While the research industry as a whole shrinks, The Research Agency continues to grow, with new staff, new clients and a few awards in 2012. Main brains Andrew Lewis, Amber Coulter and Connon Bray speak up.

Kim Dotcom says he’s over saturated the New Zealand media, and is worried New Zealanders will think he’s manipulating journos. But who is using whom?

Zenith Optimedia lost the Motorcorp media account, which includes automotive car brands Jaguar, Land Rover, Renault and Volvo, around the same time Publicis Mojo was closed, something media director Sophia Quilian told us was not linked, just simultaneous. And, as suspected, the business has gone to Total Media, which has added to the good news for the start of 2013 by bringing Ziera Shoes into the fold.

Last year, M&C Saatchi and The New Zealand Fire Service decided to play the guilt card for the first time with an ad depicting the pain a father felt for having allowed his young daughter to be burnt in a house fire because he hadn’t installed smoke alarms. And, in a hard-to-watch continuation of the ‘Could you live with yourself?’ idea, it’s released a new campaign to show that “a house fire can harm you, long after it’s out.”

Whether you need a big paperweight, bullet-proof shield, or are genuinely interested in big data; The Human Face of Big Data will have something that’ll be useful for you. Tell us how you use big data tools or information and go into the draw to win the book.

Free ice cream, t-shirts, Kim Dotcom and the chance to attend the launch of mega.co.nz drew a crowd of more than 200 people outside of the Giapo ice cream parlour in Auckland yesterday.

In a world of mergers, acquisitions and acronyms, knowing your DDBs from your TBWA\s and Y&Rs can be tough going. And so, it seems, is knowing how to say them. Thankfully, some anonymous cunning linguists have come to the rescue with this slightly ridiculous agency pronunciation guide.

Earlier this week, DraftFCB announced it would be handing the Westfield baton on for ‘commercial reasons’. And a few days later it’s announced something of a replacement, as it has been appointed as the full service advertising agency for Paper Plus Group after a competitive pitch process that was thought to have involved the late Publicis Mojo, Hotfoot and the incumbent Hyde, which relaunched the brand back in late 2011.

Nothing can stop Kiwis from shopping for bargains, especially not when everyone takes their mobile phones on holiday it seems.

The 1 billion-strong social network launches a social-powered search engine. Is this where your next SEM dollar will go?

Hawke’s Bay man creates iOS game from home which has taken the app world by storm, now sitting pretty in the Apple App charts.

The modern world is quick to jump on PR fails, and they certainly make for good fodder in an age of rampant sharing on social media. But in an effort to get people to appreciate the complexity of PR issues, Wellington PR agency BlacklandPR has created a list of what it deemed the most difficult PR challeges of 2012. And the merging of Christchurch schools took top spot.