Naked has hired Simon Bird as one of the key personnel in its New Zealand operation. Management duties will be shared by Bird and Matt O’Sullivan, who left Carat after just nine weeks a few months back to set up the New Zealand arm of the international media agency.

The StopPress towers have been inundated with new bottles of stuff recently. Which got us to thinking: what is New Zealand’s best looking bottle? Or New Zealand’s best looking label?

The 2009 finalists for the Art of the Envelope awards have been announced and a panel headed up by TBWA\Whybin’s Andy Blood will announce the winners on Thursday night.

L’Oréal New Zealand and ZenithOptimedia are set to part ways after three years together.

Tanning kits, kettles and wine have now joined political scandals, gruesome homicides and pictures of crocodiles being attacked by hippos on nzherald.co.nz after its new shopping section was released this week. And it’s just in time for Chrissy!

Photo: gotcha.co.nz

Hell Pizza love a bit of advertising-related controversy. And it created some more after releasing a couple of mobile billboards headlined ‘greed’ that featured head and shoulders photos of the founders of Hanover Finance, Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson.

Allan Scott Family winemakers have come to the Christmas party and are generously giving away a few bottles of sweet, sweet Marlborough nectar to two lucky StopPress readers.

A few weeks back, DraftFCB took the fairly unusual step – for an advertising agency, at least – of sponsoring Mad Men on Prime TV. But they’ve upped the weirdness quotient even further and fashioned a few promotional Don Draper dolls.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have spoken. And the digerati they are most pleased.

Beauty has a habit of capturing attention and, as ads since the dawn of time have claimed, improving self-esteem. And Look Good Feel Better, a not-for-profit cancer-related charity, is embracing this combination for its soon-to-be-released ad campaign.

Fly Buys celebrated the handing out of five million reward redemptions in fine awkward style at Wellington Airport last week by gathering together an array of gift-bearing strangers, tromboners (!), middle-aged dancers, cartwheelers, humans in animal suits and a range of other carnies to surprise the winners of the …

StopPress has decided to take the sage advice of Duncan Stuart and just chillax. Friday afternoon is no time for heated debates about the pros and cons of advertorial. But it’s the perfect time to bring your attention to some of the best thinkers in New Zealand rugby.

For anyone unfortunate enough to be interviewed by the NZ Herald’s John Drinnan, the feeling will be depressingly familiar: our prompt and polite responses to an email query from him resulted in a selective, confusing and potentially damaging report in this morning’s NZ Herald.

In his weekly column …

Cadbury’s decision to add a glass-and-a-half of palm oil to its shrinking Dairy Milk chocolate blocks was, as everyone has seen, a big mistake. The brand suffered, sales dropped and competitors took the opportunity to stick the boot in.  

Another day, another massive list of new, exciting things to report.