Idealog’s third issue is a must-buy: not only does it talk about Generation C—those folks who use YouTube and Flickr a lot more than me—but founder Vincent Heeringa, surely one of the more visionary commentators on New Zealand business, has a column on the sorry state of marketing here.
   We are great innovators, since Vincent, but we are not good at commercializing those innovations. Foreigners come in and New Zealand becomes more a playground for them. He even briefly mentions how designers recently came together and said that design was a ‘key enabler’ but I sense he did not think as much of that—in fact, I was far more critical of the resulting document and called it a selection of words which I won’t republish.
   Instead, our marketing has been backward and exhibits little of the innovation New Zealanders are capable of in other sectors. It smacks of 1980s’ textbooks. The talent is here, I would argue, but it happily goes offshore because no one domestically gives two hoots.
   I have been invited to speak on marketing here and there, though I don’t get paid much domestically. Being a marketing visionary isn’t as widely appreciated. I get a pretty tidy fee from Europe and the United States.
   I volunteer for government bodies and tell them I will provide my exporting, branding and marketing knowledge for free. I am, after all, still the only active antipodean at Medinge. My record is pretty sharp. But, as with my lament over exports, no one has ever taken me up on my offers. Conclusion after many years: New Zealand says it wants to export, but doesn’t. Government policies have been mixed at best, and the evidence—static exports as a proportion of GDP over 40 years and a largely static mix of those exports—speaks for itself.
   Vincent is 100 per cent right, which is why Errol Saldanha set up a branding association for Kiwis at Kiwibranding, though we are yet to actively market it.
   I do not necessarily believe it is in creating associations of hundreds of people, because you get hangers-on who don’t contribute. Smaller groups like Medinge are having greater effect because we are active. We have been discussing a new programme which will act as a form of outreach in finding other visionaries, something which I will share later.
   I believe that within our current marketing associations there is room for cleverer thinking; and the media should be more on to it with this subject. They should look at, perhaps, New Zealanders who have found success abroad and analyse them from a marketing and branding point of view. And Vincent’s own suggestion, of joining a dialogue at Idealog, is another fine idea.

Del.icio.us tags: New Zealand marketing branding Idealog export Posted by Jack Yan, 21:40  permalink

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