It seems, according to insiders, that allegedly the winning firm for crafting the great Kiwi story for NZTE, Tourism NZ and Education NZ is actually an Ozzie import. That’s appalling on the face of it.
I’m not sure whether this is an artifact of an RFP lowest bidder process. I do wonder at the impact of apparently having the person who was collating the tenders working for an Australian Agency assessment firm (I kid you not). Who knows what happened – but this has arguably left a sour taste in more than one local firm and could backfire badly.
But I’m not a journalist. Perhaps a one* could chase this down and find out what happened. As a starter:
- Ask sponsors NZTE, Tourism NZ and Education NZ what went on.
- Ask the local firms who missed out – Designworks, Interbrand, Assignment and BRR what happened.
- Google and call the Aussie winners – Principals. They seem to be 100% owned by Australians, with the local company registered in Feb 2012 and a ‘resident member’ at Generator – seemingly a very shallow footprint in the country. I cannot find a .nz website for them.
Onya mates.
*OK – One did.
Lance Wiggs 
Brian Richards did some great work with Education NZ and the BRR team live and breathe “Brand NZ”, DesignWorks have been kicking ass with several Kiwi stories such as Air NZ, Icebreaker and NZTE. Even interbrand with Snowden and Assignment with the Greens and Antipodes water. Every one of these agencies could have done a wonderful job of telling NZ’s story. We can only hope that the decision was because an external perspective would be better for building an outward facing brand.
LikeLike
Almost as bad as having a Kiwi as the coach of the Wallabies!
LikeLike
We’ve seen how well that’s worked out for them…
LikeLike