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In a digital age, even the furriest among us are expected to have some level of digital nous. And animal behaviouralist Mark Vette has now taken it upon himself to train his canine companion Reggie in the art of Snapchat.

As the debate over whether an agency should be a generalist or a specialist stews on, Young & Shand has doubled down in its commitment to digital with a string of senior hires.

Convincing someone to stop smoking can rarely be done by appealing only to the rational part of the mind. Those who smoke are often completely aware of how bad the habit is for them, but they do it regardless of what the research or pictures of blackened lungs might suggest. Given this context, Young & Shand and Inspiring Ltd decided not to take the obvious route of chastising smokers for their bad decision making with this year’s edition of Stoptober.

Smirnoff and Young & Shand made the most of Kiwi’s love of selfies and snow in a new ‘Pure Potential’ campaign, which saw photos recreated in a cocktail during a Facebook Lifestream.

A new campaign for NZI by Young & Shand transposes digital crimes into the physical world in a bid to warn business owners of the dangers they face online.

Young & Shand has announced the appointment of Jonathan Sorenson as its new media director. Sorenson joins from OMD, where he worked since February 2015 as an account director, focusing on the Air New Zealand business. PLUS: Sorenson sells Muesli Hub.

Young & Shand has injected some humour into the battle against cancer, hoping that people will shave to cure cancer and bad hair.

A King’s College advertisement encouraging teens to find themselves seems to suggest they could build themselves as well.

The vast majority of Christmas-themed advertising that flooded onto media channels during November and December featured the rotund imagery of Santa Claus smiling and handing out gifts. However, when challenged by philanthropist and scientist Ray Avery to develop a campaign encouraging Kiwis to support the development of his LifePod technology through donations, Young & Shand veered away from Santa Claus and instead used more traditional imagery to get its point across.

After 12 years of business, Consortium has closed its doors after losing the AUT business. And Young & Shand has taken over its sole account, Lightbox, as well as four of its staff. PLUS: Young & Shand’s other business wins and staff announcements.

For this year’s edition of the Semi-Permanent speakers’ event, Young & Shand has developed a slightly depressing campaign that looks at how over-worked creatives in the ad industry are. Showing scenes of the late-night activity going on in the offices of Saatchi & Saatchi, DDB, FCB and Colenso BBDO, the promotional video encourages creatives to remember to nurture their tired brains.

Not quite two years ago, Ben Young, co-founder of Young & Shand, packed his bags and headed to New York to fill what he saw as a gap in the market for analytics around native advertising. Now its measurement tool Nudge has been given a major boost after entering a licensing agreement with one of the world’s leading native advertising software companies, Sharethrough.

New Zealand’s fastest growing companies were announced yesterday at the NZ Deloitte Fast 50 event. It’s a chance for some of our most successful businesses to show off their revenue (and, in some rare cases, maybe even their profit), with a number of these companies making it on to the top 50 index with eye-popping growth. We count down a list of companies associated/loosely associated to the marcomms sector.

Back in July another sugary treat was ushered onto Kiwi shelves, with the arrival of Sour Patch, a range of sour lollies that have been available in the US since the late 1970s. As with most candy brands, the marketing has been geared at younger consumers, and for this reason Sour Patch has partnered with creative agency Young & Shand, media agency Carat and PR agency Beat Communications to develop a digitally powered campaign that aims to appeal to Generation Z (those born in the mid or late 1990s).

Young & Shand has conspired with Telecom-owned Skinny Mobile to serve up a group dancing TVC that comes with a significant dollop of cheese. Playing out to Earth Wind & Fire’s 1978 hit ‘September’, the actors are shown lip-synching and dancing their way—sometimes awkwardly—through Owairaka Park in Auckland’s Mount Albert.

Mass production still rules the world when it comes to making things. But the rise of 3D printing is seen by some as the third industrial revolution and the combination of digital data-collection and personalised printing has allowed some creative businesses and agencies to add some uniqueness to their products. Now, just in time for Mother’s Day, Cadbury and Young & Shand have embraced that shift and dipped their toes in the e-commerce waters with an online gifting platform called ‘Roses by You’.

Earthwise, a maker of environmentally friendly cleaning products, climbed to the top of this year’s Deloitte Fast 50 list of companies with 1004 percent growth, while mobile media specialists Snakk Media and digital agency Young & Shand, which was a Rising Star last year, made the top ten with growth of 486 percent and a 467 percent repsectively.