2024 NZ B2B Marketer Insights Report

Introducing Sobia: An impactful Marketeer with a dash of academic-nerdiness (and mega coffee snob).

Sobia brings over 12 years of experience in the tech, education, and services industries, making her a seasoned marketing pro. As the B2B Marketing Manager at Trade Me, she blends her passion for Product Marketing and Revenue Growth Marketing (aka RevOps) to drive results.

With a digital marketing mindset ingrained in her very being, Sobia lives and breathes go-to-market strategies and initiatives measurable growth. She's a proud nerd who dives deep into consumer behaviour literature and data to back up her marketing approaches with valuable insights for messaging.

Sobia's academic prowess extends beyond her marketing acumen. She's presented her research papers in Portugal and Germany, and earned her the esteemed Best Paper Award at a top-notch Macro-marketing conference.

Sobia's ultimate mission is to make a positive impact on people's lives. She achieves this by volunteering, empowering others, and currently serving as the Chair of the B2B Marketing Association's Special Interest Group.

Michael is incredibly passionate about the customer and their experience and believes marketing and communications have a seat at the revenue table by proving ROI on tactics and using customer data to drive insights and competitive advantage.

Michael is a qualified marketing executive with 15+ years of experience and currently heads the Marketing and Communications for Tonkin + Taylor Group. Michael and his team were instrumental in the development of the group-wide customer experience strategy, implementing new communication channels, strategic customer experience, relationship management planning, and business strategy. Their team have had good success at the TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards with several Rookie Marketer of the Year nominations, finalists in a number of categories, and winners for their internal communications channel design in 2019.

Jonathan Wrait, Attain’s Head of Marketing, comes with a rich history in business. First starting at the age of 18, he started a successful school tutoring business before being named as the 2011 Global Student Entrepreneur of the Year.

Over the next 13 years, Wrait worked both as a marketing manager and headed up his own agency, Red Gorilla.

He has worked with clients in a wide range of industries including retail, property, food & beverage, technology, engineering, corporate training and telecommunications.

“I love working with businesses that are technical or complex - understanding what they do and distilling this down to a simple, effective message that resonates with their target audience.”

PJ Morris is a creative, innovative and insightful marketing professional, who is passionate about understanding customer need to drive business outcomes and growth through all aspects of the marketing mix.

Leading change and taking stakeholders on a journey to deliver results and business growth energises me. Described as pragmatic and results focussed, my greatest strength is in building strong teams and influencing behaviour to create environments where people can grow and excel.

Having worked across both B2B and B2C brands in my career, I have a passion for B2B, and utilising technology to enable our customers growth. Currently heading up Marketing & Insights for Fletcher Building Concrete Division, across three different businesses in the construction sector to shape our market position and grow the division including portfolio strategy, brand, product development, customer communications and customer experience.

Rebecca is a freelance B2B demand generation specialist working with engineering, manufacturing and technology clients.

She is known for her practical approach to making B2B marketing work effectively in diverse client situations. She upskills in-house marketers by advocating for them with the C-suite and collaborating to deliver measurable outcomes which help to get them noticed for promotion.

Three times in her career, she's been at the forefront of leading edge marketing innovation. Professional Services marketing in the 1990s, the rise of customer relationship management in the 2000s and social media since 2005. Rebecca is an entrepreneur whose side-hustle is a sport education business for rowing. She happily uses this as the experimental sand-box for new marketing techniques. Rebecca also mentors marketers seeking career advancement through the OneUp OneDown programme.

Holding a bachelors and honours degree from Canterbury University in marketing, Gavin joined the Concentrate team with a background in a marketing agency and in house marketing.

His career started out as a digital marketing freelancer working with app startups while studying at university. From there, he has predominantly worked within the digital marketing realm within a number of industries ranging from construction and agriculture recruitment to immigration and e-commerce.

Gavin was born and raised in Thailand and moved to New Zealand in 2008. Besides work, you will find Gavin either doing Surf Life Saving in the summer or snowboarding in the winter. 

Dale heads up the marketing team at BlueOcean – The B2B Agency, where his 12+ years across both sales and marketing bring strategies fuelled by customer insight, and the tactical nous to deliver on them.

Getting sales and marketing on the same page is a passion point for Dale; helping marketers to create an environment where their ideas are respected, and their impact experienced.

Having grown up with parents in precision engineering, Dale has always had a soft spot for technical industries and complex manufacturing, though also loves healthcare and the primary sector.  

Paige is a global B2B marketer in the nutrition, food & beverage industry spanning brands including Anchor, Primo, NZMP & Fonterra.
Currently a Global Marketing Manager for Fonterra, Paige’s primary focus is enabling the success of Fonterra’s global protein and speciality ingredients portfolio
by developing and executing marketing strategy and working closely with regional sales and innovation teams across 7 continents.

Paige is passionate about B2B marketing as a broad and exciting discipline, present in almost all stages of business operation – from insights, research, new product development,
advertising, media, change management and sales. She believes a successful marketer keeps the customer at the core and values consumer insights, enthusiasm, technology, creativity and constant learning.

Professionally Paige is passionate about driving value for the New Zealand economy, supporting rural communities and spreading our quality nutrition around the world.
Personally she is energised by meeting the next generation of marketers and sharing the breadth of opportunities available in a B2B marketing career.

Sonja is an experienced marketing professional with over 16 years’ experience in both B2B and B2C marketing.

Currently heading up the marketing team at OfficeMax, Sonja is responsible for brand, research/customer experience, sales enablement and account-based marketing to New Zealand’s largest databases of business accounts (spanning every industry from healthcare to industrial, as well as education).

Sonja is passionate about making sales teams look good – fostering strong relationships between marketing and sales to ensure that customers have a fantastic experience throughout their entire purchasing journey. Sonja and her team have had the privilege of being the first marketers in New Zealand to partner with Seismic, the global leader in B2B marketing and sales enablement software. A career highlight was presenting at Seismic’s Asia Pacific customer conference on how to partner with sales to achieve mutual success.

An avid believer that B2B doesn’t have to be boring, Sonja has delivered a number of transformative projects to wow customers - including conceptualising and constructing three experiential showrooms. These have been described as a ‘Te Papa-like’ experience by customers due to their novel combination of 3D-signage, touchscreen technology and product interactions - and her work was nominated alongside Microsoft in the ‘Experience-Maker’ category of the global Seismic Shift awards.

Danielle is passionate about strategic marketing and believes that in order to be successful, you must truly understand your customers – their challenges, their wants, and their needs. She loves project managing and launching exciting initiatives, and of course, delivering value to her customers and internal stakeholders. Her role at the Marketing Association is to manage the marketing for the MA, including the brand, content, social media, campaigns, and creating a strategic marketing plan which aligns with the business strategy.

In her spare time, you will find Danielle herding her active 3-year-old son and spending time with her husband, friends and family. She also enjoys a nice getaway and trying new things. And rugby, she won’t miss an All Blacks game!

Emma is a graduate of AUT with a degree in Marketing. She previously served as an Event & Sponsorship Assistant within the events team before transitioning to her current role as a Digital Marketing Coordinator in the Marketing Team.

Originally from Hong Kong, Emma has been studying abroad since she was 11 years old. She has a background in hospitality and tourism. Her experience has made her a “Hodophile” who loves travelling and exploring new cultures because it challenges her perspective towards the world.