Winter proving to be the winning season for MBM. Off the back of a record year in 2017, the Auckland/Wellington indie media agency MBM reports that it is enjoying a cracking 2018 with three great new business wins coming in over the last couple of months.

TOKYO, Sunday: In a move reflecting the changing dynamics between Big Tobacco and advertising, Philip Morris International has appointed Thirteen, a Japanese creative agency owned by McCann Worldgroup, on a project basis for an undisclosed product launch around its IQOS heated tobacco brand.

WELLINGTON, Today: State-Owned Enterprise KiwiRail has announced its appointment of DDB as creative agency following a competitive pitch involving five agencies. The incumbent was Clemenger BBDO.

For planners, spending time outside the bubble of Adland is a necessity, argues Deutsch’s Rob Campbell in an essay for WARC’s Future of Strategy report 2018 (published yesterday – scroll down for the link to the full story).

Parnell-based full service digital and brand agency Terabyte has joined forces with another Aucklandbased agency – social media specialist Social Envy.

Band practice has begun, the wildcards are drawn and the entries are now closed for the 11th Battle of The Ad Bands.

“Did it nearly kill me? In the end, I felt the alcohol had given up on me, really. It was as if the alcohol had ingested me whole and was now spitting out the feathers.” – Wellington poet Geoff Cochrane, interviewed in the latest issue of Phantom Billstickers’ quarterly Café Reader magazine.