It’s still not clear how much – if any – of the $10,000 cash prize from last week’s Newspaper Advertising Awards will find its way into the hands of the creative team who worked on the ad. The problem for DDB, which won the award, is that its creative team at the time – art director Kevin Bachtiar and copywriter Sasha Arandelovic – have since left DDB and joined Special Group.

TV ONE Breakfast hosts Rawdon Christie and Ali Pugh will host tonight’s 2014 Effie Awards at the Langham Auckland. All 430 tickets have been sold – the doors to the hotel’s The Great Room will open for pre-dinner drinks from 6.30pm, and the show starts at 7.30pm.

FCB senior creative Freddie Coltart has been tapped to represent New Zealand at the London International Awards Creative Conversations programme in Las Vegas this week.

The Marketing Association has announced a deadline extension to submit entries for the NZ Direct Marketing Awards to be held at the Langham Auckland on Thursday 26 February next year.

Masterchef New Zealand has been an outstanding performer for TVNZ – but now the network has decided to bring the series to an end. “Viewers are increasingly demanding innovative new content formats and our significant commitment to new local productions is a reflection of this trend,” says programming chief Jeff Latch. “This also means we have to say goodbye to some existing older formats. We’ve decided not to renew MasterChef NZ.”

Like most global citizens, Kiwis are routinely bombarded with traffic-hazard ads – many of them multiple award-winners. So M+AD readers may be interested in VW’s new take on the subject, out of Ogilvy & Mather China.

Like most ad-trade media, M+AD generally does not generally dwell on lesser criminal charges involving ad people. But we cannot ignore the recent case of a senior Auckland adman’s name suppression after his conviction on charges of exporting child rape images.