Nothing says I love you like a massive sign outside a mall. And, to tap into the romantic spirit of the day, Westfield has once again let New Zealanders publicly declare their affection on 12 billboards around the country as part of its second Truly, Madly, Hugely campaign. 

As 2degrees closes in on its millionth customer, Whybin\TBWA launches its latest 60 second brand TVC for them, The Mission Continues, with the inimitable Rhys Darby.

New Zealanders, with our unusual combination of immense pride and nagging self-doubt, like to be liked (“How are you enjoying your trip? Are you enjoying your trip? You’re enjoying your trip, aren’t you?”). But, just as Aucklanders have certain preconceptions of, say, Invercargill, many Australians couldn’t think of anything worse than visiting their Tasman neighbours. So, as part of a campaign launching today in Australia, Air New Zealand and its Aussie agency Host Sydney attempted to show a bunch of ‘Kiwi Sceptics’ what they were missing out on by tricking them into a trip to the other lucky country. 

After the success of Pepsi’s MaxIt Jobs campaign last year, there were high hopes for Colenso’s follow-up, Bromitment. But, by the power of Facebook, the vocal minority have got their way and convinced Frucor/Frucor’s PR agency to bow to online pressure and withdraw a prize offering a trip to the running of the bulls in Spain from the campaign. 

The scene: a trendy bar and eatery in Freemans Bay, Auckland. Booked exclusively last evening for a business function, three stalwarts of the popular press, including Ms F O’Sullivan and Mr P Holmes, tarried at an outdoor table after a late lunch. When politely reminded their time was up, the visitor from Hawke’s Bay replied: “Don’t you know who I am?” Sadly, the young and demure organiser had to admit that she had no idea, just that she had booked the place exclusively. Perhaps the question should have been: “Don’t you know who I was?” The defenders of the fourth estate stayed ostentatiously put after the bar manager quailed in the face of the ferocious and fulsome trio, fearing a D rated review.

There were 300 entries from 33 countries for the Google-sponsored IxDA Interaction Design Awards. And Xero has beaten corporate giants Nike and Windows Phone 7 to take out the “best in class for global interaction design” award.  

It seems more and more mates are joining Bruce. 2degrees has announced a larger than expected growth, providing mobile services to 875,656 New Zealanders now, after two and a half years in the market. Included in this are more than 275,000 customers who brought their existing mobile numbers with them.

Gone are the days when homebrew was a byword for, as your dad might say, bloody undrinkable horse piss. Craft beer is one the major growth areas of the booze market and there are now plenty of interesting brews being concocted in garages, laundries, hot water cupboards, man caves and, of course, breweries all around the country. To tap into the growing number of refined palates, Ian Williams and Anders Warn spent five years developing the world’s first personal brewery, WilliamsWarn, and the design and brand work by Studio Alexander has matched the quality of the product by taking gold in the international Graphis 100 Best in Design awards. 

Ah Novus. The Auto Glass Repair and Replacement company behind one of the more divisive ads in recent history. This week Novus launches another campaign – again urging us to show them our crack. It is equally as, ahem, memorable, and looks to be made with much the same budget as the original. But this one comes with the chance to win a trip for two to the ultimate crack – The Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.  So get cracking and enter here. (ps you don’t need to send in an actual photo of one’s crack. There is an online entry form. Sorry about that Novus. Could you please just delete that email attachment I sent earlier?

Whispering sweet nothings just got a whole lot easier, but those with a sweet tooth might do best to avoid the Q-Pot phone, which is more than likely to cause users extreme chocaholic cravings every time they pull it out.

Super Bowl ads are known for generating buzz—and viewers—but not all creatives are created equal. Chrysler courted controversy and won kudos for a two-minute Super Bowl advertisement that was less a car sales pitch than a rousing political message in election year. Chrysler ignored the unwritten rules of Super Bowl advertising – to be brief and funny, for the second year in a row. But it was still voted best ad of the event. Volkswagen’s The Dog Strikes Back was a distant second and M&M’s dancing candy ad polled third (results here).

Earlier this year All Black hero Piri Weepu recorded his third Smokefree advertisement, made by the Health Sponsorship Council and Base Two. His appearance in two earlier Smokefreee ads had been so successful they inspired both his brother, and his mum Kura Weepu, to quit smoking. But now, a furore by the ‘breast-is-best brigade” has seen a two second clip of Weepu dropped from the new 2011 ad, for *gasp* bottle feeding his baby daughter.

Brands increasingly need to look for creative ways to make the most of their sponsorship dollars. And bands increasingly need to look for creative ways to make money. So, what better way to do both of these things than by filming and editing a pretty bloody good music video in one rather manic day at Auckland’s last Big Day Out, something Kiwi band I am Giant and Speight’s Summit did.