By SIMON HENDERY marketing writer
New Zealand's reputation as a remote pastoral paradise is a marketing windfall for our primary producers and the tourism sector.
But that image has a downside for the newly merged agency charged with selling our industries to the world.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the agency formed from
the merger of Trade New Zealand and Industry New Zealand, was officially launched this week.
As "a single organisation that can offer seamless, flexible and responsive service to businesses throughout their life cycle, from start-ups to internationally competitive exporting companies," it has to sell itself to its New Zealand business clients and to their potential clients around the world.
The agency's general manager of marketing, Julian Moore, said the positioning of the new organisation had been based on research carried out with customers and staff of Trade NZ and Industry NZ.
A key finding was that while it would be bigger, NZTE needed to be responsive to its New Zealand business customers.
"The worst thing it could be seen as is a bureaucratic Government organisation," said Moore, a former general manager of marketing at Axa, who became marketing manager for Industry NZ in March last year.
"The key messages that came out were flexibility and proactivity, understanding the business and commercial side, rather than being a Government agency."
For the global audience, the question was how NZTE positioned New Zealand?
Moore said New Zealand was still labelled by sporting success, primary produce, and its landscape.
That image worked well for the tourism and primary produce sectors, but presented a problem for those exporters in the sectors identified as important to our future economic growth - especially information and communication technology, biotechnology and the creative industries.
With a marketing budget of about $12.5 million from NZTE's total service delivery budget of $131 million (which excludes grant and award funding of $49 million) part of Moore's job is to convince the world that we are good at the high-tech stuff.
This will be done through a "wide-ranging communications programme to reposition New Zealand in those key sectors".
The strategy includes promoting New Zealand at major sector conferences like BIO 2003, held in Washington last month.
BIO, the Biotechnology Industrial Organisation, represents more than 1000 biotechnology companies, academic institutions, biotechnology centres and related organisations in the United States and 33 other countries.
"The idea is to get in the media around these events with real stories about what New Zealand has achieved, so we can then try to change perceptions."
Another arm of NZTE's international promotion is its e-business website MarketNewZealand.com - a showcase for New Zealand exporters that will be a key channel for the organisation in the future.
Originally developed by Trade NZ and launched last year, MarketNewZealand.com has proved its usefulness throughout the Sars crisis, when business people were reluctant to travel but could still conduct deals through the site.
As the new NZTE organisation beds in, its marketing success will be measured through customer research.
Local clients will be polled on how they feel the agency is doing in terms of being commercially focused and supporting New Zealand enterprise.
In the global market, it will monitor key sectors in major markets to track how perceptions of New Zealand as a centre of industry change over time.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise
MarketNewZealand.com
By SIMON HENDERY marketing writer
New Zealand's reputation as a remote pastoral paradise is a marketing windfall for our primary producers and the tourism sector.
But that image has a downside for the newly merged agency charged with selling our industries to the world.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the agency formed from
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