Success for NZME Taupō media specialists at NZ Radio Awards

NZME Taupō media specialists Cara Botica (left) and Lisa Soden were finalists and a winner at the NZ Radio Awards. Photo / Laurilee McMichael

Taupō may be a small region for radio, but it punched above its weight at the New Zealand Radio Awards recently.

Two of NZME Taupō's media specialists, Lisa Soden and Cara Botica, were finalists and award winners at the prestigious industry-wide awards, which recognise commercial (sales) and creative teams making radio campaigns and advertisements. Those teams include copywriters, engineers, voice talent and account managers, and to win a NZ Radio Award is considered a real coup.

Lisa won the award for Best Single Commercial and was a finalist in the Best Commercial Campaign category, while Cara was a finalist for the Johnny Douglas Award for Best New Broadcaster, an award that recognises young talents who have recently completed a radio-related qualification.

Lisa's winning commercial and the commercial campaign that was a finalist were for Taupō Violence Intervention Network. The winning best single commercial was called Born to be a Man and was partly based around the unspoken rules but also tried to point out that men don't have to behave a certain way just because that's the way it's always been.

"It's about trying to break that gender stereotype so that we can let this generation growing up know that it's okay not to have to conform to those stereotypes," Lisa says.

The commercial campaign was titled The Unspoken Rules and it linked in with the White Ribbon 2019-20 campaign, which challenged stereotypes around being "a real man" and the unspoken rules around how "real men" behave.

They both ran across The Hits and Newstalk ZB radio stations.

Besides Lisa, the successful team comprised copywriter Tracy O'Halloran, engineer James Irwin and voice talent Stephen Lovatt. Lisa says while some of the briefs to creative teams can sometimes be difficult to put together, this one was easy to write thanks to the background and information she already had from working with Taupō Violence Intervention Network and White Ribbon.

"In a good brief you don't want to overload it with information so it looks like you're writing the script for them, but you need to have quite a clear breakdown of who you're trying to reach, what you want the message to really convey. In the end it's a team effort ... they nailed it first time and the client was happy."

Cara graduated from AUT in 2020 with a Bachelor of Communications degree majoring in radio. Her awards entry was a skite reel showing a range of work she had completed during her university studies. They included live broadcasts, interviews and a documentary she made about an animal sanctuary at Matakana. Cara moved to Taupō in mid-January to join the NZME Taupō team as a media specialist.

The radio awards were held in Auckland last month at Sky City. Lisa and Cara both say it's a big deal to win an award, especially given the size of the radio industry, which produces 50,000 commercials annually.

Cara says it was an honour to be recognised for the work she had done.

"I worked really hard during my degree and strived for excellence. I always wanted to create work that I could be proud of; and to be nominated for the Johnny Douglas Award showed I'd achieved that goal. I was super-excited to see my name on the big screen and be at the awards with so many of the big names in the industry that I look up to."