New Zealand’s marketing and advertising sector continues to feel the effects of the Great Recession, with the latest results from the MYOB Business Monitor survey showing 20 percent of Kiwi firms have cut their marketing budgets over the last six months.

Who’s it for: Glassons by Mojo Publicis

Why we like it: Because it’s a real mish-mash of extremely well shot imagery and sounds that leave you a little bit confused (albeit pleasantly). Plus, it makes the banjo and accordion look raucously hip.  Who knew hauntings could …

If you’re a clever cookie you’ll be sure to take advantage of the economic juices that will come flowing from the sporting fiasco that is the 2011 Rugby World Cup (RWC). After all, the event is expected to bring at least 60,000 visitors and about 2000 media to the country, resulting in an economic benefit for Auckland of an estimated $267 million.

The figures released by Paymark for March read somewhat like a patch-work quilt of spending. While weekly growth was steady nationwide, regional and industry spending was more of a mixed bag.

Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand have paired up and found a couple of clever ways to use the word ‘shout’. The two organisations have just launched another round of the ‘New Zealand Big Shout’ campaign in Australia.

YouTube, Facebook and Twitter arguably rule in internet land. Not only have they resulted in the emergence of overnight celebrities, they have created a new clip culture and a whole new world for marketers to explore. In Fact, YouTube is the number two search engine in New Zealand. So if you’re brainy, you’ll know that utlising their marketing potential is well, the brainy thing to do.

For this week’s fix of Ads@6, we’re sad to report the absence of two notable days of the week – Friday and Sunday. Come Easter, even days of the week deserve a little time off. But fear not, that still leaves plenty of other days of the week for your commercial fix.

Call it bad taste, call it bold, call it clever marketing. We’d even call it a little creepy. Nike premiered their latest ad yesterday, on the eve of Tiger’s return to golf after a five month break because of, well, you know what.

In this installment of Michael Carney’s Marketing Week: Farewell to TV3’s Sunrise and ASB Business The new Age of thrift – why thrift is back with a vengeance Four Discrete Segments – what are the different segments of post-recession consumers?

It would seem Sam Morgan has come full circle. Having created the runaway success that is Trademe, his very own entrepreneurial gem is auctioning him off.

Much has been much written about the scourge of modern day washing that is the missing sock. It’s the bane of many a life, it is the subject of much conjecture and speculation and it is a mystery that, if Fisher & Paykel’s new Lost Sock campaign is anything to go by, seems likely to remain forever unsolved, because, despite the best efforts of its talented team of designers, engineers and scienticians, the appliance maker has admitted that it is the one thing it hasn’t quite managed to figure out.

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.