fbpx

Movings/Shakings: 2 May

New connections

After the fusing of TelstraClear and Vodafone recently, the changes have been flowing and among them is the imminent departure of Vodafone’s chief marketing officer Greg Campbell, who is heading to Australia to help turn around a business that’s had to deal with some pretty serious issues recently, including the renewed threat of a class action suit by unhappy customers and an AU$899 million loss last year

“[Campbell] is continuing in the chief marketing officer role for now and has been acting consumer business unit director until Matt Williams’ arrival,” says Vodafone senior external comms manager Emma Carter. 

The new leadership team was announced back in February and the combined business is organised around customers (Enterprise, Consumer and Wholesale), with each area delivering the full range of fixed and mobile services to its customers.  

  • Grant Hopkins has been appointed the director of enterprise. He joined Vodafone in 2004 and became sales director in October 2007. For the past several months he has been acting as chief operating officer within the TelstraClear business unit.
  • Matt Williams has been appointed consumer business unit director. He joined Vodafone New Zealand in 1995 and, after almost ten years, returns to New Zealand from Vodafone Group where he was group commercial management director. 
  • Steve Rieger is the director of wholesale and business development. He has been at Vodafone for the past ten years in a range of sales management roles.

A customer operations unit will focus on delivering a branded customer experience across the company’s major touch points (retail, telesales, call centre and digital). 

Gardining leave

OMD’s social strategist and occasional StopPress and NZ Marketing scribe Anthony Gardiner has resigned. 

As he said on Twitter: “Going to do my own thing for a bit. It might fail, but I am going to try a different model. One that cuts the bullshit from adland.”

Gardiner has recently launched music app 25mostplayed.com, which mashes together Facebook and iTunes data and is receiving a bit of media attention at the moment, and also antisocialsearch.com.

A new Dae 

iSite Media
has appointed Dae Chun to the role of agency manager to work across a wide
range of Auckland and upper-North Island agency clients. 

Chun has over five years of experience in Auckland media agencies and comes to iSite from Carat.

“Dae is a
great fit for the iSite culture, and has already been a great advocate for out
of home from the agency side. We’re looking forward to him being a crucial
player as we continue the charge forward,” says associate sales director, Steve
Simpson.

Webb of intrigue

Whatever iSite can do, so can Ooh! Media, with Matthew Webb joining as a senior account manager with a focus on the company’s Fly (airports) and Study (education institutions) offerings. 

Webb most recently worked for Living Social as a marketing consultant and was with Fairfax as a media consultant for five years.

General Manager of oOh! New Zealand Cameron Taylor said Webb’s strong agency connections, strategic thinking and solution-based selling skills make him ideally suited to the role.

“Our team is committed to giving our clients the best service and advertising exposure at Auckland airport and across our other inventory in shopping centres and universities, and Matthew’s addition significantly strengthens our team,” he says. 

oOh!’s away from home media solutions allows advertisers the ability to reach more than 14 million travellers per annum through Fly, over 6.4 million shopping trips each fortnight via Retail and over 170,000 students each week using Study.

Robinson’s Shout

Jennifer Robinson has joined Shout Media as sales director, moving from her role as senior brand manager at Beam Global. 

“Jen was someone who was well known to me so I knew the high calibre of person I was getting,” says Shout’s managing director Paul Kenny. “She has slotted in seamlessly and will be predominantly working on our new business channels we secured late last year, Air New Zealand and Tomizone Wi-Fi. We are experiencing rapid growth and expect to make another sales appointment in the next two to three months. Our aim was to be the country’s leading provider of ambient/alternative out of home advertising by the end of 2013 and we are well on the way to achieving this goal.”

Paper trail

After selling four of its Wellington papers recently, APN New Zealand Media has also sold its Christchurch and Oamaru newspaper businesses to independent publisher Mainland Press Ltd, which operates a chain of community papers and directories in Christchurch. 

The main APN titles include The Star in Canterbury, which was established in 1868, and the Oamaru Mail, which began publishing in 1879. Both are among the oldest in New Zealand. The price paid wasn’t disclosed. 

“The decision to sell was based on our determination to concentrate our efforts on the North Island where most of our businesses are located and where most of New Zealand’s growth would occur in the next decade,” says APN New Zealand chief executive Martin Simons. 

All staff at the Christchurch and Oamaru businesses will transfer to the new ownership. The Mainland group is privately owned by Pier and Charlotte Smulders, and chaired by Nick Smith, director of Allied Press, publisher of the Otago Daily Times and CTV in Canterbury. 

Simons says the Star’s effort in converting from a bi-weekly broadsheet to a daily free compact newspaper within 24 hours of the 22 February 2011 earthquake was truly remarkable. The newspaper was published free daily for several months after the earthquake, providing a vital communication link for Christchurch people living without many basic services. It was retained in compact format when it was converted back to bi-weekly in the quake’s aftermath. 

In its original form The Star was one of New Zealand’s greatest afternoon daily newspapers. It was acquired by Wilson & Horton in 1989 and came under APN ownership in 2001. It was converted from a paid daily to a free bi-weekly in 1991. 

Simons said the Oamaru Mail also had a proud history and had been covering the North Otago region for nearly 135 years. The paper moved from afternoon to morning delivery in November 2011, with compact editions Monday to Thursday, and then converted the Friday paper from broadsheet to compact the following year. 

Mainland Media managing director Pier Smulders said “with a renewed focus on local news and stories, and by bringing our great teams together with Mainland’s stable of titles, we will be serving our communities and advertisers long into the future”. And Charlotte Smulders told stuff.co.nz that “coming from a long established media family, the acquisition was important to her”. 

“There are very few privately owned media groups remaining in New Zealand, which is a real shame. My family has retained ownership and passion for the industry for over 150 years and now my husband and I get to make our own mark.”

The chairman of Mainland Media, Nick Smith, added “the purchase of a multinational publisher’s local interests is great for Christchurch and the South Island’s publishing businesses. Local ownership has many benefits as what’s good for the community is good for the papers and vice versa. We will ensure we do and must remain connected to readers and advertisers alike with appealing news.”

Mainland Media was established in 2007. Its titles include Mainland Press, the Bay Harbour News, NorWest News, Selwyn View, Pegasus Bay News, and Southern View newspapers. The company also publishes Best Motorbuys, Buy, Sell & Exchange, SeeBeSeen magazine, Forward50 magazine (formerly called Older & Bolder), and the nationwide gardening magazine – Weekend Gardener

Madant in the wild 

Madant
Productions has expanded its offering with a new experiential and activations division called Engaged. 

“Experiential
marketing has always been a dynamic part of our business, so we are extremely excited
to now have a dedicated specialist team offering this service,” says Craig Muller, managing director. 

Corinna Homer has been chosen on to head up the new division. She has ten years of promotions and marketing experience in broadcasting (including eight NZ Radio Awards in promotions), and five years as a senior event producer at Madant. 

“Corinna has done it all,” says Mueller. “There’s nothing she doesn’t know about producing experiences in this market. She brings strategic, creative and executional expertise that positions her perfectly to drive this bus.”

“Loads of companies roll out great sampling campaigns and brand ambassadors, but Engaged will bring a new level of creative intensity to the industry,” says Homer. “We deliver ideas and angles that other agencies won’t think of. We have an awesome team, we have Madant’s proven infrastructure and we’re here to own the creative end of the experiential market.”

Madant started
as a small agency with three employees and one main client in 1996. It has now grown to a full service creative,
events, and video agency, with 15 full time employees that services over 20 key
blue chip clients in Australasia and the Pacific, including Coca-Cola, Vodafone, Yellow, Vero, Mighty River, Chorus, Hallenstein Brothers,
Lion, TV3, L’Oreal and Fonterra.

Shop on

Consumer
public relations consultancy The PR Shop has welcomed Lindsay Stanley as senior account manager in its Auckland office.

Stanley has a versatile skill set
gained from working both agency-side and in-house in the UK for the past eight
years, over
a broad range of sectors including consumer, health, personal care, B2B, and
FMCG.

“Her
knowledge, eye for detail, and brilliant people skills (not to mention her
British tea-making prowess) have already been a terrific addition to the team,
in what is proving to be a fantastic year for us,” says director Sally Frewin. 

Bates rates

PPR has boosted its team this month with the appointment of Beth Bates as a senior account manager.  

She arrives at PPR from a journalism background having worked for some of the world’s top broadcasters.  

Most recently she worked abroad as a broadcast journalist for the BBC in London and in a similar role for Al Jazeera English, in both their London and Qatar newsrooms.

Prior to this she was a journalist for seven years on One News and 20/20 and worked in all three main TVNZ bureaus, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. 

Another recent appointment is Charlotte Milton who has joined the PPR team as a consultant, following her Public Relations Postgraduate studies at AUT University.

Tech swapsies

@SiobhanKeoghNZ, who has been a staff writer at Fairfax’s NZ PC World since 2010, has been handed the editorial reins. 

Previous editor Zara Baxter is leaving to study engineering in Australia.

About Author

Avatar photo

One of the talented StopPress Team of Content Producers made this post happen.

Comments are closed.