Wendy Palmer, Laura Maxwell, John Halpin and Duncan Greive all feature in today's Q&A with media CEOs.
The Spinoff’s Duncan Greive describes 2024 as “one of the most defining years in our media’s history”.
All domestic media were challenged in 2023, he says in today’s installment of Q&A interviews with industry bosses. “The transition to digital is now well past the halfway point, and that could lead to a pretty devastating event at one or more of our major media companies.”
“It will put pressure on a very fresh government to decide how to respond, if only because it’s such a major presence in the sector through its ownership of TVNZ and RNZ.
“The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill is crucial – that shapes as a pivotal event in terms of redressing the power imbalance between New Zealand’s formal content producers and the technology companies that distribute that information.”
Greive and several of our CEOs today are urging New Zealand marketers to do more to support the local industry, with their advertising budgets.
“Between all of us in the industry, we have incredible reach and engagement with Kiwi audiences,” says MediaWorks’ Wendy Palmer.
“Advertising on local platforms supports the amazing local content we all produce and keeps people in jobs.”
This is the second part of a three-part Media Insider series, in which we pose seven questions to media CEOs and leaders.
Over three weeks, you’ll hear from 20 of our top NZ media CEOs. The first six - Brent McAnulty (TVNZ), Sophie Moloney (Sky), Michael Boggs (NZME), Don Mann (Pacific Media Network), Nikki Grafton (PHD) and Nigel Douglas (OMD) - appeared last week; the next six appear today.
They all offer insight and wisdom on their roles, the issues they’re confronting, and what lies ahead.
1. What’s the one word to sum up your mood as we close out 2023 and look forward to 2024?
No doubt helped by the music streaming through the building from our fabulous stations, I’d say upbeat.
2. How would you describe your year?
Very differently to how you might describe my year!
Seriously though, it has been another tough year for our industry, but I’m struck by the resilience and tenacity of the team at MediaWorks. I’ve really enjoyed getting back into it.
3. What’s the best initiative/project/campaign in your own business – and one you thought a rival did well?
I was incredibly proud of the role our stations played in the storms earlier this year. We had announcers camped in their studio for days on end, with locals dropping in food and handwritten messages to read out on air. It really showed the power of local radio in keeping communities informed and connected.
Sky and Stuff’s partnership for the Fifa Women’s World Cup was a great demonstration of how the industry can work together. The coverage was sensational and a huge boost for the visibility of women’s sport in Aotearoa.
4. How do you think 2024 will play out for New Zealand media - what’s the biggest priority for you?
We’re seeing some positive signs, but expect it to be a slow build back.
A big focus for us is continuing our digital journey - meeting our audiences where they are and deepening their connections to our brands.
5. What’s the biggest issue that keeps you awake at night?
Looking after our people after a pretty tough few years is my biggest concern. Anxiety and mental health issues, particularly in young people, are on the rise. With quite a young team at MediaWorks, this is something I care deeply about.
6. What’s the biggest mistake media/marketing/advertising people need to avoid in 2024?
I’d love to see marketers supporting local platforms first - between all of us in the industry, we have incredible reach and engagement with Kiwi audiences. Advertising on local platforms supports the amazing local content we all produce and keeps people in jobs.
7. What are your plans for the summer break?
I’m looking forward to spending some time on Waiheke with family and friends and a glass or two of chilled vino.
1. What’s the one word to sum up your mood as we close out 2023 and look forward to 2024?
Hopeful.
2. How would you describe your year?
Whirlwind.
We have restructured our entire business, launched new digital sites for our loved and trusted mastheads, executed lively political debates, raised $5 million for Cyclone Gabrielle, our journos have been instrumental in bringing justice to cold case killers, printed and hand-delivered papers to Gisborne when no other news channel was available, executed an enterprise-wide digital transformation, asked the tough questions to those who need to be held accountable and enjoyed the thrill of showcasing global sporting events live on stuff.co.nz.
So yes, we’ve been a bit busy. What’s next? Well, we’ve been adapting our business for 165-plus years, so I can’t see us slowing down in 2024.
3. What’s the best initiative/project/campaign in your own business – and one you thought a rival did well?
We removed ourselves from X and our audience has grown, with more people coming directly to the source of the news - which restores my faith in humanity somewhat.
I’d love to see marketers have the same courage, to trust that New Zealand media sites have all the digital audience and digital tools you’ll ever need to create campaigns that get you closer to your next customer.
I thought the MediaWorks launch of 3DOOH (out of home) using Weta Workshop, was a standout. Clever use of tech to intercept audiences and showcase the power of 3DOOH.
4. How do you think 2024 will play out for New Zealand media - what’s the biggest priority for you?
NZ media businesses are under unprecedented pressure as noted by the financial results of many of our known and trusted news brands this year.
It requires a fair market to operate effectively and we can take some pages from other countries’ playbooks to address the market inequity, certainly not via Government handouts.
For us at Stuff the highest priorities will be the same next year, delivering the products and services that drive value for our audiences and customers and our business.
Our vision is to be the beating heart of news, ideas and inspiration to make Aotearoa a better place and we’ll be continuing to embed AI and other tools into the business to ensure we deliver on our vision.
5. What’s the biggest issue that keeps you awake at night?
Two issues for me right now.
Firstly, Government-funded media competing directly against commercial businesses. The leaked document you reported on in this column, Shayne, outlines RNZ positioning themselves to invest their funding into creating a digital proposition somewhere “between Stuff and Facebook”.
Whilst I’m flattered by the imitation and I’m not surprised that RNZ is looking to follow the largest digital news business in NZ, this flies in the face of their position in May where they stated they wouldn’t be replicating Stuff or NZ Herald’s online platforms.
And my second biggest issue ... did I remember to water my Christmas tree last night?
6. What’s the biggest mistake media/marketing/advertising people need to avoid in 2024?
Building cookie-cutter campaigns.
7. What are your plans for the summer break?
Heading to Aussie to catch some sunshine and spend time with family before we launch into 2024 with fervour.
1. What’s the one word to sum up your mood as we close out 2023 and look forward to 2024?
Optimistic.
2. How would you describe your year?
Solid. Core business performed well and we started getting traction on our newly launched content/commerce platforms listener.co.nz and shop.yourhomeandgarden.co.nz.
3. What’s the best initiative/project/campaign in your own business – and one you thought a rival did well?
Particularly proud of launching our first e-commerce platform shop.yourhomeandgarden.co.nz to directly convert the inspiration and influence from our media brands into transactions and sales for ourselves and our commercial partners.
Rival/friend win? I reckon NZME’s overall performance is the benchmark at the moment – print holding well, digital growing nicely with new initiatives, and radio/audio and the ZB machine in particular just keeps on rolling.
4. How do you think 2024 will play out for New Zealand media - what’s the biggest priority for you?
Challenging times for some, but big opportunities for others.
Some local media owners are worryingly reliant on one revenue stream and are meeting the inflection point of declining revenue vs increasing costs.
But the common denominator among local media companies that will be successful this year is they have multiple and diversified revenue streams and a clear strategy for each.
5. What’s the biggest issue that keeps you awake at night?
Two babies at our house. Otherwise, I’m fairly relaxed.
6. What’s the biggest mistake media/marketing/advertising people need to avoid in 2024?
Taking themselves too seriously.
7. What are your plans for the summer break?
Nice family holiday in Pauanui and hopefully sneak in a few rounds of golf – keen to beat Nigel Douglas this year!
1. What’s the one word to sum up your mood as we close out 2023 and look forward to 2024?
Accelerate.
2. How would you describe your year?
It’s been a huge year of personal and professional growth; “re-immigrating” to my homeland with my family after many years overseas and stepping into the CEO role at GroupM.
It feels like it’s been a tough year for businesses and New Zealanders in general. I’ve been reminded how much goodness there is here, and how much this country has going for it.
New Zealand has always punched above its weight, and I’d love people to really take a moment to reflect on the great things that we’ve achieved.
Looking ahead, I’m going into 2024 full of optimism about the future and the opportunities ahead.
3. What’s the best initiative/project/campaign in your own business – and one you thought a rival did well?
Our business has been the best project we’ve been working on since I arrived in July. It’s easy to think a network like ours doesn’t change much, but we’ve been reimagining how we’re structured and the way we work. Even the spaces we work in.
It’s been energising and I’ve got a great team helping me craft the solution, with some more great hires to come in the new year. We’ve even got the attention of the global network because what we’re doing is so different. It’s not every day you get to redesign a network structure from New Zealand ... except, I guess it is our every day which is awesome.
It’s probably sacrilege to reference an Australia campaign, but I loved the Yes Vote ad with John Farnham’s You’re The Voice soundtrack from The Monkeys supporting The Voice to Parliament. It was a powerful message and beautifully made. Unfortunately, The Voice didn’t pass, but I think us Kiwis could use a bit of a pep talk and be reminded of the great things we’ve achieved going into ‘24.
4. How do you think 2024 will play out for New Zealand media - what’s the biggest priority for you?
2024 is going to be a big transitional year for New Zealand media.
I don’t expect ad spend to grow in a hurry, but there are a lot of media organisations undertaking big internal transformation to get future-fit.
We’ve been making changes of our own in ‘23 as we shape our business for the next era of media, so now I’m looking forward to unleashing our revitalised teams on our clients’ businesses.
5. What’s the biggest issue that keeps you awake at night?
My 3-year-old.
6. What’s the biggest mistake media/marketing/advertising people need to avoid in 2024?
This makes me think of Amara’s Law and the impact that AI will have on how we currently deliver advertising.
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
There’s no doubt that AI will be transformational for media and marketing, but we need to make sure that we are approaching it in ways that add value, drive us forward, and make things better - not getting distracted by the hype.
There’s a lot of shit advertising in this world. AI will be very good at replicating shit advertising, so we all need to up our game.
7. What are your plans for the summer break?
It’s been amazing reconnecting with friends and family in New Zealand since moving back this year. I’m looking forward to spending the break with my family and enjoying what New Zealand has to offer - depending on what El Nino allows!
1. What’s the one word to sum up your mood as we close out 2023 and look forward to 2024?
Optimistic.
2. How would you describe your year?
2023 for me has been a year marked by a bunch of hurdles but some gratifying triumphs.
The launch of Imanz was a high point, shining a light on why Indie New Zealand-owned agencies are so vital to our industry.
At D3, our year has been one of continued growth diversifying our services into data and tech consultancy as well as into Australia. While the journey wasn’t without its challenges, it has been the collective resilience and a focus on our client’s growth that propelled us forward.
3. What’s the best initiative/project/campaign in your own business – and one you thought a rival did well?
In November, as New Zealand’s major banks announced their massive profits (like ANZ’s $2.2 billion), we collaborated with NZME and Stuff to strategically place ads for The Co-operative Bank around every news article discussing these profits.
This campaign highlighted The Co-op’s unique profit-sharing with customers, leading to numerous sign-ups. Reportedly, this move didn’t sit well with the Aussie bank CEOs. A win for us!
I really loved how PHD brought to life the outsourced radio ads campaign for Skinny. Really smart creative idea that was then executed brilliantly across all channels.
4. How do you think 2024 will play out for New Zealand media - what’s the biggest priority for you?
The New Zealand media industry faced significant headwinds in 2023, which will likely extend into 2024. Despite continued growth in the likes of Tik Tok and Meta, I genuinely think that TVNZ+, Three Now, and revamped Stuff and NZ Herald offerings will help lure marketers back to more traditional and proven channels.
Biggest priority for me is to continue to offer our clients a real balance between the scale of the global tech giants, and the more nuanced, bespoke, local offerings of our NZ media businesses.
5. What’s the biggest issue that keeps you awake at night?
Turning 50 this year. And the very real prospect of Trump being President again. I think the latter scares me more though!
6. What’s the biggest mistake media/marketing/advertising people need to avoid in 2024?
Too much ChatGPT. As an industry, we can’t risk losing that human touch. ChatGPT is a tool but not the solution.
7. What are your plans for the summer break?
Cliched, but spending some quality time with the family, on Waiheke, hopefully in the baking sun! Getting ready to do it all again in 2024!
1. What’s the one word to sum up your mood as we close out 2023 and look forward to 2024?
Exhausted – definitely crawled to the line, even more so than the usual December.
2. How would you describe your year?
Rejuvenating. It involved me stepping away from leading the company I founded, while also reintegrating myself into more writing and reporting (you might find that a familiar sensation, Shayne).
It wasn’t always easy, unlearning the habits of control. But our new CEO Amber Easby and editor Madeleine Chapman fronted a whole new generation of leadership within the organisation, and watching them pilot The Spinoff with such care and energy was probably the most enjoyable experience I’ve had in business.
On the other side, our creative and digital agency Daylight had a breakthrough year, shipping The Delivery for the World Health Organisation and the new brand and platform for the Pacific Media Network – two pieces of work amongst many that felt like real breakthroughs for the company’s thesis: that beautiful things happen when you put technology and creativity alongside one another.
3. What’s the best initiative/project/campaign in your own business – and one that you thought a rival did well?
The cost of living crunch made it a hard year for many in business, which is why I was so pleased to see our crowdfunded exploration of food, What’s Eating Aotearoa?, get over the line. It was a huge amount of work for the team, and will flow out through 2024, touching on a subject that cuts across cultural, economic and social lines – perfect material for The Spinoff to get its teeth into, if you’ll somehow pardon the pun.
As far as something a rival did well – I’m on the record as a huge fan of what BusinessDesk does. The product sense and editorial vision and discipline that Pattrick Smellie and Matt Martel have shown there, pre- and post-the NZME acquisition, is truly world-class. I love the new platform they launched this year. But I think it was the infrastructure reporting that stood out for me – the Business of Blowouts and Waste is Money series in particular. These aren’t glamorous rounds, but as a relatively poor country, getting this stuff right really matters, and the scrutiny that team delivered was absolutely vital.
4. How do you think 2024 will play out for New Zealand media – what’s the biggest priority for you?
I think 2024 shapes as one of the most defining years in our media’s history. I wrote a play-by-play of the year’s media news (leaning heavily on your Media Insider columns, thanks for that) which bundled a lot of smaller stories in an attempt to show the larger narrative – that all our domestic media were challenged in 2023.
The transition to digital is now well past the halfway point, and that could lead to a pretty devastating event at one or more of our major media companies.
It will put pressure on a very fresh government to decide how to respond, if only because it’s such a major presence in the sector through its ownership of TVNZ and RNZ. The Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill is crucial – that shapes as a pivotal event in terms of redressing the power imbalance between New Zealand’s formal content producers and the technology companies that distribute that information.
My biggest priority in governance is scrutinising this whole world very closely, so I can feed that back into our businesses to help leadership navigate an extremely tricky environment.
5. What’s the biggest issue that keeps you awake at night?
The power of huge tech companies grows more phenomenal by the day – yet we continue to virtually ignore them from a tax and regulatory perspective.
I think it’s largely down to how the products are distributed: were they to have set up factories and employed people, there’s no way our politicians would not look closely at companies with combined annual revenues in the billions and immense exposure to school-age children, to pick one element.
One day an intelligent and principled politician will seriously interrogate that dichotomy, and try and ensure we reap the benefits of big tech while also ensuring it works more for our national interest than its own margin.
The longer we wait for that day, the more difficult the task becomes, and the more New Zealand becomes a client state to businesses that barely know we exist.
6. What’s the biggest mistake media/ marketing/ advertising people need to avoid in 2024?
It’s related to my answer above. Those companies are everywhere, and like water.
Some proportion of marketing spend must flow through those channels.
But spreading the balance among New Zealand’s domestic media has an enormous impact on the quantity and quality of content created by and for our people.
A dollar spent here can be easily as impactful as more money funnelled off to Meta – but spent at Three or Stuff or Mediaworks or Sky TV or TVNZ or NZME (and, I humbly suggest, The Spinoff) it has the gift-with-purchase of generating news and entertainment content about this country, too.
If the existence of that is desirable to you as a marketer – or to your PR department – challenge your media agency to move the dial. It’s extraordinarily impactful within our media.
7. What are your plans for the summer break?
I will try my best to stop thinking about all this stuff – or less directly.
I have a stack of books to get through: a few on the fourth Labour government, for a major project we have coming next year; the autobiography of famed Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham, loaned to me by one of The Spinoff’s members; and a book by political theorist Christopher Lasch, loaned by one of our editors.
It will have been a good summer if I’ve been able to churn through those in the shade near one beach or another.
NEXT WEEK: The final installment of media CEOs and leaders.
Beehive sources say law has hit a snag. One source went further: 'Apparently it's over'.