A red letter day is turning pink for an important cause. The NZ Effie Awards on Thursday 8 October falls during Breast Cancer Awareness Month – and this year CAANZ will hold a live auction to help raise funds to support the work of Breast Cancer Cure.

Nielsen no longer publishes its annual Top 200 NZ Advertiser chart – a popular resource that ran in AdMedia’s Agencies & Clients book (which went out of publication in 2013 when Mediaweb folded). The researcher is, however, now supplying M+AD with an annual Top 20.

With the proliferation of communication channels, media companies are changing their offering. How is New Zealand responding to this new era of media and marketing?  And what does it mean for marketers, agencies and consumers?

Volkswagen NZ and its agency Colenso BBDO have – unsurprisingly – gone to ground as the VW emissions scandal brings the global brand crashing around their ears – perhaps fatally.

Creative retail agency.99 and direct experts justONE are encouraging marketers to rethink what’s possible in the world of DM, via a new campaign for the 2015 NZ Direct Marketing Awards – which has just issued its 2015 call for entries.

M+AD has accepted an invitation to join The Campaign Asia Agency of the Year Awards family of sponsors – coinciding with its entry call for NZ and Australian agencies.

The Paris-based Epica Awards – the global creative awards judged by the world’s advertising trade press – has announced its entry call and launched its 2015 season with new categories.

Facebook’s Instagram community has grown to more than 400 million strong worldwide, according to a release supplied to M+AD from an unnamed Instagram/Facebook spokesperson.