Bay of Plenty gets a new attitude (and along with it a new slogan) as the region attempts to squeeze into the top four tourist destinations in New Zealand.

The community of tech aficionados who participate on the Geekzone forums are some of the harshest critics of Telecom. It’s interesting to see then the country’s largest telco tap into this pool of switched on geeks to help design a new consumer modem it plans to sell to the wider New Zealand.

We’ve seen Samsung take the fight to Apple. Now Microsoft is squaring up against the dominant tech force with an ad for its new Surface that uses a Siri-like voice to point out what the more expensive iPad doesn’t do.

The Manukau Institute of Technology and bcg2 took the animated approach in its last campaign. And it’s gone to the other end of the ad spectrum this time with a campaign starring Samoan media personalities Sela Alo and Pua Magasiva that confronts the misunderstandings many prospective students can have about studying in an effort to boost mid-year enrolments​.

Ahhh, the Falcon, that most graceful of winged creatures, and that most boganic of wheeled machines. Following news that Ford was ceasing manufacture in Australia, the 56-year-old model—one of the longest running nameplates in automotive history—will be no more come 2016. So in honour of the beast, here’s a collection of classic Falcon ads from the region that have run over the years, including the classic 1989 campaign that reportedly saw requests to drive the new ‘Ford Lately’ go through the roof.

A weekly wrap of funny things, good things, weird things and other things seen on the intertubes.

DB Export 33’s recent campaign tried to prove that men were doing women a favour by drinking low-carb beer. And now Tegel and DraftFCB are doing their bit to inspire better inter-sex relations with a 45 second TVC to prompt the lads to roast up a few more chooks.

Yesterday’s Xbox One reveal summarised in under two minutes. As someone who woke up at 5 AM to watch the announcement I can whole-heartedly say, this is pretty much bang on the money.

Given the recent ructions in the world of print media—and, to a lesser extent, broadcast media—and the fact that the job of newspaper journalist was recently ranked as the worst job in a recent US survey, this nzherald.co.nz headline shows some surprising results.

While Samsung has shot a few ads in New Zealand, the local executions have been few and far between. Colenso BBDO has done a few things for the South Korean behemoth, like Peter Bromhead drawing cartoons live on nzherald.co.nz and a virtual queue to launch the Galaxy S4. And now Barnes Catmur has given the Galaxy Note 2 the full Kiwi treatment by getting actor/director Taika Waititi to do his mad thing in an online only, long-form video called ‘State of the —ATION’.

Following several overseas breaches into high profile Twitter accounts overseas (and one closer to home) Twitter has finally given users a tool to protect their accounts by introducing two-factor authentication.

A sold out Digital Day Out kicked off this morning with Catherine Bates from Tourism New Zealand talking about the strategy the organisation is taking to sell New Zealand to the world using The Hobbit.

Last year, Getty Images and its Brazilian agency AlmapBBDO released a commercial called ‘From Love to Bingo’, a collection of stock imagery that told a love story and clocked up almost three million views on The Yoob. And the pairing have continued on a similar path with their latest effort, ’85 seconds’.

Westpac did it last year at 79 Queen St, and BNZ has followed suit with its own ‘concept store’ across the road at 80 Queen St.