Written for M+AD by Mike Handes, director of customer success at Marketo: If I’ve learnt nothing else in my career, it’s that customers who are skilled at using your software are a low risk of switching to a competitive solution. This is the most obvious benefit of having educated customers, but there are also additional benefits. The individuals who have built a strong skill set around your software become your internal and external champions, and this can have a benefit to new business opportunities.

Park Road Post Production, the facility behind The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies and countless award-winning commercials, is joining up with New Zealand’s film and digital industry training institutions to offer aspiring Kiwi filmmakers an advanced industry training programme.

Vox Populi – the voice of the people – takes on a whole new meaning this week as the latest version of RNZ’s digital innovation VoxPop is launched.

The London International Awards has issued its call for entries – and with a new Regional of the Year category, it’s almost certain to be very well received in Australia & NZ, as the only two countries in the running for this category’s Oceania section.

Just days after the closure of Pandora’s Australian office – and its role in NZ – the Pandora team was named sales team of the year at Australia’s Mumbrella Awards, winning a standing ovation from the 1000-strong crowd during commercial director Chris Freel’s acceptance speech.

TVNZ has named a young production manager at opposition network MediaWorks as a winner of TVNZ’s New Blood web series competition with her pilot, Oddly Even.

Hiemat Berlin; AMVBBDO UK; Forsman & Bodenfors Gothenburg; Leo Burnett Frankfurt and McCann Melbourne have all made the finals list at the 25th Annual Cresta International Advertising Awards in New York. But not a Kiwi shop in sight.

Sugar & Partners has picked up the New Zealand Natural Premium Ice Cream creative business after a pitch against unidentified agencies. NZN has worked with a number of agencies – but the incumbent here was likely to have been Work Communications.

All Black Malakai Fekitoa and Danish tennis ace Caroline Wozniacki star in ESPN US magazine’s annual nude Body issue. (But the site’s mainly male editors chose the Wozniaki nude for the cover!)