2009 was a bit of a watershed year for cider in New Zealand. And to celebrate, Monteith’s recently launched its new Crushed Pear Cider—which is made entirely from good old fashioned New Zealand pears, not from apples like some of its pear-flavoured competitors—with a rather unique take on comparative advertising and a fake protest outside DB HQ. You’ll be overjoyed to know that we’ve got some of the delectable nectar to give away to parched StopPress readers and because everyone loves sloganic frivolity, we want you to come up with a slogan for Monteith’s Crushed Pear Cider. Add it to the comment wall and the three best efforts will get 12 bottles of the good stuff to sup on contentedly during these warm tropical nights. Extra points for bad pear-related puns.

Hey, look, Masport celebrates in 100th, too much Countdown family, facial topiary embraced for Movember, Wanganui attempts to lure domestic tourists, Unilever continues to make almost every product on the face of the Earth, New Zealand’s taxi companies unite under a blue bubble and kudos directed to the Sovereign ads that play before TV One’s sports news.

It seemed like a promising start—and it also seemed like a win-win scenario—but the commercial realities have hit home for public bike provider Nextbike and it has been forced to suspend its operations and remove its bikes from the Auckland streets due to a lack of advertising revenue.

With Kiwi consumers increasingly heading online to do their buying, Loyalty New Zealand has added another five e-tailers to its Fly Buys e-stores list, which brings the total to 23 after the service was launched late last year. 

More than 700,000 New Zealanders tuned in to say their final farewell to Outrageous Fortune—and to the much loved West family—last night, with TV3 nabbing a 51.5 percent share in 18-49 demographic and a 24.8 rating for the last ever episode of what was New Zealand’s favourite drama.

In a sordid tale of intrigue, subterfuge, poaching and skullduggery that could be worthy of a cover story in itself, ACP has made an already uber-competitive sector even more competitive by signing up Women’s Weekly editor Sido Kitchin as the new editor of what was not too long ago her avowed enemy, Woman’s Day, and also bringing Weekly’s deputy editor Fiona Fraser into the fold. 

There’s nothing more beautiful than seeing a man at his most natural and a new spot for Speight’s Summit lager by Publicis Mojo that was directed by The Sweet Shop’s Steve Ayson has got all the required elements to become a new contender for beer ad of the early summer (ie man standing in river, man growing luxurious beard, man hurling rock, man yelling from mountaintop, man chasing deer, man punching boar and, of course, man drinking beer). It’s certainly much better—and much easier to understand—than man being teleported and running around the Savannah being chased by a Lion. 

More stunning moves than Kasparov versus Deep Blue.

After purchasing the former Pinto plant in Tauranga, signing a big distribution deal in the UK and welcoming former Fisher Funds Management chief investment officer Warren Couillault into the shareholding fold this year, Kiwi-based VnC Cocktails is well and truly beefing up and planning on tripling its already impressive sales next year. And winning a highly competitive global tender to supply its premium pre-mixed cocktails to Etihad Airways’ First Class services is certainly a pretty good start.

In November last year L’Oréal announced it would be parting ways with its media agency ZenithOptimedia after three years together and that a new agency would be announced in May this year. Zenith had inherited the business after L’Oréal’s agency Universal McCann ran into trouble in New Zealand a few years back, but although it was invited to pitch for the business, it declined. Since then, the business has been floating around and Zenith remained in place during the tendering process (some insiders feel the delay is because no-one actually wanted the account due to low margins and L’Oréal’s reputation as a fairly difficult client). But Universal McCann is now back in the fold and will take up the role as media agency in the Australia/New Zealand region. 

You know you’ve done something right (or wrong) if you get a concerned call from Bill Ralston after posting a story. And that’s what happened when we found out Pauline Hanton had resigned from her sales director position at Adshel to take up a role with a retail/instore media outfit supposedly linked to Ogilvy. Turns out the rumours were true and now Hanton, along with Paul Kenny and Suzi Hood in sales, have officially set their new, fully integrated in-store media channel and shopper marketing specialist Hypermedia into the wild, with Countdown as the flagship client.

This week on the telly, the battle of the supermarkets heats up, with Countdown still gobbling up all of ONE’s weekday 6.10pm news spots and New World: the musical going live. Also of note, an amazing spot (and an amazing lead man) for Blind Week, the Interislander gets summery, Hyundai revs up a new one, Nescafe starts up a new rewards programme, New Zealand Post toys with the emotions to get the people primed for Christmas, and the latest feelgood instalment of TelstraClear’s nationwide journey hits the screens.