Last night, at the 2021 Beacon Awards, a sell-out crowd of 800 of New Zealand’s leading media personalities came together to celebrate for the first time as a big crowd, since 2019, and to acknowledge the industry’s best media-lead campaigns from 2020. Hosted by the hilarious Hayley Sproull, the evening highlighted the smart and innovative media-thinking that is driving advertising and comms up and out of Covid-19.

Auckland, Thursday: FCB Media has again dominated the 2021Communications Council Beacon Awards, held at Shed 10 in Auckland last night.

NEW YORK, Today: The One Club for Creativity has opened the call for entries for Young Guns, celebrating international creative professionals age 30 or younger.

AUCKLAND, Today: The Pond, which modestly (but accurately) describes itself as “NZ’s foremost recruitment agency for creative & design, digital & tech, and marketing professionals” is taking recruitment to the next level by offering CliftonStrengths’ strengths-based assessments in conjunction with Jason Biggs to fully refine candidate selection alongside their standard, four-week fulltime recruitment process.

AUCKLAND, Wednesday: Off the back of recent new business wins, Mango Aotearoa is expanding with the recent appointments of three new team members. And, says MD Claudia Macdonald, “we’re looking for more”.

AUCKLAND, Tuesday: “Facebook’s worst fears have been realised by Apple’s new IOS 14.5 software upgrade, which allows iPhone ad iPad users to opt out of ads that track their online activity,” writes NZ Herald business reporter Chris Keall.

LONDON, Today: NZ agencies have five campaigns through to the shortlist of the Craft and Side Hustle categories at D&AD, announced overnight – Clemenger BBDO Wellington has three finalists, DDB Aotearoa has two, and Special Group NZ has one.

LONDON, Tuesday: Marketing budgets are expanding at a rate never seen before, following deep cuts during the initial wave of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, according to WARC Data’s Global Marketing Index.

NEW YORK, Monday: Two NZ winners have demonstrated their prowess at two global awards programmes from the Type Directors Club in the TDC67 Communication Design and 24TDC Typeface Design categories.