After a tender process that ended up attracting over 50 submissions, Sydney agency Iris was chosen to lead Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism’s push to bring Aussies back to the region after a 43 percent decline in visitor numbers since the earthquake. And it has launched a campaign based around a series of long-form mockumentary episodes, with Mayor Bob Parker playing on Australia’s love of oversized novelty structures and real-time images used to show how far the city has moved on.

Smaller, independent agencies are often going on about their nimbleness and agility in comparison to the big, internationally-owned full-service shops. And smaller, independent financial institutions are always going on about the level of service and local ownership compared to the big, foreign-owned banks. And the two things have collided with TSB and Special Group’s new campaign, which aims to make hay after the black horse has bolted and offers its support to soon-to-be ex-National Bank customers.

The vultures have been circling for a while now, and the official announcement that the National Bank brand is finally heading for the knacker’s yard and will be folded into its Australian-owned parent bank ANZ over the next two years, with remaining branches rebranded at an estimated cost of $100 million, marks what will be one of the biggest changes to the financial marketing landscape in over a decade. NZ Marketing ran a cover story on the looming disappearance of the black horse and what kind of treasures were up for grabs back in May. Here’s an edited version of that story.

Following on from its win in the Yahoo! New Zealand Digital Strategy Award for its LiptonSlide campaign, PHDiQ has taken out the latest edition of the competition for its launch of the Samsung Galaxy III on behalf of Vodafone.

Given New Zealand’s feverish excitement during the Olympics when our gold medal tally was greater than that of the usually better performing Australian Olympic team, there’s still a fairly healthy dose of ‘friendly’ rivalry between the two nations. Over the years there’s been a bit of talk about New Zealand becoming the seventh state (and it happened briefly during the Games when, for the first time since 1912, the two nations came together as a rogue state known as Aus Zealand) and, from a marketing perspective, plenty of companies have decided to take care of business in New Zealand from Australia. But subtleties and local nuances are important when it comes to communications, as TVNZ-NZ Marketing Award winners Volkswagen and Z Energy can attest, and some things that work in other markets might not work here. And that’s the card British American Tobacco has played in the latest instalment of G2 Sydney’s animated Agree Disagree campaign, which taps into New Zealand’s patriotic, independent, Aussie-hating streak and questions the wisdom of following Australia’s lead on plain packaging legislation.

Sponsorship is less about logos on hoardings and more about activation these days (although ANZ might disagree after its logo-fest at The Cloud for Valerie Adams’ gold medal ceremony last week). In fact, some believe the old ratio of three dollars for every one spent on the sponsorship should now be upped to five. So in an effort to offer some added value to All Blacks fans, Adidas and Carat have unveiled Game Day, a Facebook application that lets them follow live commentary, comment on the game, track up-to-the-minute stats, access player and team profiles, weigh in on referee calls, vote for man of the match, and buy Adidas gear.

There is perhaps no greater force in the online world than cat videos. Wired recently delved into what it called the online cat-industrial complex, ad agency John St spoofed the feline fascination brilliantly with the world’s first cat advertising agency, and a recent cat video film festival in the US drew 10,000 people (it was won by Henri 2: paw de deux). Now Orcon is embracing the zeitgeist with a new campaign starring animated cats Daisy and Gav.

Just Juice has Antonia Prebble, Symbio has Lorraine Downes and now Cool Charm is aiming to up its street cred by launching a campaign starring its new ambassador: Kiwi electropopper Zowie.

Back in 2007, a man by the name of Mike Orange decided he needed to start looking after himself a bit better. In the realm of male cosmetics, there were plenty of hand me downs from corporate monsters used to producing feminine products, but nothing that “promised quality at a reasonable price without the made up words and fake science”. So DirtyMan skincare was born—and, rather appropriately, it was born in a dingey bathroom on a building site. So, for all those men questioning themselves after watching the latest Lindaeur ad, or all those women who want their men to be more manly, we’ve got a couple of prize packs to give away and all you have to do is tell us a dirty joke.

Campbell Arnott’s New Zealand has formalised its relationship with marketing agency Belowtheline after six months of competitive pitching on a project-by-project basis, putting the agency in control of “through-the-line marketing” across in-store activation, consumer promotional work and select television work for the company.

You may have seen Samsung’s feisty print ad dissing the features of the soon-to-launch iPhone 5. Now Samsung has launched a TVC in the US that once again takes aim at the lemming-like Apple fans by trying to show that the tech company du jour is, in fact, a bit behind the eight ball and its products—block your ears Apple lovers—are so mainstream they’re even popular with parents.