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ZM and Pride & Joy collaborate to kickstart career of a ‘remarkable unemployee’

ZM, part of The Radio Network (TRN), has teamed up with ice cream franchise Pride & Joy to give a $30,000 franchise opportunity to a lucky New Zealander, who shows the drive and determination necessary to run a successful business.

Pride and Joy co-founders James Coddington and Tony Balfour say that they are focused on providing opportunities for remarkable people among today’s unemployed and underemployed.

“Pride and Joy was founded to create entrepreneurial business opportunities for people who weren’t fitting the employment model, the product was actually secondary. New Zealand produces the best dairy products in the world, so it follows we also make the best ice cream, so ice cream became the vehicle for the ‘remarkable unemployees’ to create their own business,” says Coddington.

Coddington and Balfour initially proposed the promotional idea to several potential candidates, but ZM eventually won the contract to deliver the four-week competition to find “New Zealand’s most remarkable unemployee.”

“Jay, Flynny and Zoe’s personalities are perfect for this type of competition. They’re funny, very quick and most of all love eating ice cream – it was an easy decision,” says TRN account director Gavin Harper when commenting on why the ZM drive team was chosen.

A key differentiator of the franchise is the use of quirky pods, which serve as points of sale. As the franchise has expanded, Coddington and Balfour have continued their innovative streak by converting a 40-foot shipping container into a micro-manufacturing unit, which can produce enough ice cream for 55 pods.

The winner of the competition will not only win one of these pods but also an ice cream freezer and opening stock of ice cream, a point-of-sale system, and all the necessary training.

“Many radio competitions involve sending in a text or ticking a box with your contact details. We’re giving away a new start for someone, a $30,000 business opportunity that could set them up for life. They have had to sell themselves so we can see how entrepreneurial they really are. So it’s a complex process and people have responded in the thousands,” says Harper.

Heather Bennett, Jamie O’Donnell, Sean Chambers, Milica Milenkovic and Morgan Burkett have been announced as the five finalists, and they will all be flown to Auckland on Saturday 5 April to complete a variety of tasks before the person with the most votes on the ZM website is revealed as the overall winner on Friday 11 April on the breakfast show.

While many charitable campaigns only offer a single donation, this collaborative effort between ZM and Pride & Joy will serve to remove one of these Kiwis from the unemployment (or underemployment) statistics. And this is significant, given that the nation continues to struggle to keep these numbers down. 

At over four percent, New Zealand has the sixth highest rate of underemployment among OECD countries, according to figures from Statistics NZ.

   

And while the nation’s unemployment rate has been declining steadily over the past few years, the underemployment rate has increased slightly, with statistics showing that the problem is more pronounced among women than men.

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