The Shopping Channel has had a pretty rough ride since it launched with great, Eva Longoria-inspired fanfare last year. But it’s still alive—albeit much leaner, in a different location and with a modified focus.

TradeMe Jobs recently launched a campaign showing that nominative determinism was a thing of the past. Try telling that to the BBC.

German beer brand Beck’s chose Semi-Permanent in Auckland to unveil its latest toy: a beer bottle where instead of a label there’s music.

‘Can you make it go viral?’ is a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of all agency folk. But Swedish PR consultant Simon Strand, who has spent an inordinate amount of time philosophising on last year’s big YouTube hits and coming up with his own viral formula, is here to help.

Kim Dotcom’s cloud locker service Mega came under sustained cyber attack yesterday, which affected the New Zealand-based cloud company’s services for about 2.5 hours.

When it comes to ad spend, there are a few measures available, from the ratecard-based Nielsen AIS, to the industry-supplied figures released annually by the Advertising Standards Authority, or other quarterly releases sent out by various industry bodies. But a new player is about to take the field, with Standard Media Index (SMI) launching in the New Zealand market this month.

Mention the word drones and images of indiscriminate bombing come to mind. But Ex-Wired editor Chris Anderson has a different take on things and he’s been extolling the virtues of—and making a business out of—unmanned flying devices for years. Now Domino’s has also seen the light and, as this video of the ‘DomiCopter’ shows, the pizza of the future might be airborne.

Getty Images’ Hulton Archive goes almost all the way back to the birth of photography. So, as part of an effort to highlight the breadth and depth of historic content available there, it teamed up with Short and Sweet to launch a film challenge with a twist.

My love hate relationship with Samsung’s Galaxy Note range now spans over two years of smartphones and tablets. These flagship devices known for the signature S Pen stylus inputs, border gimmicky on one end and business essential on the other. With the Galaxy Note 8.0, Samsung has created a device that’s definitely more latter than the former – putting a powerful iPad Mini competitor in the hands of consumers (for a price).

While print media continues to tumble and find its footing in the digital age, online advertising is on a rocket ride to the top. According to PwC’s latest entertainment and media outlook, online advertising is expected to reach $543 million in annual revenue by 2017.

The Dollar Shave Club guy, otherwise known as Michael Dubin, earned legions of fans for his very entertaining launch video. And he’s back with no.2—and an array of no. 2 puns—to promote the arrival of his next product: butt wipes for men.

Coat-tailing on the success of The Hobbit trilogy is paying off for Tourism New Zealand and it says it’s a strategy that will feature heavily in the organisation’s three-year plan for marketing the country to the rest of the world.

Just like its father/mother is in the online auction space, TradeMe Jobs is the most-visited New Zealand jobs site, reaching that goal a couple of years ago. And, it’s aiming to stay there with the help of its first-ever brand campaign via JWT.

Kiwi mobile advertising company Snakk Media has released its first annual revenue figures since listing on the New Zealand Alternative Exchange (NZAX) earlier this year, raking in $3,654,346 between March 2012 and March 2013 – an 83 percent growth year-on-year.

As the AskewOne piece on the wall beside Auckland’s south-western motorway says, ‘better never stops’. And Charlie’s Trading Co. has acknowledged that philosophy by creating a new corporate brand called The Better Drinks Co.

Goodby Silverstein and Partners’ Got Milk? campaign for the California Milk Processor Board was one of the most memorable campaigns of the ’90s and became part of the pop cultural furniture in the US. It helped increased milk consumption in California, it has spawned a host of parodies and it’s still going strong today. So why is the phrase being used by Fonterra to advertise its Anchor brand?

Niklas Roy, the self-described inventor of useless things, talks to the Semi-Permanent crowd about the colliding worlds of engineering, design and artistry.

Raising money for charities and not-for-profits is a much more difficult job than it used to be, given the number of competing organisations and the economic strain of recent years. But there were plenty of impressive efforts showcased at the Fundraising Excellence awards in Wellington earlier this month.