New Zealand may be small but its government apparently has got a whole lot of chutzpah.

The government’s new law that all tobacco products cannot be publicly displayed went into effect Monday, and a plan to force all tobacco products to be sold in plain packaging — which NZ's Ministry of Health calls the "single biggest cause of preventable death and disease" — is still forging ahead. The government's new "Tobacco Available Here" sign for authorized tobacco retailers, in English and Maori with a sickening photo of a gangrene-infected foot, is also fairly grim.

The hope is that the entire country will be smoke-free by 2025, according to TV New Zealand. However, the government may need to pay a boatload of cash out in order to make it happen. “Ministry of Health officials have warned the Government that defending a case at the World Trade Organization could cost taxpayers between $1.5 million to $2 million,” the website reports. And that price could go up to $6 million.

One tobacco giant is already sounding like it is ready take the government to court.Continue reading...

There is a worldwide battle against cigarette marketing going on and the British government has doubled up on rulings in order to keep them out of the eyes of consumers.

Starting April 6th, the UK government stipulates that retailers that runs stores larger than 280 square meters must keep cigarettes hidden from consumers and only expose them while making the sale or cleaning off the shelf that they are on, according to FreshBusinessThinking.com. “Price lists and posters, necessary because customers will not be able to see the products, have to be in a specified font and font size,” according to the Dec. 2011 tobacco display guidelines.

The effort to hide the smokes will cost retailers an estimated £15.6 million ($20.6 million), but there has been an outcry from the British Retail Consortium because the government is also “considering the possibility of plain packaging for tobacco products.”Continue reading...

For about $6 million annually for the next 20 years, The Sports Authority took over naming rights from investment-management company Invesco for the Denver Broncos’ stadium in August. The Authority’s first interaction with Broncos fans didn’t seem to go that well.

On August 30, the retailer put up a humungous sign on the stadium that reads, “Sports Authority Field.” The Colorado-based Sports Authority also proudly tweeted that Broncos fans “might notice something a little different on your drive home today."

They sure did. Following fan complaints, the company took the sign down a week earlier than the company had planned, according to Denver’s KDVR-TV. “The signage we put up we didn’t like,” a company spokesperson told the station. “We’re fans, too. We’ll put up a new sign next week that’s more representative with the stadium.”Continue reading...

Want to get your brand name all over London during next summer’s Olympics without spending hundreds of millions to be an official sponsor of the event? Don’t feel like risking arrest with some stealth ambush marketing at the 2012 Summer Games?

Millions of visitors will be roaming the streets of London next summer during the Games of the XXX Olympiad, and they'll be needing a lift, which is why advertisers are looking to taxicab advertising to create a moving experience for their brands. Consider it a (literally) mobile marketing platform.Continue reading...

What do fashion, a Chinese news agency and pizza have in common?

Times Square – hotter, and more popular than ever! And not just because it's summer.

This past Saturday, Express, the fashion retailer for style-conscious Millennials, set out to break the Guinness world record for the largest number of people modeling on a catwalk.  And despite temperatures hovering in the 100’s – they did, showing that wannabe models cannot resist a catwalk, no matter how crowded or sweaty.

A total of 1,243 people walked the Express runway, including the Naked Cowboy, police officers, tourists, and just regular locals, shattering the previous record of 521 set last year by Galeries Lafayette in Paris.Continue reading...

Across the globe, there is uproar over what is appropriate content on billboards. In Australia, there is talk of starting a ratings board for billboards. In the US, an atheists' billboard in Ohio keeps getting moved, while anti-abortion billboards are getting right-to-lifers worked up wherever they are placed. 

Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority is pushing for legislation “to regulate the content of billboards along major thoroughfares,” according to GMANews: “We really have to strengthen our consultative sessions to get the (input) of everybody,” said  MMDA assistant general manager Tina Velasco.

What's got their knickers in a twist? Billboards featuring the country's pro rugby players in their knickers.Continue reading...

Amityville, New York, has long been known as the home of 112 Ocean Avenue, the house stuffed with creepy ghosts and blood-soaked tales that inspired the 1977 book and 1979 movie, The Amityville Horror. That’s an image the sweet Victorian village has been shaking for years.

Now there is a new horror for the mayor and town elders of the Long Island hamlet to deal with: a Stop & Shop sign that isn’t made with the town’s approved color palette.

CBS News reports that the sign, which has not been put up yet, does not follow the “ordinance limiting signs to historical colors, like Revere Pewter and Monticello Rose, (which) help preserve the village’s Colonial roots.” The horror! The horror!Continue reading...

Chicago takes its architecture seriously — very seriously. 

That's why Target may be in for a battle today as it goes before the permit review committee of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks to seek permission to place its very recognizable bullseye logo on Sullivan Center, a building in Chicago's Loop that’s recognized as a national and Chicago historical landmark.

“The building is renowned for its expressive exterior and the freshly restored cast-iron decoration that wraps around its base,” the Chicago Tribune reports. But the building, formerly known as the Carson Pirie Scott Building, has also been empty since 2007. 

The new Target store's planned location for the logo is actually inside the building, the paper notes, but it would be visible through the building’s large rotunda windows.Continue reading...