The heads were down and the fingers were furiously a-tweetin’ yesterday at the inaugural Social Media Junction (SMJ). And an array of big social media brains spilled their secrets and gave tips, tricks and advice on best practice to around 200 conference goers at Sky City hoping to get to grips with this increasingly important but at-times intimidating marketing realm.

The eyes of car salesmen the world over might be nervously focused on New Zealand this week, as Mini pilots a radical new retail strategy.

Michael Carney is quite possibly the most productive man on the planet. And he’s generous, too: he’s giving away a few free copies of his new literary baby – an e-book called Adventures into the Unknown World of Social Media that deals with marketers’ fears about the space and details the ways to overcome them – to a few speedy downloaders.

Of note this week on Ads@6, Magnum puts out a couple of teasers for the ‘golden age of ice cream’; Olivio changes its name to Bertolli and gets hip with the lingo; Domino’s releases a new lunch-time sandwich (and the year’s worst press release to go with it); and Tourism Queensland takes the prize for what is quite possibly the most cringeworthy jingle ever to be heard on New Zealand television, snatching it off Suzuki (see the ousted winner near the end of this clip). And how could we forget Stacey Jones, who gives a bravura performance for Instant Finance and even hangs out with his own cardboard cut-out. A triumph! A tour de force!

Kamran Kazalbash has been appointed as the general manager of retail at DraftFCB and Angela Spain will be coming on board as general manager of the agency’s public relations arm. 

The editorial in last week’s Listener, ‘Turbulence Ahead’, was based around Air New Zealand’s proposed trans-Tasman allegiance with Virgin Blue and how it seemed as though the national carrier was on its way to becoming a budget airline, which, according to the writer, contradicted the ‘premium carrier’ tag it was using in its marketing. Turns out chief executive Rob Fyfe was so incensed by the article that he felt the need to respond on camera in an effort to draw attention to the facts.

Twenty three of New Zealand’s top footballers received some good news this week when the All Whites squad was named to play at the Football World Cup in South Africa. And the sport as a whole also got some good news after Volkswagen signed on as a major partner of football in New Zealand.

The One Club’s Creative Week, a big ol’ celebration of creativity in advertising, design, digital media and the arts, kicked off in New York on Monday with the announcement of the One Show Design Awards. And Auckland design outfit Alt Group popped a few more corks after it was ranked in the world’s top 10 design agencies for netting two Pencils and two merits, exactly the same haul it received last year.

Australasian cinema advertising company Val Morgan is currently whistling as it walks, after it announced the results of a study showing that cinema advertising, when used in conjunction with television, increases consumer propensity to buy and drives return on investment for advertisers.

Restaurants and gift stores were the big winners during Mother’s Day week. But it’s not just the cockles of mothers that were warmed: some retailers and marketers will find plenty of comfort in figures that show spending on the Paymark network, which processes more than three quarters of all in-store electronic transactions in New Zealand, is up considerably on the same period last year.

Sean Mitchell’s Action Media Ltd, publisher of NetGuide, IT Brief, Telecommunications Review and The Channel, was put into liquidation last week. So it was a bit of a surprise to receive a press release from the man himself trumpeting the arrival of a new publication about technology issues in small business.

This week on Ads@6, we talk candidly with Freida, Cadbury’s weird dancing cow, about empty udders, that difficult second album syndrome, salmonella scares and how she plans to knock that arrogant drumming gorilla of his chocolatey perch by putting on some bovine ritz.