Subjects were canvassed, numbers were crunched and insights that have guided strategy and communications were delivered. And the research companies that have followed this path and impacted on the fortunes of their clients have been recognised with the announcement of the finalists for the Market Research Effectiveness Awards.

Hey, look, it’s almost Fathers’ Day, which means a host of companies will soon start guilting consumers into buying socks, booze and other trinkets in order to show their patriarchal love. And nothing says fatherly love like Chivas Regal, some of which you can win if you’re cool and entertaining enough.

Pizza and horror movies have always gone pretty well together. And while there have been plenty of classic zombie flicks over the years, not one of them has featured pizza in the movie itself. Hell Pizza and Christchurch-based filmmakers Little Sister Films decided to change that by creating Deliver Me to Hell, supposedly the world’s first ‘pick a path’ interactive Zombie movie and now a mid-level YouTube sensation.

That inconsequential stuff the ads are placed around on the telly (aka programming) has been acknowledged once again, with finalists for 41 sections across three categories—news and current affairs, general television and documentary—announced in this year’s Qantas Film and Television Awards.

On this edition of Ads@6, ANZ receives plaudits for the gratuitous use of a meercat; Women’s Weekly puts its ladies on display; State’s ‘My 3 Things’ puts a few favourite things in boxes; the Audi spot makes design/tech nerds (and possibly even captains of industry) go weak at the knees; Orcon opens up multiple windows; Telecom attempts to lure the punters to its Backing Black scheme; and Fantastic noodles embraces Engrish.

After snatching the Westpac account from Saatchi and releasing a couple of rather well-received campaigns recently, Colenso is on a bit of a roll at the moment. And, as is often the way when the going is good, the hires have followed, with Daniel Wright set to join as digital creative director at the end of the month and Margot Chandler appointed as Clemenger Group’s ‘people development director’ in a newly developed human resources role.

After losing the Flight Centre business recently, Total Media, which is part of the Omnicom Group, has decided a restructure is in order, so there’s no room for the Auckland general manager position, a position which was held by Jason Rutherford for the last eight months.

Group chief executive …

Barnes, Catmur & Friends has just released a new Benjamin Button-esque billboard campaign for Okuma (it’s Kiwi for fishing, don’t you know). And it involves some pretty classic, quintessentially swarthy young/old seadogs. Ah, don’t they grow up and get tattoos and have facial hair and start smoking pipes and reeling in those big ones so fast these days.

This country’s diminutive stature has, according to legend, made us the perfect testing ground for technology firsts. And while it seems we always have to wait before we get our delivery of the newest gadgets, there have been a host of cool techie developments of late, from sandwich ordering to iPad apps, and crowdsourced language studies to dancing digital cows.

The first phase of the search for Christchurch’s top retailers has just drawn to a close, with entries for the Top Shop awards up 11 percent on the 2008 edition.

As interactions and events rather than the old school spray and pray approach are increasingly being utilised to rise above the rabble and capture the jaded consumer’s attention, experiential marketing’s star continues to rise. And the good news keeps coming for local experiential agency AmbientX: after its double medal haul at this year’s Australasian Promotional Marketing Association Star Awards for the Arnott’s Velish campaign, it has managed to pick up a couple more significant client wins recently.

Designers, animators, advertisers, marketers and possibly even a few hip accountants don’t have too long to wait until the 2010 edition of Semi-Permanent starts squeezing some creative juice. And Nicolas Roope, an all round digital and design ideas guy from the UK who set up Poke London, retro phone company Hulger and this cool t-shirt blog, is venturing to New Zealand to speak at the event. He took time out from his busy schedule of coming up with awesome things (and from being the UK’s Webby ambassador, a member of the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences and a member of the UK Coolbrands board) to have an e-chat with StopPress.

I often write about new campaigns. But I don’t often write about new campaigns that are directly connected to me. So let me get out my literary quick unpick and unweave the tapestry of advertising life as I tell you a tale that involves a series of moderately interesting things and events including, but not limited to, printed words, photography, nuptials, skybeasts, gifts, awesome art and a giant billboard.

It may be a relatively unsexy side of the digital marketing world. But there’s no doubt email is powerful (read this if you don’t believe it). And the Jericho Email Marketing Metrics Report for 2010, which crunched tens of millions of permission-based commercial emails in New Zealand, has shown that email drives massive readership and clicks—especially on Mondays.

Some companies just seem to have unending revenue streams. And as Trade Me stretches its tentacles into the services area and starts competing with Yellow and Google (for the full round-up, scroll down to near the bottom of this story), it’s also finding a bit of a niche as an online display advertising team for other websites, the latest of which is metservice.com.

The New Zealand Marketing Association has launched two flashy new advisory services, PR and Word of Mouth, bringing the total number of resources aimed at developing specialist areas of marketing to 18.

Westpac has gracefully declined to provide Saatchi & Saatchi with its advertising business and in a competitive pitch the account for the creative work has gone to Colenso.