To celebrate the world’s ‘Universal Pen’, Bic has sought to discover the world’s ‘Universal Typeface’ .

DDB and Dynamo will lead the new creative strategy for Beaurepaires after winning the automotive repair company’s advertising and media planning account, following a competitive pitch thought to have involved several unnamed agencies. And this announcement also coincided with news that Vince Martin, the face of Beaurepaires for the last 30 years, would no longer be the brand ambassador.

The ninth edition of the annual awards show was hosted at AUT and again organised by the industry body News Works. And this year, the attendees from DDB left with the biggest smiles as the agency picked up the most coveted award: the Newspaper Ad of the Year. Illustrating that the greatest ideas don’t always have to be complicated, the judges awarded the gong to DDB for its simple VW print ad that drew attention to a Beetle sale.

Plenty of Kiwis have Icebreaker products in their drawers, and, as the brand has gradually expanded outside of New Zealand’s borders, so do an increasing number of foreign folk. And now the pioneering apparel brand has decided to partner with DDB New Zealand to help gets its woolly gear on more of them.

Last Sunday once again marked the annual time of year when Kiwis are unified in an attempt to assuage some of the guilt associated with pretty much commandeering the word relaxation from the vocabularies of the nation’s fathers. And it does after all make sense, because once children enter the world, men’s lives change: sleeping in late becomes virtually impossible, prized possessions become ad-hoc teething soothers and monthly bills start to stretch in a way that defies all the rules of physics. So here’s a rundown of various brands that decided to tap into this shared guilt in the hope of extracting a few coins.

Every year, the equivalent of 1,866,664 trailer loads full of organic waste are sent unnecessarily to the landfill in Auckland, a mass so huge that it costs taxpayers approximately $77 million per year to dispose of it. So, in a bid to remind Aucklanders about the problem of food waste while simultaneously encouraging them to consider composting, We Compost (a network of New Zealand businesses committed to reducing and recycling organic waste) has launched a campaign via DDB and with support from Auckland Council that will on 6 and 7 September enable Aucklanders to trade their food waste for a variety of treats.

Back in 1903, C.M. Coolidge was commissioned by cigar makers Brown & Bigelow to create 16 paintings of dogs acting like humans that it could use for advertising and giveaways. Nine of them were of dogs sitting around a table playing cards and one of them, ‘Looks Like Four of a Kind’, ended up becoming a classic that has been referenced, copied and parodied relentlessly over the years (here in New Zealand, artist Ivan Clarke and Weta Workshop’s Richard Taylor were obviously inspired by the anthropomorphic, gambling canines and created The Lonely Dog series). And now Lotto NZ and DDB have joined that club for a new Keno campaign.

In an effort to subvert the preconceptions attached to working at the company, McDonald’s has a launched a new campaign via DDB that gives viewers a look at some of the success stories that have emerged from starting a career at one of the stores.

In an open letter sent to Reserve Bank governor Graeme Wheeler, YWCA Auckland is calling for Kiwi suffragette Kate Sheppard’s image to be removed from the ten-dollar note and replaced with that of a man. This request, which comes as part of a new campaign developed by DDB, aims to draw attention to the fact that a woman remembered for fighting for equality would not be pleased to have her face on the note at a time when for every ten dollars men earn, women only earn nine. PLUS: we take a look at whether the 10 percent reference is accurate.

Canada-based Milk West, a dairy partnership consisting of Alberta Milk, BC Dairy Association, Dairy Farmers of Manitoba and SaskMilk, has launched a somewhat bizarre YouTube-based campaign via DDB. Called Snack Time and featuring a trio traditional snacks in awkward scenes, the campaign takes the form of a web series that is intermittently updated with new videos.

As Damon Stapleton wrote recently, the idea is the gift, the award is the wrapping paper. His employer, DDB Group, shares this philosophy and, in a rather earnest video that showcases some of the best ads ever made, it gives ‘the idea catchers’ a pat on the back and attempts to prove Bernbach’s quote about creativity being the most powerful force in business correct.

Entries are now open for the 2014 Newspaper Advertising Awards, with the usual prize of $10,000 for Newspaper Ad of the Year. Last year, DDB won it with its YWCA advertisement promoting equal pay for women with the headline “from now until the end of the year, women will work for free”. This year, there’s a thousand-dollar media lunch on offer too.