From top TV and radio broadcaster to lawyer squaring off against media firms in the Tom Phillips case - the career of Linda Clark; New Formula 1 TV rights deal in NZ; Unauthorised Jacinda Ardern book cover revealed; But first, one of NZ’s most popular advertising campaigns is up for
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Media Insider: Briscoes ad account faces shake-up; Tom Phillips injunction - Linda Clark squares off with media; Unauthorised Jacinda Ardern book; New F1 TV rights deal
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The pair, and their teams, have been responsible for the extraordinarily successful Briscoes Lady television and media campaign, which started in the late 1980s.
The Briscoes Lady, aka Tammy Wells, is one of New Zealand’s most recognisable and beloved advertising characters.
Media Insider understands Briscoes has opened up the media account, currently held by Partington’s Stanley St agency, to pitch.
Sources say leading media agencies, including Initiative and Dentsu, are among the contenders.
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Last December, Tammy Wells was openly wondering in the media whether her contract would survive past the end of 2025.
But in an interview with the NZ Woman’s Weekly in June, she revealed her contract had been extended.
“I had some discussions and the company said to me, ‘If you would still like to be doing this, then we would like you to stay.’
“My boss, Rod Duke, also said to my husband words to the effect of, ‘We love your girl!’ So it’s going to go on, maybe with a Zimmer frame!”
In the 36 years that Wells has been on our screens, she has become a mother and a grandmother.
The extension of her contract would indicate Briscoes is keen to continue with her as the face of its advertising, while a mighty battle for the account is set to unfold behind the cameras.
Partington told Media Insider by text: “I’m not able to comment on this pitch.”
Briscoe Group marketing boss Liz Hanrahan did not return messages, while a PR spokeswoman said: “As this isn’t a public process, they are unable to comment at this time.”
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Early on Friday morning, Duke - who is overseas - said by text: “Sorry Shayne, no comment at this point.”
Initiative’s Blair Alexander did not respond to several calls and messages; Dentsu group managing director Rachel Anderson-Cormack said it was her company’s policy not to comment on requests for proposals (RFPs).
Obviously, a very sensitive topic.
‘Unbreakable’
A senior advertising industry source said Briscoe Group’s links with Partington had seemed “unbreakable”.
Partington - under his then agency Adworks - began looking after the Briscoes account in the late 1980s, soon after retail entrepreneur Rod Duke moved from Australia to lead Briscoes, and prepare it for sale for its Dutch owners.
Instead, Duke himself bought out the business himself in 1990 - today, he still owns more than 75% of the now publicly listed firm.
Adworks merged in early 2005 with Singleton Ogilvy & Mather to become Advertising Works Ogilvy, and later Ogilvy NZ. In 2019, Partington bought out the 65% of the business that was owned by international agency WPP and renamed it Stanley St.
“Just as Briscoes has been a one-woman brand with Wells, it has also been a one-man brand when it comes to advertising and has been under Greg Partington’s watch since 1989,” wrote Ben Fahy for Stop Press in 2012.
“And while the sales-focused, low-budget approach to advertising still certainly fits into David Ogilvy’s ‘sell or else‘ mantra, Briscoes has changed its approach slightly over the years, as evidenced by a TVC from last year that is probably about as close as you’d get to a Briscoes brand ad.”
Last year, Duke told the Herald’s Liam Dann of the marketing makeover he brought to Briscoes soon after joining the business.
“For the first three or four months from that September 1988, right through to Christmas, we’d done loud, in-your-face, high-discount, get into the store ads,” Duke said.
“That was never going to last forever. And we needed an iconic face that projected and showed folks the value of my brand. We did a whole lot of interviews and Tammy came through very, very strong.
“We tested her in the market. That also came through very strong. And here we are. So it was a good call hiring her, because she’s really resonated with the New Zealand public. And she’s been an important part of our team.”
Former NZ Herald media reporter Damien Venuto wrote in 2019 that Partington’s long-running partnership with Briscoe Group remained rock-solid.
“Briscoe Group boss Rod Duke and Partington have long worked closely together – and since neither executive has shown any indication of waning ambition, the partnership seems set to continue for the foreseeable future.
“While Briscoe’s relatively dry brand of advertising might not fill Stanley St’s trophy cabinet with industry rewards, Partington is unlikely to lose any sleep over that,” wrote Venuto.
Sky TV confirms new F1 rights deal
Sky TV has secured Formula 1 TV rights in New Zealand for three more years.
It confirmed an earlier Media Insider report that it has the rights for seasons 2026, 2027 and 2028 - and that the Melbourne Grand Prix will also be screened live on Sky’s free-to-air channels.
For the first time, that should include the race being screened on Three (TV3), which Sky bought from Warner Bros Discovery for a nominal $1 and took over on August 1.
F1 has enjoyed a surge in popularity over the past six years, driven largely by the success of the Netflix fly-on-the-wall series Drive to Survive.
The arrival of Kiwi Liam Lawson as a fulltime driver for, firstly, the Red Bull team and then Racing Bulls, and the performance of the McLaren team - founded originally by New Zealand motorsport legend Bruce McLaren - has also spurred widespread interest in New Zealand.
Despite the overnight timing of most F1 races, it is understood Sky has been delighted with viewership numbers of its live and replay coverage since it won back the rights in 2023. From 2019 to 2022, those rights were held by the now-defunct Spark Sport.
In a press statement this morning, Sky said more than 1.1 million viewers had tuned into Formula 1 on Sky Sport and Sky Open so far in 2025. Almost 470,000 viewers had watched F1 on digital platforms Sky Sport Now and Sky Go.
Unauthorised Ardern biography
An unauthorised biography of former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern is nearing completion.
The cover design for Jacinda: The Untold Stories has been released, several days before Ardern launches her own new children’s book in the United States this weekend.
The unauthorised biography of Ardern is set to be released later this year, with final interviews and chapters under way now.
“The new Jacinda book goes where no author has yet gone – into a blow-by-blow, both sides now, critical analysis of her leadership and what that might mean for a world on a powder keg," says the book’s website.
Other publicity has previously stated: “The real story is coming.”
The book has been produced by Centrist Publishing, which is connected to the Centrist news and news aggregator website - described by some commentators as “right-leaning” and “alternative”.
“There’s no editorial intercession,” one of the book’s two authors, David Cohen, told Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan in June. ”I’ve done nine books. My hands are clean journalistically, and they’re certainly going to remain so."
The book’s website carries various quotes from interviews for the book.
“When she looked up, it was like someone had turned on a light. For a moment, the energy was palpable. But then it vanished. The contrast was startling.”
Centrist owner and managing editor Tameem Barakat told Media Insider in June: “Book publishing is the ultimate commercialisation of long-form journalism.
“Our decision to back this project reflects the expected ROI [return on investment], particularly given the market gap for a more balanced, independent look at the former Prime Minister. People don’t just want a puff piece. They want the whole picture.”
Auckland businessman Jim Grenon was involved in establishing the Centrist in 2023, but Companies Office records show he ceased being a shareholder in June 2023 and ceased being a director in August 2023.
Barakat is now the sole shareholder and director.
Grenon has gone on to become a director and substantial shareholder of NZME, publisher of the NZ Herald.
The release of the Ardern book cover coincides with the official launch of her children’s book this weekend at a Barnes & Noble store in New York.
It is called Mom’s Busy Work in the US and Canada and Mum’s Busy Work in New Zealand, Australia and the UK.
It is reportedly told through the eyes of a child, and a note from Ardern in it says, “This book is based on the words and lessons taught to me by my daughter, Neve, while I was the prime minister of New Zealand.
“May every child know that no matter what, they are our life’s greatest work.”
Ardern’s official biography, A Different Kind of Power, spent seven weeks on the New Zealand best-seller list this year.
The rise of Linda Clark, lawyer
The thing about Linda Clark - the former top journalist and now top lawyer who is fighting for suppression of key details in the Tom Phillips case - is you will always know where you sit.
As friends and former colleagues will attest, she never leaves you guessing.
We know that, two decades ago, she walked away from an industry that formed the basis of a hugely successful career as a broadcaster. An industry she once adored, but with whose direction she was seemingly disillusioned.
“So much of the journalism that I read, so much of what I see, so much of what I hear isn’t very penetrating. It isn’t very contextual. It isn’t very illuminating,” she told the Listener’s Joanne Black in 2006, as she vacated RNZ’s Nine to Noon chair.
“I’m over the gig. I’m over journalism, and I never ever imagined I would be able to say that.”
She thought then, as she presumably thinks now, that journalism was a career best suited for twenty-somethings.
“When you’re twenty-something, the world is villains and heroes, issues are black and white, and that’s how journalism works now. It’s how the media has to see issues a lot of the time. So when you’re 25 and you’re full of energy and your worldview is monochromatic, journalism makes a lot more sense.
“When you get older and nothing is black and white, and you realise that even the people you hound have redeeming features and even the people you really like do terrible things, it becomes so much more complicated.”
So at the age of 42, the former TVNZ political editor and Grace magazine editor packed in the RNZ job and quit journalism.
Instead of spending long hours researching interviews for her Nine to Noon show, she turned her inquisitive nose to the legal books. She was fascinated, she told Black, by a change of career, and law in particular.
“Without a doubt, the most inspiring people I’ve interviewed doing Nine to Noon have been people who’ve had more than one career. Without exception, they have been inspiring because what those people say is that it is all an adventure, it’s rethinking middle age and beyond.
“There’s been a lot of international law and public law that has come across my desk at Nine to Noon, and it’s been fantastically interesting and stimulating, so whereas before my idea of finishing a law degree was unfocused, now I’m really clear I want to specialise in public law," she told Black.
“It’s a big cherry to bite. You can’t even imagine the possibilities open to you, but it’s a bringing together of my experience as a political reporter and my understanding of Parliament, and adding to that the discipline of legal thinking, and then seeing where that takes me.
“There’s a big common intersection between those disciplines of law, politics and journalism, and I’m moving from one side of the axis to the other over a period of time.”
Clark did not wish to be interviewed for this piece - she said she might (“perhaps”) agree to chat once the Phillips case is resolved - but I’ve spoken to her a couple of times in recent years and I sense she still harbours deep concerns about modern-day journalism.
Her hugely successful career in journalism has been matched by an equally rapid rise in the legal industry. She qualified as a lawyer in 2012 and, by the end of the decade, in May 2019, she was made partner at Kensington Swan - now Dentons.
She has, in a short time, acquired several high-profile cases. Aside from the current Phillips injunction, she has:
- Represented former police commissioner Jevon McSkimming in his ongoing legal issues since his departure from police. At one stage, she was granted an injunction that prevented media from publishing new details about the criminal investigation he faced;
- Represented Clarke Gayford, the husband of former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern, in a defamation threat against NZME’s then-fledgling Kick youth platform;
- Represented Rachel MacGregor in the defamation case brought against her by former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig;
- Represented high-profile media personalities in contract negotiations, including Duncan Garner for a role on the AM TV show;
- Been a part of the independent panel that reviewed RNZ editorial practices after the broadcaster published stories about the Ukraine war with pro-Russian edits;
- Represented Parliament’s then Speaker, Trevor Mallard, when he was defending a defamation claim.
Dentons represents a wide range of clients and Clark has always been clear that the high-profile cases are only a glimpse of the work her team carries out.
Nevertheless, Dentons own website says Clark has “acted on a range of sensitive matters for high-profile clients, including for a senior police leader who was the subject of a year-long investigation by the Independent Police Conduct Authority into allegations of bullying and inappropriate conduct; for a law partner of a major law firm facing allegations of sexual harassment; and for one of the five summer clerks who, in the summer of 2015-16, was sexually assaulted by (former) Russell McVeagh partner James Gardiner-Hopkins”.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins revealed Dentons recently advised him, former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson and Ayesha Verrall on whether the quartet should appear publicly before the latest Royal Commission inquiry into the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hipkins said Dentons advised against it.
I asked Clark about that directly last month. She said she was travelling and couldn’t come back to me by my deadline; in any case, a response would come from Dentons’ chairman, Hayden Wilson. He followed up: “We do not comment on the client work that the firm does.”
TVNZ board role
Clark has also been a board member of TVNZ and NZ on Air, among other public sector roles.
Her time on the TVNZ board was short, just under two years, as it turned out. She was appointed in July 2023 for a two-year term, but took temporary leave in May this year because of her work on the McSkimming case.
TVNZ’s board had “complete confidence in Linda’s professional judgment and capabilities”, but a “potential for a conflict existed” between the two responsibilities, TVNZ chairman Alastair Carruthers said at the time.
The Government did not reappoint Clark this year.
A release of documents from the Treasury shows three TVNZ board members were up for reappointment on June 30.
Officials recommended the reappointment of at least two of them: John Quirk and someone whose name has been redacted. The other two board members up for reappointment were Clark and Meg Matthews.
Quirk was the only one of the three to be announced as reappointed on June 24 by Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith. Broadcaster Paul Henry was announced as a new board member.
Based on the Treasury’s belief that the optimum number of board members is seven, there remains one vacancy.
While she might no longer be on the board of her former broadcasting employer, Clark’s work on the Phillips case is another example of a legal career in full flight.
She has also retained some personality traits.
“She doesn’t put up with foolish people for long,” former magazine editor Kate Coughlan, who hired Clark for the Grace editorship, told me in 2023.
“There’s something of a bird of prey about her as she listens to people, head cocked slightly, weighing up whether they will trip by saying something stupid and be carrion or make intelligent sense and be worth talking to.”
The Phillips injunction
In the High Court at Wellington yesterday, Clark was facing off, for the second time in a week, against NZME, Stuff, TVNZ, RNZ and Newsroom in the Phillips injunction case.
Justice Helen Cull suppressed the arguments heard in court, but allowed media to report that procedural matters were discussed.
The suppression order was extended until further order of the court.
Phillips was killed early last week after a shootout with police.
The High Court granted an injunction on that Monday evening after an urgent oral application from Clark on behalf of Phillips’ mother, Julia Phillips.
TVNZ boss fronts up
Bravo to TVNZ chief executive Jodi O’Donnell for fronting up to the High Court in what appeared to be a clear show of support for reporter Thomas Mead this week.
The pair arrived together for the first day of a defended defamation hearing in which Talley’s is suing TVNZ and Mead for a series of reports in 2021 and 2022.
As my colleague Matt Nippert reported this week, the case is “being closely watched by the media industry as many of the stories complained about made heavy use of anonymous sources, and TVNZ is making the practice of responsible journalism a key plank of its defence”.
RNZ exec, board changes
More big changes at the board and executive levels of RNZ.
As Media Insider reported yesterday, experienced commercial and screen industry executive Andrew Szusterman has been appointed to RNZ’s board, effective from next month.
The South Pacific Pictures managing director is another respected media industry leader who doesn’t leave you wondering.
Meanwhile, the executive reshuffle at RNZ continues, with chief performance officer Glen Scanlon leaving to be the new chief executive of Water Safety NZ. He starts that role in November.
Scanlon, a former chief executive of the Broadcasting Standards Authority, is following RNZ’s chief content officer, Megan Whelan, out the door. She left last month.
RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson said he was sad to be losing Scanlon. “He has done a great job of dealing with a number of issues and provided support and invaluable advice to me and his executive colleagues. He will be missed.”
Scanlon was not available for an interview, said RNZ, but in a statement, he said he would miss “RNZ life” and paid tribute to his team and colleagues.
The departures still leave the broadcaster with seven executives, and with one role to be appointed - the new position of chief audio officer. The person who eventually fills that role will be specifically responsible for rebuilding RNZ’s radio ratings.
Media Insider understands RNZ news programmes editor Pip Keane is the leading internal candidate for the role - several other RNZers are understood to have put their hands up but have missed out. Keane is believed to be competing with a selection of outsiders.
Kiwi pair named in 40-under-40 list
Congratulations to Darkhorse New Zealand managing director Francesca Kelly and Colenso BBDO’s Léon Bristow - the only two New Zealanders named in Campaign Asia Pacific’s ’40 Under 40 List’ this week.
The list honours talents who are shaping the future of the marketing, media and communications industry across the Asia-Pacific region.
“I’m really proud to be named alongside so many inspiring leaders in the region,” said Kelly.
Darkhorse chief executive Mike Hewitt added: “Anyone who has worked with Fran will tell you she’s one of the brightest and most dynamic talents in the industry, so we’re thrilled to see her named on this list.”
According to Darkhorse, each nominee had to prove their measurable impact on the industry as well as their professional achievement, leadership, innovation and creativity.
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME, including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor, and has a small shareholding in NZME.
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