PR adviser cuts longstanding Microsoft ties

By ADAM GIFFORD

Leading IT public relations consultancy Botica Conroy and Associates has ended a nine-year relationship with Microsoft New Zealand.

"We've indicated we won't go beyond the contract we have got, which ends in March," said managing director Allan Botica.

In a world where agencies can change with the season, the relationship has been enduring and high-profile.

Microsoft managing director Geoff Lawrie said Botica Conroy was involved in getting Microsoft off the ground as a separate identity in New Zealand, "and we've grown together."

He said Microsoft would go to the market for a new agency.

Mr Botica said his firm had not been called on for its strategic capability since its senior consultant on the Microsoft account, Carol Leishman, left to become Microsoft's in-house communications manager a year ago.

"There's a lot of process activity so there has not been a significant contraction of business, but we like to see ourselves as providing strategic counsel," he said.

"There's got to be better reason to come to work in the morning than to localise a release. They still do interesting things but we don't see it."

Mr Botica said it had been a great relationship. "We have learned things from them we would not have learned from anyone else, but their needs are changing."

While IT companies still accounted for a large part of his business, "the huge growth is in new economy companies.

"Those companies are usually IT or technology-based, but they are a capital markets story. They're not like traditional corporates so you can't approach them like an IT branch of an NZSE company," Mr Botica said.

"Microsoft's needs are changing. They require more classic corporate services."

He said that because of the wide span of Microsoft's activities, the relationship had cut Botica Conroy off from other opportunities in the IT sector that it could now pursue.