← More

Andrew Waddel

General Manager - Australia, Tourism New ZealandSydney

Andrew heads Tourism New Zealand's marketing and business operations in Australia, New Zealand’s largest inbound tourism market. His 20 year career has seen him work on iconic brands such as Red Bull, Stella Artois and Beck’s. Andrew takes us through Tourism New Zealand’s approach to reengaging post-lockdown travellers using unique content, innovative marketing approaches and of course - humour.

More episodes

Janet Smith

Janet Smith

Vice President of Brand Communications - Atlanta Hawks & State Farm ArenaAtlanta

With stints at Jive Records, Red Bull, Habitat for Humanity International and now the Atlanta Hawks, Janet Smith has had an impressive career in entertainment and experiential marketing.

Brent Smart

Brent Smart

CMO at IAGSydney

As CMO at IAG Insurance and ex-CEO at Saatchi & Saatchi New York, Brent Smart knows how to change the fortunes of businesses from the inside out.

Aseem Puri

Aseem Puri

CMO Unilever International & CEO Unilever KoreaSingapore

Aseem leads marketing, innovation and digital communications for Unilever International, responsible for managing brand building for a billion dollar portfolio.

Luanne Calvert

Luanne Calvert

Start-up advisor and ex-CMO Virgin AmericaSan Francisco

Luanne Calvert has decades of experience shaping some of the world’s leading brands. She was Google’s first Creative Director, and served as CMO at Virgin America for 6 years.

Paulo Silva

Paulo Silva

Board Member, Advisor & Internet pioneerSão Paulo

An internet pioneer in the 80s and ex-CEO of Walmart.com in Brazil, Paulo Silva has over 25 years experience leading high performance teams across Latin America. He’s currently the founder and managing partner of RockOn Advisors.

Lamar Dawson

Lamar Dawson

Senior Marketer in Multicultural BeautyNew York

Lamar has helped some of the world's most iconic brands tell their stories through digital channels, including L’Oréal, Pepsi, Oreo and Nike, and is currently focussing on multicultural beauty.

Jeff Burroughs

Jeff Burroughs

Senior VP, Def Jam RecordingsNew York

A music industry veteran, Jeff’s illustrious career has seen him hold senior positions at Columbia Records, Bad Boy Recordings and Syco Entertainment.

Sarah Wyse

Sarah Wyse

General Manager - Digital, Media & Marketing, AFLMelbourne

With almost 20 years global experience specialising in the digital media and advertising technology sector, Sarah is currently overseeing the core news, content, creative and production teams of the AFL.

David Alberts

David Alberts

Co-Founder of Been There Done ThatLondon

An ex-Grey veteran, David’s career has also spanned stints at Mojo, BBDO and Bates. He set up Been There Done That in 2014 to provide a new model for brands to access creative strategy.

Annabel Venner

Annabel Venner

Marketing Consultant & ex-Global Brand Director, HiscoxLondon

Annabel currently runs a marketing consultancy after an impressive marketing career, including 11 years at Hiscox Insurance and 9 years at Coca-Cola.

Tracy Hall

Tracy Hall

Marketing ConsultantSydney

With extensive experience working for global brands like Virgin Mobile, eBay and GoDaddy, Tracy is currently consulting for some of Australia’s fastest growing tech companies.

Thaiza Akemi

Thaiza Akemi

Head of Communication and Content Marketing, Bank ItaúSão Paulo

After stints at some of Brazil's biggest agencies and leading the Twitter ArtHouse Americas team, Thaiza is now Head of Communication and Content Marketing at Bank Itaú.

Transcript

Kia Ora, I'm Andrew Waddell, General Manager Australia, Tourism New Zealand.

I've been with Tourism New Zealand for about three years now. Brand marketeer by trade. I’ve previously worked in the UK, South Africa and Australia for Red Bull, and prior to that, I worked on a number of beer brands, including Stella Artois, Becks and Castlemaine 4X.

The single biggest disruption for the advertising and marketing industry is easily COVID-19 and the pandemic that swept the world. It was a real leveler in knowledge and experience - there’s a saying: “you're only naive once, so make the most of it”. And for marketeers and business people around the world, the rules were completely rewritten. Nothing that worked before was guaranteed to work in the future. So you really had to approach it with a sense of understanding of what was going on, the understanding of the consumer in their context, and how you were going to go about bringing your brand to life and making a commercial impact for your business.

So one of the questions we asked was, when people can't travel, how do we keep the brand alive? We set up a framework under ‘Prime, Ignite and Scale’. Prime was really about winning consumer's hearts and minds when they couldn't travel and for when they could travel. The Ignite phase was really about converting that brand love into the ability to travel to New Zealand in the future.

One of the principles of our go-to-market was really focussed on earned first. The idea of that was to ensure that we had the right spokesperson with the right messaging to land in the right context through the right channels. It was really agile, and it meant we could turn on a dial within a couple of hours versus a paid campaign, which takes a little bit longer to produce and land and market. When the context started settling for the consumer and they were able to travel, that was the right time to be able to bring through a more inspiring campaign and bringing that opportunity to travel to New Zealand to life.

It's a really interesting time to be working in the travel industry. We've gone from this period of real growth and travel over a number of years, then all of a sudden, no visitors. And now, particularly for Australia and New Zealand, is the opportunity to really reignite that travel opportunity. So marketeers have worked on that emotional sense, that idea of setting that desire to travel overseas. But what we're also seeing is an increase in the idea of rational requirements. What does it look like when I travel? What things do I need to think about from a COVID perspective? And that has changed our understanding of the role that we've got to play in encouraging people to travel, inspiring them, but then also making sure that they've got everything sorted out for when they are actually on the ground.

We use a hybrid model for the set up and structure of our marketing services. We find getting best-in-class talent across creative media storytelling and channels is critical and open and transparent working relationships and setting a really high bar and high aspiration for the most creative execution we can bring to market.

One of the things that stands out from New Zealand marketing and storytelling, I think, is its ability to bring humor through and not take itself too seriously. We've seen that show up in social channels, whether it be police videos and social social activity, but also through Tourism New Zealand campaigns as well.

Play NZ was the first virtual walk through of a whole country using video game or video game as a storytelling device. So a really innovative way of bringing to life countries, people in place and the feeling of embracing a country, but through a video game.

Getting close to consumer insights continues to be critical to the travel industry, we're not really too sure - no one's really sure what the future's going to look like. So we really have to understand the consumer and context. What we mean by that is that we really understand what their needs are now and work to anticipate what that looks like. We find with technology partners - if we're able to match new technology with those consumer insights, that's when the magic happens, and we're able to provide a new sort of set up for the consumer to engage and hopefully create that desire and ability to travel in the future.