Carat New Zealand has delivered a digital media first in the New Zealand market by creating a new campaign for Tourism Australia entitled ‘Short Breaks’.

As we all know, ’tis been a season of flux and upheaval in adland. And the Colenso stable will have a distinctly different look to it in the new year.

The Christmas ads were all-pervasive this week, with plenty of new, mostly terrible albums on the stocking stuffer ad agenda. And Coke’s summer campaign also kicked off. Big, dumb fun in the water, just like the old days. Look how much fun those virile, tanned young things are having splashing their sticky beverages over each other!

In our semi-non-regular (regular?) hexagonally-themed question and answer section devoted to helping you find out more about some of the Heppest Cats in the Kiwi marcomms industry, we go in for the probe with Nick Fracture.

Esquire magazine recently released its new ‘augmented reality’ December issue. Readers were implored to download an app and then hold their magazine up to a webcam to make Robert Downey Jr (an appropriate subject given his well-publicised penchant for reality augmentation in the past) come to over-excited life. There’s also a weather-dependent fashion portfolio, a time-sensitive updated Funny Joke from a Beautiful Woman and a few other slick features on offer.

Extreme sports aficionados, ravers, sugary-drink loving youngsters and other NZ Herald readers will soon be getting their mits on the The Red Bulletin, a self-styled “almost independent” monthly lifestyle magazine that covers music, art, culture, society and sport.

Auckland film-maker and critic Lewis Bostock is aiming big by thinking small: he’s trying to create the largest collaborative film ever made.

In June last year there was a blaze of publicity surrounding Flossie.com, a female-centric masthead that brought together the ‘best of the best’ female focused websites. But the blaze has well and truly subsided, advertising reality has bitten and Flossie Media Group has now decided to turn its back on the display advertising model.

Our generous friends at Perceptive have developed a website that aims to provide “a growing hub of intelligence for Kiwi marketers”. And they’re offering StopPress readers a chance to get a free taste of the insightful action.

Everyone loves free stuff. Especially women, it seems, as a new campaign that tests what lengths the ladies will go to to get their hands on some of the world’s most coveted items has shown.

Campaign Brief are reporting that Nick Garrett, BMF Sydney’s group account director, will be taking over from Brent Smart as managing director at Colenso.

Ryan Mudie has been appointed as  group account manager for nzherald.co.nz and will join the team on 7 December.

Immigration New Zealand (INZ) has been announced as a finalist in the public sector category of 2009’s UK Chartered Institute of Marketing Marketing Excellence awards, the only New Zealand organisation to be recognised.

Who it’s for: Silver Fern Farms

Why we like it: Good Kiwi man ‘o the land takes back what’s rightfully ours from a bunch of Euro aristocrats. More patriotic post-colonial New Zealand humour from the stubbie-loving Colenso crew.

Next year is the 30th anniversary of the Axis awards and TBWA/Whybin’s Andy Blood and Dave Walden, as well as Rick Osbourne, CEO of CAANZ, are making sure it’ll be a right royal nostalgic hooley.The call for entries goes out on 1 December (entries close …