We initially published the following interview with David in May 2022 and have slightly updated it to maintain its relevance.

I was involved on the fringes of the New Zealand Story from the beginning, in 2011. In New Zealand, the idea of branding a country was not well known – we don’t have many other countries marketing to us, apart from Australia and some of the Pacific Islands – so it seemed very innovative. Intuitively though, it made sense to me.

I have studied brand development, and applying that thinking to a country makes perfect sense. I can see the principles and approaches of brand management work well for us.

Interestingly, it’s businesses themselves who are now driving the innovation around the environment, climate, and green economy. You could look at this in two ways:

• In one way, businesses are seeing that consumer sentiment has shifted quickly, and they are reacting to that change as a priority.
• From another perspective, it’s that the values of the country are shining through – as mentioned.

We see New Zealand as a country that cares for people and place, and so in many respects what we are seeing in terms of changing consumer priority and sentiment plays directly into this value system and our strengths. By focusing on core values, we set up a key alignment with consumer sentiment.

Completely agree. In many ways, that is exactly what the New Zealand Story was set up to do. We know through numerous research reports that New Zealand has a very strong positive perception but often that rests on a small number of attributes.

While it’s true we have a beautiful environment and welcoming people, we also are a country of innovation, science, culture and one of the easiest places in the world to do business. We strive to highlight these extra dimensions of the country wherever we can, to expand people’s understanding and connection to New Zealand. Stories and images of our rich urban and business environment help make sure people realize we are more than beauty.

We are lucky that New Zealand is a very desirable place to live and work – we have to make sure people know how they could do that, and make it easy for them. A very talented leader in New Zealand once said that to give our economy a super-charge, we need to be the place where ‘talent wants to live’.

I would say that we have the lifestyle that would appeal to many, we just have to get the word out there. That can be hard – it’s a crowded market and getting messages across takes time and money. We don’t have the marketing budgets of other countries, so we need to let our actions do most of the talking.

We are on a learning journey about how best to brand a country. I think we do some things well and have more to learn, and we are always open to talking to others and learning from them too. Please reach out if you would like to know more or to learn together. As we say in our local language – ‘He Waka Eke Noa’, we are all in this together.