Unitec has pushed the educational marketing envelope over the past couple of years with some novel and risky campaigns and helped change the perception of the institute among potential students—and their parents. And Jeanette Paine, the executive director of marketing and communications, was rewarded for her efforts after being named as a finalist in the TVNZ-NZ Marketing marketer of the year award.
Whittaker’s foreign correspondent, Bay Audiology’s moments of joy, Prince Nikolai Stroganov III, NZ Police and VW’s take on the importance of being young at heart earn TVC honours.
Whittaker’s and Assignment Group have been successfully beating the patriotic, family-owned, challenger brand drum for many years. But, due to New Zealand’s International Inferiority Complex (IIS), everyone knows that anything with Kiwi provenance needs a ringing foreign endorsement before it can be considered a true success and Whittaker’s has got a good one in the form of UK celebrity chef and unashamed chocolate lover Nigella Lawson, who has signed on to promote the new five roll refined Creamy Milk Chocolate—and give the Swiss a bit of a hurry up.
Whittaker’s has a history of innovation, both in terms of its new products and its approach to marketing. We were big fans of its amazing chocolate website, which may or may not have provided some inspiration for Cadbury’s Google+ page. And while it doesn’t seem to be an official production (yet), a few chocolate lovers decided to turn something else usually deemed inedible into something much more enticing by screenprinting Whittaker’s chocolate designs onto wafer paper.
In just 18 months, Jasmine Griffin has helped turn Whittaker’s from a fairly traditional FMCG marketer into a company lauded for its digital and social media savviness.
Porirua chocolate maker Whittaker’s has been voted New Zealand’s most trusted brand in the annual Reader’s Digest Most Trusted Survey, moving up three places to top the 2012 list, knocking last year’s number one St John’s from its perch down to number two.