Mystical penguin and banana nana hired as boring job titles get fired

Moa chief executive Geoff Ross was the chief vodka guy when he started 42 Below. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Traditional, boring job titles are being ditched for quirky names such as head of moving things, chief of exciting opportunities or prince of marketing.

Smaller, creative companies are doing away with standard chief executive or manager roles, saying they pigeonhole staff, and are instead creating their own titles that better represent what the brands stand for.

Icecream company Pride & Joy mystical penguin (CEO) James Coddington does not believe in job titles because ultimately all employees have the responsibility to deliver. "So whether you are the founder or whether you are the newest employee - it doesn't matter what the title says. Ultimately it's your actions which deliver the results and unfortunately I've been in companies that rely far too much on titles for their self-worth as opposed to their outcomes."

Instead of having no titles, the company takes a humorous approach, calling staff penguins. Mr Coddington is the mystical penguin, while the export manager is the intrepid penguin and the manager of international markets is the global penguin.

Moa chief executive Geoff Ross was the chief vodka guy when he started 42 Below and introduced the use of unconventional titles over to his craft beer brand, where about half of the job titles are unique.

He said using different titles was a good way for people in small companies to describe multiple roles that did not necessarily fit traditional names, and also helped to communicate the brand was not "old and slow".

The logistics manager at Moa had the title head of moving stuff around to better describe his broad range of responsibilities, including supply chain, customer service and invoicing.

"We would get a bit of a grin when people saw the titles," Mr Ross said. "It helps make the company feel like a group of people you would deal with and wanted to hang out with."

Mr Vintage director Rob Ewan said the cheeky T-shirt company's quirky job titles were often the staff members' ideas and as a result it had a prince of marketing and a get shit done guy.

"It just goes with the culture of the brand in that we don't really have any defined roles here. Everyone pitches in and does a whole bunch of everything here. I don't think it's very appropriate for us to have very defined titles," Mr Ewan said.

At the Better Juice Co, whose brands include Charlie's and Juicy Lucy, CEO - Creating Exciting Opportunities - Craig Cotton said he wanted the job titles to be not just quirky, but a promise or commitment, which was why he had chosen his.

The company had inherited some out-there titles from Charlie's such as colonel bean for the finance manager and professor of juice for the operations manager - but going forward, Mr Cotton wanted them to mean more.

All Good Organics director Simon Coley, also referred to as the head of colouring-in, said having fun titles like "the money" and "camp mother" for him and the two other directors provided a light-hearted side to the company, which was serious about where its ingredients were sourced, and ethics. The marketing director was referred to as the head of propaganda, the head of sales banana nana and the credit controller moneypenny.

Hays Recruitment managing director Jason Walker said interesting titles tended to be used in the high-tech and innovative industries to reflect their personality as an employer and carry on the brand's flavour.

While Trade Me head of jobs Peter Osborne thought interesting titles were a great idea, he warned that they were not always successful. A Trade Me client listed an ad for sanitation engineers with no luck, but when they changed it to cleaners, received many applications. He also liked typing "ninja" into the search engine because it pulled up a lot of IT-related roles.

Quirky job titles
*Head of moving things - Moa Beer
*Prince of marketing - Mr Vintage
*Chief of exciting opportunities - Better Drinks
*Banana nana - All Good
*Mystical penguin - Pride & Joy icecream company