Most Read of 2024: New Zealand’s Biggest Stories

This story covered the launch of the now award-winning ‘Adopable’, created by Colenso BBDO and Nexus Studios for Pedigree. Since its launch, the campaign has won a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions for Outdoor, a Billboard Grand LIA, and progressed to the global judging round of LBB’s Immortal Awards - one of five pieces of work across the region to progress to the final round.

Through DDB Aotearoa’s Takitoru Uplift programme, staff at the agency have been learning te reo and tikanga Māori throughout 2024. 

DDB NZ’s goal is to have 50% of staff speaking basic te reo and tikanga Māori within two years. 

Colenso BBDO is back, this time promoting cats as the ‘perfect dog’ for Whiskas. When searching for keywords such as, ‘a dog that doesn’t bark’, people will be presented with the ‘Meowzer’. 

Influencers also showed off their cats to audiences under the pretence that they are the ‘perfect dog.’

This Behind the Work feature explores how Big Save Furniture took a leap of faith with creative agency Motion Sickness to produce hilarious spots aimed to draw customers in. 

Reporter Casey Martin spoke to the brand’s Lily Salter and the agency’s Alex McManus on why making a huge butter sculpture was entirely worth it. 

A collaboration between 4AM and The Sweetshop, this campaign captured the dry sense of humour that Kiwi car culture is known for. It made the mundane task of selling a car into something memorable.

Motion Sickness captured attention with a non-traditional PSA, branding New Zealand as the best place in the world to get herpes. It worked - just this week, Motion Sickness confirmed the country has indeed, become the best place in the world to get herpes, overtaking Australia and Sweden.

People from around the world spent 10,776 hours consuming the campaign’s educational content, and the campaign earned 12.7m impressions. 69% of people who had completed a course attached to the campaign reported a reduction in their feelings of stigma towards herpes. 

And  75-year-old Julie from Levin said it all: “When I first heard about this campaign I thought, For goodness sake this has nothing to do with me. I don't have herpes and I'm not going to be catching it. But a friend convinced me to watch the videos - they were clever and funny and after watching them my attitude to herpes has changed."

Storm Day was promoted to Accenture Song lead and CEO of Droga5 Aotearoa, following the elevations of Bronwyn van der Merwe (Accenture Song) and Matt Michael (Droga5) across AUNZ. 

“Combined with the Droga5 name and our incredible creative leader, Damon Stapleton, we will continue to build and sustain Aotearoa’s most influential brands,” Storm said. 

The Gravy Train was KFC's first-ever themed train delivery service, and a celebration of its partnership with rugby union team the Blues. The collaboration, led by Special PR, offered a free on-board experience, with commuters greeted with limited edition snack boxes as they travelled to the game. 

Samantha Attenborough, executive producer at Flying Fish, spoke about her move from creative to production, her first role as a producer, and why function over fashion will always be the best on set… unless you want to slip and end up with a broken rib.

CCO Simon Vicars spoke to reporter Casey Martin about the AI technology used in the work, and why you should be “recklessly ambitious” when it comes to making the impossible possible.