Paris, November 25. – Omnicom is the Epica Awards Holding Company of the Year. Omnicom’s agencies – TBWA, DDB and BBDO – won a combined total of 82 awards during the 30th edition of the Epica Awards. It was a gratifying result for Omnicom after a battle between DDB, BBDO and Leo Burnett for the Network of the Year title, which was finally won by Leo Burnett from rival holding Publicis Groupe.

London, November 25. – D&AD has launched a new campaign for its 2017 global under-24 competition – the D&AD New Blood Awards. The campaign was created by UK agency The Beautiful Meme, and is designed to spark debate, following suggestions that the gender debate is over.

iHeartRadio – with a little help from their friends 2degrees – is to feature Kiwi band band The Naked and Famous performing a free live concert on Tuesday 10 January at Auckland’s Logan Campbell Centre as part of the group’s Simple Forms world tour.

New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) has put the cat among the pigeons by stepping outside of its home turf, and handing the tender for its $400,000 website redesign to Australian agency DT.

M+AD ed David Gapes writes about his lifelong friend Barrie Everard, who died in Auckland last week  from a terrible condition that interfered with his balance, ultimately taking his life. Everard was a media pioneer in NZ; a distributor, a feature film producer, entrepreneur, a former chairman of the NZ Film Commission, owner of the Barclay cinema chain, and founder of break-through Auckland hi-fidelity station 89FM …