LONDON, Today: PHD Auckland’s DB Export Beer Bottle Sand, and PHD & Colenso BBDO’s Child Replacement Programme were the best examples of creativity, effectiveness and media excellence in 2018, according to the Warc Rankings 2019 report, out this morning.

AUCKLAND, Today: Cross-cultural agency Bananaworks’ Eva Lee, account manager for WeChat, believes Kiwi brand owners and marketers are missing a trick. “WeChat is not just social media,” she says. “It’s a tool for marketing, providing services and e-commerce.

AUCKLAND, Today: Jean-Claude Decaux, the French founder of global billboard giant JCDecaux (which now owns NZ’s APN Outdoor) is contributing to the Notre-Dame restoration fund.

NEW YORK, Thursday: Mars petcare brand Puppo has collaborated with Colenso BBDO to create a bespoke ad for every registered dog in New York City – over 100,000 of them.

AUCKLAND, Today: Bauer Media, NZ’s largest magazine publisher, have agreed to sell Autotrader to former managers Ross Logue and Richard East.

AUCKLAND, Today: The collective at Parachute Music has embarked on a third season of production music for Dancing with the Stars NZ.

AUCKLAND, Today: NZ-based creative content company Pitchblack Partners have set their sights on the US with Podium, a new coaching app for runners, launched last week in the US with a full brand design, app design, and ATL campaign.

AUCKLAND, Today: A hard-bitten, gimlet-eyed PR person feeling “isolated and depressed”? A contradiction in terms, surely? But it was reality to NSPR founder Niki Schuck when she moved from her hometown Dunedin to Waiheke Island in 2014.

AUCKLAND, Today: A very quiet day for industry news today – due, of course, to the onset of the four-day Easter break.