Taxpayer Talk
We're the voice for Kiwi taxpayers in the corridors of power. With our 200,000 subscribed members and supporters we fight for Lower Taxes, Less Waste, and More Accountability across all levels of government. Join or support the Taxpayers' Union at www.taxpayers.org.nz
Taxpayer Talk
Taxpayer Talk: Tourism NZ and its new $10m international ad campaign
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Despite our closed borders, Tourism NZ is spending $10 million on a new campaign meant to bring overseas travellers to New Zealand. The campaign is supposed to bolster New Zealand’s international brand of “kaitiaki, manaakitanga, and integrity”. In the latest episode of Taxpayer Talk, Louis questions Tourism NZ CEO Stephen England-Hall on whether this will deliver value for taxpayers.
00:06 Louis Houlbrooke
While New Zealand was in lock down with our borders closed a suite of government agencies, including tourism New Zealand got quite busy producing an international ad campaign called stories from New Zealand. The Taxpayers' Union made some critical comments about its value so tourism. New Zealand got in touch with us to explain the value of the campaign. Now we've decided to have this discussion on the Taxpayers' Union podcast, so today I'm joined by Stephen England-Hall. The chief executive of Tourism New Zealand. How are you Steven?
00:37 Stephen England-Hall
Good morning, I'm very well thank you.
00:39 Louis Houlbrooke
Brilliant now can we just start by, could you explain what the stories from New Zealand campaign is about what it sort of theme or meaning is and just how it works in terms of as a TV ads online and what countries are the targeted audience?
00:53 Stephen England-Hall
Yeah, sure no problem at all, I mean, it's the campaign is messages from New Zealand is the core idea or core creative platform. And to your introductory remark absolutely, so tourism New Zealand obviously are charged with ensuring that New Zealand as a destination is marketed for the long term benefit of New Zealand.
In fact that's the reason we exist and when we saw what was happening around the world and what was happening, obviously with New Zealand with regards to our borders and the inability for visitors to move across them we thought you know how can we ensure that we keep New Zealand as a destination alive in the hearts and minds of consumers, particularly in our key target markets around the world at a time when they actually can't visit us and we so we, we started thinking about that. We started working on that piece of work, um and as we started to develop it and get underneath the surface of the insights and the consumer mindset that's going on out there; We start to recognise those are significant opportunities to partner with some of her other agencies in the New Zealand Inc Network, if you like, to try and bring a greater weight together. A stronger voice together and therefore being more efficient user of taxpayers dollars and bringing a message from New Zealand to the world at this time.
So, that was that was the premise of it and and as we got into that piece of work what became really, um, important for us to recognise as tourism is under courses that keeping you know the brand alive out there in the world, ensuring we have a share of voice that's strategically significant to his office future has significant halo benefits to other export industries and so not only doing this for the benefit of the tourism industry, but also for the benefit of other New Zealand export sectors made a lot of sense.
02:38 Louis Houlbrooke
So um how many government agencies were involved, all up?
02:42 Stephen England-Hall
So Tourism New Zealand, New Zealand Trading Enterprise, the Ministry for Primary Industries, New Zealand Story, Education New Zealand.
02:50 Louis Houlbrooke
OK, but are you suggesting that even if these agencies hadn't teamed up, Tourism New Zealand would have still launched a campaign like this, or perhaps on a smaller scale?
03:00 Stephen England-Hall
Yeah, we would have absolutely have launched a campaign like this, um because one of the things that we have to be very mindful of an international visitor space is that the the lead time between somebody becoming aware of a place to go and visit like New Zealand and them actually arriving here as a visitor can be anything up to a couple of years. Our data suggests that you know for most of our long haul markets would that be Europe or Asia or the US. Then you're looking at somewhere in the order of 6 to 12 months before they actually arrive here from the time they first start to consider using as a place to go on holiday.
Australia clearly is a little bit different. It's a bit closer to home and that conversion can be anything from sort of 6 to 12 weeks, so they are a bit closer, but certainly for this long haul markets. It can be quite a long, long journey given that we don't know when the borders will reopen. We wanted to make sure that we kept that brand layer operating in international markets because it's actually very difficult, requires a huge amount of investment and takes a lot of time to build what we call share of voice and awareness amongst the core audience that we're trying to target so when we look when we balance, it out. We say look. You know at the at the at the heart of our act so to speak is this definition that says so market New Zealand as a destination for the long term benefit of New Zealanders.
And with that in mind, we're going well, How do we get best use of funds here right now? How do we make sure that we can have real cut through an international stage make sure that New Zealand doesn't disappear off everyone's map? You may recall we ran a campaign on that a couple of years ago -
04:30 Louis Houlbrooke
Yeah.
04:31 Stephen England-Hall
- called get NZ on the map, yeah, and that's because you know, we, we're very small with 0.29% global tourism so it's very, very small number of visitors come here. But with 0.8 % of global tourism spend so we have been very effective over time at making sure that we're targeting require high value audiences that we are improving New Zealand you know with a mix of visitors to to value as improving the right way for us as a country and we didn't want to lose any of that momentum and so that was so we would have done the work regardless yeah.
05:03 Louis Houlbrooke
Well, I'm sure our listeners probably understand this idea that if someone sees an ad it might take 6 months or 12 months or even longer before they decide to book a flight to New Zealand. But if you have a choice between spending money today at a time when the borders are closed, and could be closed for months or even longer into the future, and the alternative is to wait until spending this money on a campaign when people actually immediately have that option of booking a flight is that really the same kind of value wouldn't it make more sense to wait until you until people do have that opportunity before you make the spend.
05:39 Stephen England-Hall
Yeah, so there's always a tradeoff there between you know, kind of short term as them and long term benefit and what we had to really be careful of is, so to your point, the example given there is what we call the conversion layer so that's actually taking someone who's got an interest in New Zealand and converting them into an arrival and that conversion layer you're absolutely bang on there's no point in spending money in that conversion layer right now because people can't actually physically come so that conversion layer largely the funding from that layer's gone into our domestic campaign work.
To drive New Zealand behavior and New Zealanders in the tourism industry and participating in the tourism industry helping to drive economic recovery through that lens, but the brand layer is like is like an ongoing requirement and so, if we say it went off the year for went dark for say 12 months, which meant we weren't in the markets out there In our keen, our say, top 6 markets. We might save a few tens of millions of dollars. Uh in the short term, but what happens is that it will take us 3 + years to rebuild that share of voice and it will cost the taxpayer, and of course, New Zealand, Tourism New Zealand you know into the into the power of 2 or 3 to be able to get the same share of voice back.
Because of what happens is that when you stop marketing, you stop talking to your audience, they, you you just get replaced by other things. If that makes sense. You just you, you know you, you fill up the consumers mind is filled with other options, so that trade off for us is how do we balance that? How do we make sure that we're not spending money on things that don't make sense like the conversion layer, which you just mentioned before getting people actually buy a ticket and company with and today 'cause it would be wasting money in that activity layer versus making sure we stay relevant and we have a strong share of voice out there and that that's the that's the piece that we're very, very mindful of how do we make sure we do that? 'cause. It will cost us a fortune as a country to get back what we lose if we disappear.
07:27 Louis Houlbrooke
OK so I think you've started to answer the question that I was going to ask next which is around the actual content of the campaign.
When you talk about the conversion layer, which is what you're not focusing on right now. I assume these are ads designed to get people online to book a ticket on a on a fairly short term basis, whereas this campaign is more about the brand and this idea of messages from New Zealand. I have watched well the 3 I think the 3 first videos of this campaign, and I'll I'll try to read out some examples of the script.
So there are there is essentially a montage of characters in these videos and they they have messages for the audience asking the viewers to for example, listen carefully to each other, go to the library, be nice to all the dogs, always be a good boy and seek the treasure of your heart.
What does this all mean?
08:21 Stephen England-Hall
So those are great questions, so that yeah, I mean, obviously you're picking particular lines out of the video content themselves and what we're going to make sure we do here is that the piece of content is, so first of all that the messages from New Zealand campaign is actually matter for series of pieces of content. Some of which we've already seen the early ones have just seen.
At the heart of that we want to build a picture of New Zealand as a place and the values of the people that live here and if you like those 2 things together along with our our prosperity, and our ingenuity and our integrity really represent our brand.
08:54 Louis Houlbrooke
What are the values of the people who live here?
08:56 Stephen England-Hall
So the values that are expressed in the content around kaitiaki, so taking care of people in place for now and future generations, manaakitanga, so obviously the the building respecting others and uplifting the values of others and therefore we're building mana in yourself and then of course, things like ingenuity, which is around our innovation story for notifying us or they built their out of building relationships with others and the connection with without without communities so that's where.
Speaker 1
Yeah, this idea when a person visit somewhere, they become connected to us as a people so the principles of that campaign. The principles of the brand layer and the days were trying to espouse so really around quite yucky. Minaki Tanner and ingenuity and so the key for us is about reinforcing those messages so that's that's the brand later if you like OK.
Speaker 1
The flow and pieces of content start to get into specific almost calls to action against particular verticals. So we so off of this top piece of layer. This top layer of content, which is really just about expressions of values. We start getting into you know? Our food and beverage story. Our technology story. Tourism story and so forth. The idea is you create a brand framework on top.
Speaker 1
We have got consistent brand layering or brand messaging and the values become important. They become a reason for someone to connect with Brazil and and then underneath that we started to look at different audience. Segments such as your tourism consumer or business events. Consider your source of inspire your tourism trade campaign your food and beverage should take an investment and so forth and each of those.
Speaker 1
Uh sub sectoral campaigns, obviously isn't development.
Speaker 1
Close to going live now and that'll be phased out over the next 12 months or so.
Louis Houlbrooke
OK, So what you're saying is they'll be more specific advocacy for certain products or services further on in the campaign.
Speaker 1
Absolutely absolutely and what we realized is that trying to get brand story for NZ that's more cohesive.
Speaker 1
Or you know, I'm I'm joined up campaign platform that other agencies and exporters can use will enable us to tell AA more powerful story. It's like it's like the sum of the parts is greater than the whole so to speak and we want to make sure that the the different parts of New Zealand's representation in those different audiences. Whilst are selling specific things.
Speaker 1
Good wine beer hops, you know beef and Lamb and and fiber and so forth.
Speaker 1
And there's a consistency in our kind of value space.
Louis Houlbrooke
OK don't private businesses or even the industry associations. For example, wine or fisheries and NZ already have an incentive to engage in this kind of international marketing.
Speaker 1
Yes, some of them do that's right, I mean, I'm part of the part of the reason why we exist as an organization is because of the fragmented nature of our exports and how tourism sector in Partic.
Speaker 1
And the market failure if you like the tourism NZ set up to address is that the lack of cohesion or the the concern about you know say 100 different stories or 50 different stories being talked yelled at the same consumer at the same time, and the lack of cohesion across that actually creates confusion so one of the things from a marketing and brand development point of view, particularly nation brand point of view, too.
Speaker 1
Want to make sure that we have some consistency and obviously we don't want anyone doing exactly the same thing because it gets very boring. But you do want consistency in the underlying kind of values of your brand campaign and in marketing efforts and we want to make sure that that gets picked up because obviously they added together. That's more powerful, but of course, the opposite is also true if they're very fragmented nor doing slightly different things and not aligned then actually you get it.
Speaker 1
Version of your brand story because people don't really.
Speaker 1
Know what you stand for it back so we've been very good at NZ overtime. Even though we haven't necessarily try to joined up campaign like this across lots of different government agencies prior to this those different agencies to your point are doing different parts of work, whereas what we've done here is said. How do we get those different bits of work to align more effectively to tell us more?
Speaker 1
Powerful story for kids you know.
Louis Houlbrooke
Better in this case? What is the consistent message? What is what is the powerful and consistent messages our audience will be familiar? I guess with that 100% pure brand. But in this case. It's did you say Katia, Khatanga, an monarchy Tanya? Is that as that being is that a new message?
Speaker 1
Absolutely so that 100% pure New Zealand's.
Speaker 1
Um existing brand pillars if you like the things in which that that campaign is built on our Minaki Tanga coyote. I keep talking and Fernando Tonya. So it that exists thing. That's been there for 20. Plus, he is now that that foundation and so even though the campaign has evolved overtime. As you will know it's been 100% during his illness in 100%, using under spent 100 Middle Earth.
Speaker 1
You know it's been kind of assume you're welcome, you know 100% pure choice. The actual platform actual creative platform has changed overtime as the world has moved.
Louis Houlbrooke
On so that messages expanded from a kind of environmental one into something quite a lot broader.
Speaker 1
You were Interestingly enough most of our international markets don't see that campaigners and environmental commitment. They see it as a promise that is normal deliver a totally unique.
Speaker 1
Experience, a funny available here, so the premise of 100% pure New Zealand is people place and product. If you like that triangle the perfect triangle of experiences coming together to deliver something that's truly uniquely NZ so 100% pure New Zealand in the infamous tourism. NZ marketing point of your destination marketing perspective doesn't really have promised solved.
Speaker 1
Curity, it's uh it's a commitment to an idea that if you come to New Zealand. You'll get a truly unique experience. That's at the heart of 100% pure so that and that platform has evolved as mentioned before and it's always been 100% pure Dylan. But how it's been taken to market at different times in its in its life has changed.
Louis Houlbrooke
OK, back to the nuts and bolts of it the.
Louis Houlbrooke
Messages from New Zealand campaign was this designed and house within the agency so or was there a an external ad agency that was commissioned for this.
Speaker 1
We we have a roster of agencies that we work with and this is one. We used a special group as the agency that took the lead on this particular development for.
Louis Houlbrooke
Us and how how much did the campaign cost or as budgeted to cost.
Speaker 1
So we will invest will expect to invest somewhere around $10,000,000 at the campaign over the coming year. Across all of our key markets and obviously other agencies will contribute money towards their own executions an their own audiences accordingly.
Louis Houlbrooke
Are you able to give me any indication of? How much all the agencies in total will spam commit I?
Speaker 1
Couldn't I would if I gave you a number? I'd probably be incorrect to be fear probably not having a chat.
Speaker 1
With this thing is.
Louis Houlbrooke
OK, but it's 10 million, 10,000,000 from Tourism, New Zealand.
Speaker 1
Yeah, 10,000,000 from us that OK OK and I mean in terms of performance, though, I mean that I mean, if there's so far. The videos being the content video contents being viewed about 11:11 .6 million times globally?
Speaker 1
And, of course, the sentiment towards the content is really positive right ranging from around 80 to 95% positive depending upon the market and of course, a particular video viewed those kinds of results so far pretty pretty particularly given that we're actually only running in 5 markets. So far and of course, we've got.
Louis Houlbrooke
Well, I was going to ask you quite specifically about that how how exactly.
Louis Houlbrooke
Do you measure with your teen million dollar investment of taxpayer money as creating $10,000,000 at least and value?
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a good question so we have a We run a well chosen museums always run a pretty robust measurement framework? Can we use, independent both independent auditing and also reviews of our campaign work on an ongoing basis to determine the answer that question so this is not unique in that regard.
Speaker 1
So we're always looking for tournament basement every dollar. We spend and of course, the independent review that was commissioned last year by the Ministry of Business Innovation and employment into tourism is eons role actually acknowledged that the performance of our work generates somewhere in the order of magnitude of sort of 15 between 15 to one and 22 to one.
Speaker 1
Return on investment for every dollar. We spend so we're pretty good at doing that stuff. We're pretty good at making sure we're getting a good return for Kiwis. Our investments and the means to really at this point give it something running for a matter of weeks to give you a dollar based ROI figure. But the early signals that we look for in a campaign is around the sentiment towards the content.
Speaker 1
So that's the amount of commentary sharing likes or dislikes that the contract, says across multiple social channels so we're looking at.
Speaker 1
Whether not this week.
Speaker 1
And right now, it's it's showing up as being very positive.
Speaker 1
And, of course.
Louis Houlbrooke
So you're examining their reactions on social media is their subsequent surveying that happens further down the track is there.
Speaker 1
Yes, there is the absolutely as Yes, an we also look at things like you know what's your point post survey this very specific buyer behavior research that we also look at doing so, it did someone.
Speaker 1
That's on the campaign within the X period of time, then spend time on our digital assets like newzealand.com or visit a partner website that was promoted or indeed eventually turned up in New Zealand. Of course, that last one's a bit more difficult to do because of you know things like privacy. We want to make sure we respect individuals privacy. So we want to track them that that that closely but.
Speaker 1
But we do look at trying to find everything we can to measure the effectiveness of their marketing OK and we tend to launch. I don't know if you've been through this before. Maybe your listeners might might find this interesting to what we do. When we do a large campaign like this, or large new release of new kind of campaign strategy content.
Speaker 1
It's well like she started.
Speaker 1
Launching at softly into various social channels in different markets and and do some initial testing against those audiences to see how it lands will also do consumer research specific consumer research and against consumer target audience is hearing how the content lands. That wasn't understandable that it to get the right messages across what was recalled etc.
Speaker 1
And we will actually do that with every major piece of content we produce to make sure it's hitting the hitting. The Mark and actually being effective, and of course, if it doesn't we'll go back and we'll revisit.
Speaker 1
That and rework it and put it again.
Louis Houlbrooke
OK, the cost of this performance monitoring is that included within the $10,000,000 investment or is there an additional cost.
Speaker 1
No, that'll be partly included in the investment will be specific campaign measurement metrics measures.
Speaker 1
Included within the budget for every campaign. We run but we also have an inhouse. Analytics team, and we also have a performance management digital performance management team team being loose with their usually 2 or 3 people not large, but they specialist and understanding and how to look at the performance of content and happy without any impact.
Louis Houlbrooke
OK and you are you competing against.
Louis Houlbrooke
Other countries who are running similar campaigns.
Speaker 1
Absolutely all the time I mean, one of the one of the challenges we find is that the problem example. I could use. I don't know if you've bought a new car recently or if you have bought it in the market to buy some furniture or any other appliance or any other discretionary choice what you'll find is when you're in the market to to buy something suddenly all the cars you see at the same when you're trying to buy.
Speaker 1
You find that you're very become very aware of destinations when you start thinking about a holiday. The same way and so when New Zealand is out there competing if you like on the world stage. We're not just competing for holiday buyers were actually competing for things like investment. You know food and wine and and other you know economic migrants and all those sorts of things we compete in education and so forth.
Speaker 1
Hitting with all these different countries all the time.
Louis Houlbrooke
OK, I can see AA risk here, though, because the examples that you've given will largely purely commercial examples. But in the case of an international tourism campaign. You're competing against. Foreign governments who like you guys have taxpayer resources. Yes, potentially unlimited taxpayer resources that can be.
Louis Houlbrooke
Diploid to an extent that's not necessarily rational. How can you compete against an overseas government that is willing to put millions or even billions into these campaigns?
Speaker 1
So we've always been in that position and we've always been a relatively small version of very large pond and to your point we are up against it all the time even against Australia.
Speaker 1
I mean, there's tourism and Tourism, Australia at pier or separate interfere and the 5 states in Australia. Collectively spend about 7 times? What transmission within your budget is but we're still able to effectively compete with them as best we can and and because we're very targeted were also very I think we're very sophisticated our use of analytics and.
Speaker 1
And digital media and were very creative. We have incredibly effective creative agencies and we've got a very good reputation and expertise that really delivering great compelling content that consumers really enjoy and of course. We are a great place to visit with him incredibly rich culture and natural environment that people can can immerse themselves and so like I think we?
Speaker 1
NZ as a country we compete very effectively in spite of the competition out there, but you do raise a very good point we, we already started.
Louis Houlbrooke
Discussing taxpayer funded bidding war anti that's that's the concern.
Speaker 1
Well, there. There is a bit of that I mean, some countries, you will have significantly greater investment going in. Then then we have, but of course, we will always work with the resources that we've got available to us.
Speaker 1
Expensive defenders and I think to be honest, having you know our budgets being flat for 6 plus years. In fact down a bit. I have last couple of years and meaning about competing agencies around the world. The countries are competing have actually increased their budgets. And there's some free time but we've still been able to hold our own as best we can.
Speaker 1
So I think you know, there is there's always a risk of those things but obviously, we've got a pretty clear eye on you know, not what you know, making sure we have money gives us a good return. You know, and I think you know the the challenge. As you point out. I mean, I think one of the challenges for many countries.
Speaker 1
Is even in the locked the deep dark despair of lockdown? We saw some of our competition go to market still operating in that traditional tourism conversion layer an that really did start to backfire on some of them as you can imagine and what we did is we took a different stance. We took a values based approach. We shifted to a brand platform that was much more about who we are what we think.
Speaker 1
Wouldn't an and what we in the fact that you can still enjoy things from New Zealand. Even if you come visit us. So we kind of took a different approach and that's really so far paid dividends.
Louis Houlbrooke
For us, I think that brings me onto it and the the one question that uh. I haven't yeah, switches. But maybe it's about philosophical and it's about the content of their campaign in this idea of NZ values.
Louis Houlbrooke
Is this a campaign that promotes a type of national identity very good question. And if so how do you decide what the national identity is in New Zealand? How do you make that decision on behalf of New Zealanders?
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's that's a really good question. We I would so I don't know how to answer that one without being but also for 2 philosophical. I guess we're not trying to so there's probably 2 parts that one. Is there's a conversation in the world that already exists about New Zealand and.
Speaker 1
And true brand marketing terms, you say that brand is the conversation people are having about?
Speaker 1
You when you're not in the room.
Speaker 1
So it's that you know that's how your brain shows up so this is already a narrative that exists about.
Speaker 1
Using under the world.
Speaker 1
And then we look at how we do, um consumer research and deep insights into consumer relationships and business relationships with New Zealand. So this is an outside in perspective, so that's what the world sees of us and what they think is is appropriate and then we overlay that against the way, New Zealanders see ourselves and of course, the.
Speaker 1
Things that we hold aspirational disappointing and that you can see some of that happening, you get a view of that everyday with it being media or in the social kind of discourse. But those kind of conversations, then we bring those things together and then we come up with what's called a creative platform or a strategic strategic weapon idea so rather say it's about.
Speaker 1
Our identity in which when I pushed it onto people. It's actually saying what is the world think of us already? How does that relate to the way we see ourselves or aspire to be and can, we truthfully and authentically put some of those key messages and key values into our campaign and creative content, so that they resonate back with the audience is that we're engaging with.
Speaker 1
So it's really it's more of A.
Speaker 1
A tug of war between the markets, which run engaged within the audiences want to sell too. And the way we see ourselves and what we aspire to be and how do we play that role out in a way that creates good compelling content. That's authentic and true? Yeah, so that's that, then answer question 'cause. I don't think one agency? Can I don't think one group of people can do that.
Speaker 1
Can say this is the identity of New Zealand?
Louis Houlbrooke
I see I think it is a very difficult question to answer but I've I've enjoyed this discussion. and I hope our listeners will too. I thank you so much for making time for the statement. We know you're busy so we really appreciate it.
Speaker 1
You're very welcome and look. I'm good luck out there and look forward to catching bass.
Speaker 1
With value listed at some point in the.
Louis Houlbrooke
Edit transcript section
Future thank you.