From the pulpit

There's quite a lot of politics in this issue.

There's JWT and Vice in New Zealand trying to get young Kiwis to take an interest in the election by gamifying it. Pages 44-45.

There's The Economist commenting on the UK election. Pages 78-79.

And there's Greenpeace, trying to influence the COP23 Summit in Bonn. Pages 34-35.

But then we also have brands beginning to take a stand.

Nissan in Saudi Arabia getting involved in the emotional and contentious issue of whether women should be allowed to drive. Pages 48-49.

Supermarket group EDEKA made a statement about diversity when they cleared their shelves of all products sourced outside Germany, leaving some very empty supermarkets. Pages 58-59.

And then P&G decided to make a stand on racial bias in the USA with a new video in their "My Black Is Beautiful" campaign. Pages 74-75.

I suppose it's the Trump effect.

As politics becomes increasingly polarised, brands feel the need to show solidarity with who they believe are their core customers.

Another recurring theme we've noticed is TV channels beginning to innovate with their content.

So, football commentators in Costa Rica marked International Women's Day by not going nuts whenever a goal was scored. Because in the struggle for equality there is still nothing to celebrate. Pages 68-69.

France 3 TV got people to bet on who did it in a recent whodunnit. Pages 80-81.

Één, the national TV station in Belgium, rekindled interest in a new season of soap-opera "Home" by getting four of the show's stars to appear on a popular TV quiz to answer questions about the previous season's cliff-hanger ending.

And the UK television channel Dave rebranded itself Rupert in a partnership with Snickers (you're not you when you're hungry). We haven't featured these two last ideas simply because we ran out of space.

For different reasons, great work often doesn't make it into the magazine.

This time around, apologies to

• OgilvyOne London for "The 1,000 Day Calendar" for Nestlé. Data used skilfully to create personalised mailings to new mums.
• BBDO NYC. "Live Looper" for Downtown Records is a technical tour-de-force.
• Duval Guillaume's "Transfer the Fans" for the German football league, the Bundesliga.
• mortierbrigade. Their "Imagine Home" project with canvas.be is a new way of getting people to donate to a good cause.
• DDB Tribal Amsterdam keep turning out great work for KLM and "Connecting Seats" is just the latest in a constant stream of nice ideas.
• FamousGrey. We love the "Tailor-Made Safety Jacket".
• Clemenger BBDO Melbourne. "NAB Mini-Legends". Charming, funny, successful.

Still, if you're a subscriber to Directory, these campaigns and many others that didn't quite make the cut are all available to inspect in the online archive.

Pip pip,

Patrick