Like sand through the hourglass, these are the days of our ads@6.

Following on from two golds in the ‘charity’ and ‘art direction and typography’ categories at the 2010 Axis awards, Colenso BBDO’s animated film of Maurice Gee’s novel Going West, which was produced for The New Zealand Book Council to promote books and reading, has received another nod, this time from the Museum of Art and Design in New York.

It was a sell-out crowd at the Trust Events Centre for the Tua versus Ahunanya stoush last night. The businesspeople drank wine, ate canapes, and cheered for John Key; those in the cheap seats yelled things like ‘Kill his face’, ‘Hit the face’ and ‘permanently disfigure his face’ loudly and aggressively; the scantily-clad promo girls sashayed around the venue texting and being ogled by drunkards; and a particularly special guest came all the way from Miami to get in the ring.

Progressive Auckland church St Matthew-in-the-city has put up its Easter/April Fools billboard, and this one, which features Jesus on the cross saying “Well this sucks. I wonder if they’ll remember anything I said,” appears to be much more palatable to fun-hating prudes and religious zealots than the last innuendo-filled Christmas number.

The launch presentation for the ‘first phase’ of the Rugby World Cup has been given, the phrase once in a life-time was used way too often and the rumours were true: The Feelers will be the voice (and, judging by the falsetto in the Jesus Jones song Right Here, Right Now, not a particularly good one) of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Yoghurt! MOVE! Birds, fish and Jazz! Barnes, Catmur and even more friends! Adstream, Karma and Freeview! Star Awards!

Some billboards bleed. Some offer diamond earrings. And almost all shout a call to action. But the Fairground Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that was set up and funded by ecostore founder Malcolm Rands to create a healthier, more sustainable world, has taken a different approach to grabbing people’s attention after unveiling what it likes to call the “un-billboard”.

Ads@6, where the name says it all. No pithy comment this week. StopPress has got a hangover.

The Air New Zealanders have done it again, this time brewing up an interesting marketing ploy they like to call the Aviation Design Academy, which is asking customers from New Zealand and around the world to submit their ideas and add a few finishing touches to the offerings in the airline’s new 777-300 aircraft.

Optimism was in the air at the New Zealand Marketing Association’s Northern Regional Event today, with the general consensus among some of the country’s bravest and ‘upto’ direct marketers being that with the fancy tools now in the box there’s never been a better time to be in the game.

Somewhat surprisingly, for a man who’s the president and chief creative officer of the massive behemoth that is the Time Warner Global Media Group (oh, and he’s also the senior vice president of Time Warner), Mark D’Arcy exudes calm and charm. And, with a silver tongue and a penchant for strange magazines like this, he seems like your quintessential creative director. The strange thing is he’s actually working for a media company and he’s at the forefront of what he sees as a move towards media-led creativity in marketing.

After analysing the visual searches and choices of more than 1.5 million creative professionals around the world and reviewing thousands of tearsheets, commercials and other websites to discover trends, the global creative research team at Getty Images has produced some rather revealing white papers that show how the kinds of imagery used in marketing material in the technology and telecommunications, pharmaceutical and financial sectors has evolved in recent years.