NZ agencies have nine entries through to the finals of the first three AWARD Award categories – Radio, Digital, and Branded Entertainment/Content – announced over the weekend in Sydney.

Drunksense made straightsense to ORCA judges this month with Mike Ramsay and Mariona Wesselo-Comas from JWT taking out the January award. Drunksense was created for Auckland Transport to relay the message when you’re drunk dumb things make sense … like driving home.

FCB is extending its popular NZI Devils Chair TVC theme, continuing to bring a little light relief to the colourless insurance game.

Jockey has engaged All Blacks and All Blacks Sevens stars to help launch its new winter All Colour campaign via Host Sydney and Parlour Creative. For the second year, the ABs will feature a nationwide campaign clad only in their new Jockeys.

In December, research company Roy Morgan closed the doors to its New Zealand offices on Auckland’s Swanson Street and let three staff members go in the process, according to website Stop Press.

Kiri Hannifin and Jo de Joux today announced the formation of Hannifin de Joux, an integrated public affairs and campaign consultancy that will form a strategic partnership with CrosbyITextor Group in New Zealand.

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.