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First Published: 08 August, 2023
As a young, idealistic tertiary student in the sevenites, I gave up a potential career in law by dropping out of my Auckland Uni studies at the time to pursue a job in advertising – an interest inspired by reading the book: ‘Confessions of an Advertising man’ authored by ad guru and market research innovator David Olgilvy. Written in the early 1960’s it contained insights and ideas still relevant a decade or so later when I leafed through its pages in the university library. Ogilvy’s words encouraged me to seek out the ideal job that would combine ad creativity, sales and consumer insights. Luckily for me, I landed just such a role a few months later, as an advertising cadet with the NZ Herald.
Over the next few years as one of the Heralds’ advertising trainees I learnt the craft of creative newspaper advertising and its relevance to the print medium. When aged 22, I was headhunted by magazine publisher AGM to work on their fast-growing computer and electronics trade titles which I did for the next 2 years before landing a role as promotions co-ordinator at Mazda.
It was a fantastic opportunity as a young motor sports enthusiast to work on a growing auto brand. I gained experience on new car launch campaigns, dealer support, product and brand merchandising, corporate identity systems, managing the vehicle PR fleet and events and most of all overseeing the Mazda rally sport programme. A personal highlight was supporting Rod Millen’s Mazda rally team during the 1983/84 WRC season.
After a move to Christchurch in the mid-80's, I worked in auto retail marketing with the Amuri Motors group then one of the largest dealerships in NZ representing both Volvo and Mazda, followed by four years as a senior account manager with PR consultancy Network Communications. I then joined Telecom Mobile Radio as their communications manager for the next four years and travelled NZ and overseas extensively as we rolled out new mobile and data services. A stint in banking with Trustbank during its transition to WestpacTrust capped off a busy few years during that period.
Over the years I’ve started a couple of marketing and communications agencies and worked with NZ Post, Australia Post, the University of Canterbury and more recently with a range of start-ups in energy tech, software and AI sectors. I’m proud of my work as a mentor and advisor to a number of Christchurch-based businesses and more recently as a member of the Board of Business Mentors NZ.
I’ve taken on a number of new roles recently that reflect my growing interest in new ventures, tech and social enterprise. These include joining the advisory boards of a few local start ups, one of which is my local gym so that keeps me motivated to stay fit!.
There’s one that’s developing a new software platform for sourcing funds and another that’s developing drone swarms to fight wildfires. What time I have left over is spent with family and travel but mostly helping my wife grow her florist retail and online homewares business which is a nice way to test out and have fun with marketing theory in practice.
Despite the changes that come and go, I’ve retained my passion for the marketing profession and my role as Southern Region Chair for the Marketing Association and also as a teacher of their popular one-day ‘Marketing Bootcamp’. It’s fun, frustrating and challenging – but it’s never boring and always interesting.
Having spent a number of years living abroad and looking at our country from afar I’m determined to see NZ grow into the best small economy in the world. But I realise we have to change much of our thinking and attitudes towards how we do this.
In my mind the stimulation of our start-up eco-system across high value, high tech outcomes is a key area that’ll make a difference to growing our national GDP whether in more tradional sectors such as farming, manufacturing, retail, banking, financial services and tourism or emerging sectors such as areospace, clean energy, SaaS and AI. What’s interesting to me is that all these growth sectors require marketing expertise to prospect and grow.
Growing our talent pool through education, niche exporting and new venture investment will be the differientors. And the ability to source funds to grow and expand our entreprenuerial base is the challlenge we must overcome so we can stimulate and incentivise our emerging and incumbant business leaders.
Firstly, keeping up with the latest trends and leading edge research and insights that affect marketers and their stakeholders & customers everywhere seems to be the common cry. (Something the MA is certainly across and which we do our best at a branch level to deliver).
Secondly gaining access to deep dive training and specific events via the MA such as ‘Think Again’, ‘Brainy Breakfast sessions’ and ‘Marketing South’ delivered by leading industry figures are always in hot demand from our members. It’s this interest in not only keeping up but leading our industry and those of NZ Inc, that will only grow stronger as global competition heats up.
Thirdly – and it’s a perrenial one – is the desire to hear about what campaign or strategy or creative exectution worked and what didn’t and why – these being case studies and real-life marketing war-stories from any source that have lessons our marketing community can learn from and replicate.
Finally, our members want to learn and experiment with all the tools in the marketing toolbox and execute these with flair and brilliance so as to be better marketers and business leaders.
I certainly believe that these goals align with the MA’s vision of ‘Helping Marketers be Brilliant’ as we certainly have our share of brilliant marketers within the Southern region!
I believe that marketing in Te Waiounamu, South Island is no different than that practiced elsewhere but our distance from the major centres in the North Island means local firms often work to more contrained budgets, smaller scale creative briefs and with fewer resources. But the strategic and creative end-product is as good as anywhere in the country or world for that matter.
We’ve local brands that aspire to be the best they can be, the majority of our marketing agencies are world class and there’s pride in awards won and revenue and results achieved.
Most of all we have a high quality talent pool of professional marketers, many of whom are locally born, bred and trained and located in towns and cities reaching from Bluff to Westport and Lyttleton to Farewell Spit. Our regional mix is complemented by those from elsewhere drawn to locations throughout the mainland because they want to live in a place that offers a high standard of living, quality education, and with access to the wide open and beautiful landscapes combined with affordable housing.
The mainland is a special place and for marketers it’s even more appealing as the place to be. And of course, it’s the friendly and welcoming people here who are it’s main drawcard.
Around 1993 I was encouraged to join the local committee of the NZ Direct Marketing Association (precursor to the MA), that was mostly made up of direct mail and mail order brands such as Readers Digest, Time Life publishing, Amex and NZ Post. Up to that point I’d been heavily invloved with the NZ Advertising Institute helping our local committee establish the South Island Advertising Awards but due to my work with Telecom, Trustbank and NZ Post, the NZ DMA was a perfect fit.
By 1998 I became chair of the local DMA branch and held that role until it changed in 2001/2002 to become the MA we know today. The organisation was led at the time by the indefatigable Keith Norris ably supported by Sylvia Devlin who both inspired and supported my tenure as Southern Chair. I also started teaching the NZ Ceritficate in Direct Marketing, helping local marketers on their DM journey.
After a 12 year stint in Australia I returned to Christchurch in 2015 rejoining the MA Southern committee a year later following a chance encounter with MA Southern secretary Jayne Rattray whom I’d known for many years and who encouraged me to get back on board. By 2018 I was elected Southern Region Chair taking over from my predessesor Anne Newman who had taken up an exciting role as GM of the recently opened Christchurch Adventure Park.
Since stepping into the role of Southern Region Chair, I’ve led a talented team of marketers and volunteers on the branch committee who’ve given their all to oversee our many regionally organised events such as ‘’Marketing for Good’, quiz nights and the ‘Off the Clock’ monthly networking series. Despite challenging times during lockdown we’ve attracted consistently high attendance numbers to all our events.
Five years ago, we were looking for new ways to engage our members by asking them to donate their marketing knowledge and expertise to worthy community causes.
After evaluating ideas as to how best to do this, we launched a programme at the 2018 Marketing South conference called "Marketing for Good". During a 1-hour workshop delegates would share their collective marketing wisdom with a local charity, the first one being the Christchurch City Mission.
From that one session almost 200 ideas were tabled which our committee distilled to five actionable categories that City Mission could use to address their major marketing challenges whether to raise funds or educate local stakeholders. Since then we’ve extended the programme each year to help businesses emerging from Covid lockdown (‘Building Better Business’) and assisted more charities such as NZ Spinal Trust, CanBreathe Asthma Society and Aviva (Womens Refuge). We are looking forward to running this again as part of the 2023 Marketing South Conference on 17 October in Christchurch.
These initatives have been an outstanding success and a worthy example of committee teamwork and member participation doing something good. They’ve given our members a means to donate a little of their time and knowledge to help well-deserving charities and businesses with practical marketing ideas they can use and adapt to meet their goals.
It’s the perfect win, win,win programme – for our members, for the MA and for the charities and businesses on the receiving end.
Coming up with new ideas and events to reflect what’s going on in this ever-changing profession. Each month our team check in to reveiw what we’ve achieved and to plan for the months ahead.
It’s interesting to me how themes and topics of interest to our members have changed over the past few years from those focused on stories about more traditional advertising case studies to social media, influencer marketing and onto today’s ubiquitous interest in AI in marketing.
These changes keep marketing fresh and relevant to the changing dynamic that is marketing today. And along with the huge support we get from the MA national team led by CEO John Miles, we’ve maintained a growing profile within the South Island’s business and marketing community that bodes well for a prosperous future. Especially for our younger cohort coming through tertiary studies who seek a career in this most exciting profession.
As an organisation representing industry best practice, new ideas and creative thinking, it’s important our regional committee oversees a programme that is relevant, interesting and fully engages our stakeholders and members.
In the year ahead we’ll focus on these activities:
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Contact us if you have any suggestions on resources you would like to see more of, or if you have something you think would benefit our members.
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