The Flight of the Conchords used the power of laughter in its charity music video to help raise funds for CureKids. But The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation’s 2012 Breast Cancer Action Month campaign, which features a new recording of Chris Knox’s iconic Kiwi ballad ‘Not Given Lightly’ and a music video starring famous and not-so-famous New Zealanders who want to remind the women they love to be vigilant and reduce their risk of breast cancer, is using the power of tears to get its message across.

BNZ’s teaser campaign reached its denouement last night, launching its new brand platform ‘Be Good with money’ and adding some spice to an already pretty spicy financial marketing scene after last week’s formal announcement about the cessation of the National Bank brand. BNZ’s chief marketing officer Craig Herbison talks about starting conversations, breaking taboos and focusing on the bigger issue.

After three weeks of TV ads, hundreds of mystery billboards, a few spray painted footpaths, a hijacked Twitter account that sent around 100 people to a fake money drop, and a fair bit of speculation about who was behind the ‘Money is Bad/Money is Good’ teaser campaign, our suspicions were confirmed last night when the BNZ logo came into view alongside its new tagline ‘Be good with money’.

Observant souls—and lovers of teaser campaigns—may have noticed a few unbranded billboards around Auckland featuring phrases like ‘money is bad’ and ‘money is good’. So what gives?

Anyone who doesn’t use a high-rigidity 165g competition quality disc deserves to be ridiculed. And that’s exactly what Paul Henry has done in the local—and, in our humble opinion, slightly underwhelming—execution of Snickers’ ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’ campaign.

Breakfast, as the old idiom goes, is the most important meal of the day. Burger King NZ obviously didn’t get the memo and left that segment of the fast-food market to competitors like McDonald’s and Wendys. But, as a new campaign by Colenso BBDO that spans TV, radio, press, online, sampling and PR states, it’s now “woken up to a whole new time”.

Bankland is never short on action and rumours of National Bank’s shaky future look set to be fuelled by the latest Nielsen AIS figures on advertising spend by New Zealand banks. The ANZ NZ-owned brand spent the second lowest amount on advertising in the first half of this year compared to the other five banks, its $3.5 million paling in comparison to ANZ NZ’s ANZ brand, which clocked up the largest bill of all the banks at $15.3 million.

We wrote about the launch of Colenso BBDO’s very cool V Motion Project a few weeks back. And after an “epic journey to create music using the body’s movement”, the creators took their bootleged technology and a projector to an Auckland carpark on Saturday night to show the people what happens when the power of dance is harnessed.

New Zealand is one of the only markets in the world where Red Bull isn’t the number one energy drink. That title is held by Frucor’s V, and it got there through a combination of savvy NPD and a series of brilliant campaigns. Given what’s come before, it’s always going to be a challenge to raise the bar creatively, but Colenso BBDO and Frucor have given it a good nudge with their latest effort, the V Motion Project.