simple and unobtrusive, just the way an email client should be.

Pizza. It’s delicious, but no one has time anymore to walk down to the local pizza joint and wait for a box of carbohydrates, protein and other supposedly edible miscellany to heat up. Domino’s Pizza New Zealand is hedging on this to happen and predicts by 2016 4 out of every five of its sales dollars will be made online.

New Zealand design company Hardhat has won best packaging in the non-alcoholic beverage category of the Dieline Package Design Awards 2013 for cups designed as part of its re-branding of fellow Kiwi’s Coffee Supreme. And Curious Design and Think Packaging came second in the same category for their work on Bolu Tea.

Gina’s restaurant certainly isn’t averse to a bit of saucy advertising (its radio ads are filled with innuendo and good-natured male objectification). And its latest billboard, which features a shirtless Italian stallion with his jeans unbuttoned, the line ‘mozzarella with balls’ and two extra letters that change everything, continues this trend.