There’s nothing we love more here at StopPress than making up hilarious fictional band names (eg Quiver and the Groans), laughing at hilarious actual band names or coming up with hilarious lyrics about the wide array of situations in which you get sweaty legs (tennis in jeans, leather seats in Auckland, sex in a sleeping bag, pvc pants on the tube etc). We know the creative power of our readers is immense, and we want to harness it for good rather than evil, so add your own ridiculous fictional band name to the comment wall and you might just get your greasy mitts on one of the hottest tickets in town, because we’ve got one double pass to St. Jerome’s Laneway festival in Auckland’s Aotea Square on 31 January and three double passes to the Wellington event at the Town Hall on 1 February to give away.

PR and communications specialist, past National Party president and general woman-about-town Michelle Boag has been hired to fill the newly created role of executive director at Ogilvy NZ and will take up the role from February.

New Zealand will soon welcome a big new player in the out-of-home sector, with media company Taxi Impact and a range of taxi companies—including the main taxi co-operatives under the Blue Bubble brand—agreeing to start displaying advertising on their vehicles in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

With a combination of effective, unashamedly jingoistic advertising, a solid product offering and consistently high rates of customer satisfaction, Kiwibank has performed the role of challenger brand brilliantly and given the big boys plenty of grief since it was set up in 2002. Hell, ASB even took aim at it last year in the misguided ‘We’re a Kiwi bank’ campaign and Sam Neill signed on to be the bank’s mascot, so it must be doing something right. Sadhana Raman, Kiwibank’s general manager of brand and marketing communications—and a finalist in last year’s Marketer of the Year awards—goes back in time.

Spark PHDIQ has taken out the third quarter round of the Yahoo!Xtra Digital Strategy Awards for its Unilever Sunsilk Co-creations campaign, which the judges—Yahoo!Xtra’s Laura Maxwell-Hansen, Mohawk Media’s Helen Baxter and guest judge Gavin Pook, Red Bull’s marketing manager—felt succeeded in re-launching the brand through a range of digital channels and firmly established it as an expert in hair care.

Creative Review magazine called David Carson “the most famous graphic designer on the planet” and “art director of the era”; his first book The End of Print, is the top selling graphic design book of all time, selling over 200,000 copies; and he and his work have been featured in over 180 magazine and newspaper articles around the world, including a feature in Newsweek magazine and a front page article in the New York Times. Well, Kiwi design lovers rejoice, for you will be able to bask in his reflected glow when he conducts seminars Auckland and Wellington in February.

Ashburton isn’t a place that’s renowned for its marketing innovations. But, after the launch of Air Banners, it soon might be.

JWT’s desire to become a more potent force in the Kiwi ad landscape just got a big fillip with the announcement that it has won the PlaceMakers account and will take control of the whole shebang, including creative, media, trade, loyalty and retail. 

Creativity can come from anywhere. And the Media Design School obviously recognises that, because it’s calling for wildcard entries to fill two positions on this year’s creative advertising course.