It was a time when Vanilla Ice was cool, Windows 3.0 was released and Tim Berners-Lee came up with a little thing called HTML. But 1990 also saw the birth of a company in Wellington called BNA design. Fast forward through an impressive client list that has included the likes of Telecom, Solid Energy, Formway, National Bank, NZTE and Yellow Pages, add in a rather scientific name change, and you get to the auspicious milestone of design agency DNA’s 21st birthday. To mark the occasion, DNA showed this video to clients and staff at its recent 21st parties in Auckland and Wellington. And having partied with the DNA folks at the Auckland bash, we felt the rest of you might want to have a gander at the entertaining documentation of the DNA story as well. 

Everyone loves a deal. And the Great New Zealand Deal Wars have been spiced up considerably after the arrival of a few new players recently. Now Positively Wellington Tourism is kicking off WellingtonWednesday.com, a site that offers up some of the hottest tickets in town to draw attention to its events culture. But with a reverse auction format and only the cream of the Wellington crop on offer, the creators say it differs from the other deal sites on the market. 

The polyester/labcoat clad investigative scienticians from Did I Believe It claim to have been helping you—yes you—think for almost 42 years. And, in what could be seen as New Zealand’s slightly more alcoholic answer to Look Around You, the visionary Silo theatre and the visionary 42 Below have joined forces to bring you a perfect theatrical/commercial muddle that aims to disseminate the silly, mad and historic facts about vodka. Ah, can you smell that? It’s art and commerce colliding. But not only are they helping you think, they’re also helping you win things. So in the spirit of weird, comical science edu-tainment that can be seen on the trailer here or the play’s Facetube page here, just come up with a completely nonsensical science-related question you would like answered and the weirdest effort will get one double pass to the show on Sunday 10 April. We’ve also got four very cool 42 Below gift packs (‘True Encounters of the Spirit of the 42nd Parallel) to give away.

Of note in this collection of televisual commercial messages, the Red Bull Trolley Derby gets set to take some skin off; a classic from Mini keeps it on top in the car class; Robert Harris launches a seemingly unnecessary product for lazy people; ASB and Expol let off a couple of groaners; Skinfood goes mainstream and gets itself on the telly; Tower hits the courts, Pinnacle Life continues with its enjoyable challenger brand cheek and a new campaign from Cigna tries to clear the murky life insurance waters; Magnum embraces temptation by sending a babe down a fire escape in a low cut dress; Telecom continues to push its Android smartphone wares hard, presumably welcoming news that Android took over from Apple as the biggest mobile operating system in the UK recently; and the Skyline ad maintains its place as the best ad on TV at the moment. 

Was that you with your top off and teeth showing in the photobooth at the Axis awards?

Hey good looking. And hey the rest of you. Check out the good, the gooder and the gorgeous at the Axis awards on Thursday, as snapped by one of Getty Images’ many talented camera wielders. We have 200 prize trips to Hobart for the funniest comments. Annnnd go!

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As a founding member and the first course leader of the AdSchool at Media Design School, David Bell has whipped a multitude of young advertising minds into shape and readied them for the cut and thrust of the real ad world. And to honour these efforts over the years, he was handed the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2011 CAANZ Axis Awards last week.

Hey look, a Friday afternoon press release about New Zealand’s favourite cliff-walking broadcaster Paul Henry, who has, blow me down, officially signed up with MediaWorks, both for radio and television duties. And here we were thinking he’d go to Stratos. 

As the entry video shows, Yellow and Colenso believed you could get anything done with Yellow. But in a world dominated by Google, they had to say it loudly. And, like the award-winning Yellow Treehouse before it, Yellow Chocolate did just that. Whether this campaign achieved business results is debateable (Yellow could also be in line for the Creative Accounting Business of the Year), but that’s an argument for another day. In keeping with the creative Axis vibe, what is clear is that Colenso came up with a big, complicated idea, the Yellow powers that be were brave enough to run with it and the pair brought the many disparate parts together in the form of a chocolate bar. 

Ewwwww, what’s this? Why it’s us, softly launching a juicy new Creative channel on StopPress. Just as you’ve come to love and expect, we’ve got loads of creative advertising to show off, and loads of news about advertising creatives. So to help you get it faster, we’re putting it all in one place—minus all the distractions. Just the work, the awards and the work. Check out the new channel here and fill your boots with a virtual cornucopia of Axis awards winners. Love, The StopPressers.

Hyperfactory’s Geoff and Derek Handley are offering to send a marketer on a whirl-wind tour of the US to to visit the best-of-breed in digital and marketing in the U.S. But you’d better hurry. The award entries close on Monday.

Colenso’s ‘Yellow Chocolate’ was the only campaign deemed worthy of a nod in the Social category and was awarded one of eight golds for its efforts, while DraftFCB’s ‘The Journal’ was also a lonely winner in the Digital/Interactive category after picking up a bronze.