Whittaker’s has a history of innovation, both in terms of its new products and its approach to marketing. We were big fans of its amazing chocolate website, which may or may not have provided some inspiration for Cadbury’s Google+ page. And while it doesn’t seem to be an official production (yet), a few chocolate lovers decided to turn something else usually deemed inedible into something much more enticing by screenprinting Whittaker’s chocolate designs onto wafer paper.

It is a scientifically proven fact (or will be, once somebody gets around to studying it) that the internet favours extremes. Trolls (like spammers) are inescapable. And as senior advisor for innovation to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Alec Ross said in his keynote address to the Project Revolution conference last week, moderation and compromise tend to get punished in the process.

Following on from its performance in the recent APMA Star Awards, marketing and promotional agency Belowtheline has won big at this year’s APPA Awards, taking home five awards including a gold, two silvers and two bronzes.

It’s a very competitive home loan market out there at the moment, but Westpac is hoping it can put a bit more of a gap between itself and the rest of the field with what it’s calling a New Zealand-first for homebuyers, a comprehensive online tool called www.homeclub.co.nz that enables users to collect, compare and store properties they are interested in by importing TradeMe watchlists and aims to smooth the often-frustrating purchase process by providing information like QV valuations, comparative sales in the area, multiple views of the location with Google maps, mortgage calculators and easy contact with Westpac loan specialists.

Despite the fact that Samsung has morphed from a relatively small player in the consumer electronics market into a globally respected brand in ultra quick time, it isn’t really renowned for the quality of its advertising and, in many cases, there’s a whiff of naffness about a lot of it. But as part of its Olympics sponsorship and to markt the opening of the Paralympics, it’s released a pretty amazing new campaign called ‘Sport doesn’t care who you are’—and it’s right up there in the spine-tingling stakes with Channel 4’s ‘Meet the Superhumans’.

In the past, the tobacco industry has largely acquiesced whenever regulation has been imposed on it—and whether it be forcing manufacturers to put health warnings or graphic images on packs, smoking bans, retail restrictions like those implemented recently or seemingly imminent tax hikes, there’s been plenty. But the threat of plain packaging, which has recently been given the go-ahead in Australia, has been something of a tipping point for the industry and, in an effort to convince Kiwis that doing the same thing here is tantamount to theft, British American Tobacco has taken the unusual step of launching an above-the-line campaign.

If Kleenex can do it with toilet paper, Kim Crawford can do it with wine. Well, kind of. As part of its Fashion Week sponsorship, the winemaker has launched a campaign in conjunction with The Business and MediaWorks where six teams of students from Whitecliffe’s Fashion School look for some inspiration in the bottle.

‘Tis peak season for academic institutions to try and convince prospective students to sign on the dotted line. Unitec has looked to the city with its new, very urban campaign, The University of Canterbury has looked to the future with Designworks, Lincoln has looked to the land and most of the other academic institutions are active as well. And now AUT University is joining in the fun, with a new brand campaign by Consortium that showcases the work of six researchers who are “helping define the future of our changing world”.