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Dean Cook departs Farmers for The Warehouse Group—UPDATED

Farmers’ long-time head of marketing Dean Cook has left to join The Warehouse Group.

UPDATE: On 1 March he will be taking up the role of general manager of marketing for the Noel Leeming Torpedo 7 Group after 12 with the Farmers Trading Company.

Tim Edwards, CEO of Noel Leeming Group and Torpedo 7 said the team are very excited to welcome Cook.

“Dean is the whole package, he’s a great people leader who fosters and grows creative talent, he knows how to maximise brand engagement in the ever-changing digital landscape and of course has extensive retail experience.”

Cook’s 12 years with Farmers was his second stint with the company after holding advertising and marketing roles at DEKA from 1992 to 1993, and then advertising manager and marketing manager – retail and card roles at Farmers until 2001 (according to Wikipedia, “the DEKA chain closed in July 2001 after financial difficulty in competing with The Warehouse discount stores”).  

Cook’s departure from Farmers came after he appointed FCB to evolve the brand strategy, beginning with an emotional Christmas campaign.

At the time of FCB’s appointment, Cook said it’s a very important stage in the evolution of the company’s marketing (while moving a lot of its production in-house in recent years, it also works closely with .99). 

“We want to reinforce the role Farmers plays in numerous moments throughout New Zealanders’ lives, and has played for over 100 years.”

One of Cook’s major projects was the launch of the Farmers Club Card in 2011, which involved two years of strategic development. 

Farmers, which is owned by the Norman family, has over 50 stores across the county and, according to Nielsen, which calculates ratecard spend, it spent $34 million on advertising between October 2016 and September 2017. That was up from $26 million during the same period in 2015. 

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