Vodafone and Spark have a long way to go before their customers feel satisfied with their service, according to Consumer NZ’s latest internet service provider survey. Both rated below average in nearly every category.

Whybin\TBWA is helping national domestic abuse charity Shine to launch a new radio campaign to generate awareness and funding for the charity’s No Excuses programme, a 20 week positive change programme that helps men who have used abuse against family members to change their behaviour and develop respectful relationships.

Marketers are boosting their precision, broadening their scope, moving more quickly, and telling better stories, write Jonathan Gordon and Jesko Perrey in global business title McKinsey Quarterly. Science has permeated marketing for decades, they say. Fans of the television drama Mad Men saw a fictionalised encounter when an IBM System/360 mainframe computer physically displaced the creative department of a late-1960s advertising agency. In reality, though, the 1960s through the early 1990s witnessed a happy marriage of advertising and technology as marketers mastered both the medium of television and the science of Nielsen ratings.

A new TVC production company has set up shop in K Rd. “We bring to the market two unique points of difference,” says co-founder/director Adam King. “We produce television commercials, brand content and engagement videos with a focus on narrative storytelling, and reinvest our profits back into the New Zealand film industry as investment financing.”

Nissan United, a dedicated unit of DDB’s owner Omnicom, has hired former Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand ECD Antonio Navas as its first chief creative officer, a role previously overseen by Rob Schwartz as global creative president of TBWA Worldwide prior to his appointment to ceo of TBWA\Chiat\Day New York earlier this year.

Whybin\TBWA joint CDs Lisa Fedyszyn & Jonathan McMahon have resigned, and left the Auckland agency. At press time, it was not clear what their plans are – although both have talked about looking overseas.

Parnell-based design agency Logan Brooke has led an upgrade to the digital window for leading appliance solutions company Rinnai, which has unveiled its revamped Tradesmart Hub, aimed at helping Kiwi tradespeople upskill.

You may not know who the New England Patriots or their helmet-headed combatants are, but rather than decipher the intricacies of an eligible receiver, it’s arguably the famed ads that run throughout you’re all the more interested in, according to a report in Australia’s B&T. However, if recent press out of the States is to be believed, the once holy grail of creativity – the much-vaunted Super Bowl advertising – may possibly have had its day.