The official deadline may have passed, but you can still submit your entry to the 2015 TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards. So if you feel you’ve performed heroic feats of marketing over the past year, request a late entry (by clicking here) and you could also be Mighty Marketing material like Fonterra’s Tim Deane.
If you were collecting your own set of Mighty Marketers, whether from this market or from around the world, who would you choose and why?
I’ll go with some Kiwi examples because I think we do punch above our weight as marketers.
Barbara Chapman. The marketer behind ASB’s Goldstein not only made bank advertising entertaining but also drove a customer value proposition that saw ASB grow into a banking heavyweight in New Zealand, delivering huge gains for shareholders. Barbara understands how to drive marketing that hits the bottom line.
Len Potts. The creative genius behind some of New Zealand s most loved campaigns had the knack of tapping into the psyche of Kiwis in the days when the hero TV advertisement was pivotal. Check out the old BNZ ‘It’s just a bach’ campaign as just one example.
John Brakenridge turned the New Zealand Merino wool industry around by re-positioning NZ Merino from commodity to premium product setting the stage for Peri Drysdale to launch Untouched World and Jeremy Moon to launch Icebreaker. What a legacy!.
What are some of your favourite local or international marketing initiatives? And why do they stand out?
The ‘Got Milk?’ campaign run by the California Milk Processors Board which ran for over a decade and transformed milk consumption by targeting people who were already milk drinkers. I love it because it delivered bottom line growth in the demand for milk with a budget which was a fraction of the spend of the juice, soft drink, bottled water and iced tea competitors.
The ‘Anchor Family’ campaign run for almost a decade in the 80s and 90s is still talked about today. It was hugely successful and was shown at a time when New Zealand was really starting to form its own unique creative identity breaking away from the apron strings of Great Britain.
The Toyota ‘Bugger’ campaign made a Japanese car brand seem more Kiwi than the jandal and the Hilux the gold standard off-road vehicle for New Zealanders.
How has marketing changed in your career? And what skills do you require to be a Mighty Marketer these days?
When I started marketing the 60 second hero advertisement playing during the six o’clock news reached pretty well the whole population. And for the few people without TV some radio adverts did the rest. The digital revolution changed all that with today’s marketers having to understand the rapidly changing digital landscape, the evolution of social media and how today’s consumers prefer to engage with brands. There were also distinct disciplines when I started. An FMCG marketer was seen as quite different to a business to business marketer or a services marketer.
Today the lines are blurred and some of the best FMCG marketers coming from a service marketing background, for example. Despite all this this the fundamentals of marketing remain unchanged. The best marketers focus on the fundamentals, understand their customers/consumers needs, understand how their organisation’s P&L works and the critical drivers impacting performance and ensure that everything they do either drives revenue and margin growth or operational efficiencies and savings to drive profit.
You’ve won plenty of industry accolades in your time. What are the benefits of collecting your own award, either for your own career or for the industry as a whole?
I’ve always tried to “make a difference”. Striving to be the best I can be in my chosen career is one aspect of this. Benchmarking myself against the best is an objective way of monitoring progress and learning how to be more effective. Entering the Marketing Awards taught me an awful lot and made me a better marketer—and winning was a real highlight. If you are keen to develop as a marketer – give it a go – enter the marketing awards.
- Download your entry form and check out what you need to do to include a late entry here.
