This week there was this embarrassing article in the Press about ChristchurchNZ engaging an Auckland team to produce a video for them. Here’s the article:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/122103189/christchurch-promotional-agency-uses-outoftown-company-for-new-video-campaign.
An observer of the sector wrote to me with this comment:
The outrage does seem to have united the commercial industry and its impressive that something seems to be growing.
A few years ago, it would have been acceptable to send this work to Auckland, but great to see that now there is group standing in opposition to such a plan.
The response by Joanna Norris was:
the video contract was awarded “based on the specific expertise required” and represented good value to the ratepayer.
If our economic development agency hasn’t the confidence to shop in its own city, as they are encouraging us to do, why should we? Was their decision based on “best price”? This was exactly the sort of decision making which shifted most of our manufacturing jobs to China. “Best price”.
Or was the decision based on that the team in Auckland were more skilled? If so, what responsibility has our economic development agency to nurture up local producers?
The media commentator went on to say:
It is worth noting that Dunedin’s clever promotional campaign “Plan D” has been running for some time.
The self-deprecating Dunedin humour, giving us a strong flavour of place, could only have been concocted in Dunedin!
This encouraged me to go and have a look at Dunedin’s “Plan D”, which I hadn’t even heard of.
The campaign is clever and witty. It could only have been created in Dunedin, as the media commentator wrote to me. If this had been produced in Auckland it would have been nothing like this. It takes locals to take the piss out of an area. When I think about it the only ads I remember personally were funny ones. Dunedin passed this test.
Here’s two of the ads. Make your own mind up. I laughed at both of them.
This made me look around New Zealand at what other areas were doing, and I was particularly impressed with the Taranaki economic plan. It’s called Tapuae Roa: Make way for Taranaki. It demonstrates a comprehensive, widely consulted, exercise which has been worked on since 2017.
Here’s the link to the site http://about.taranaki.info/Tapuae-Roa.aspx.
When you get into the site there is a link to the regions plans for the steps they need to take to 2050 http://about.taranaki.info/Taranaki2050/TapuaeRoa.
Then they have the transition path to the future on this http://about.taranaki.info/Taranaki2050/What-is-a-just-transition-(1).aspx.
We have a long way to go to get properly into economic development in this City. We need to get in behind ChristchurchNZ so that we can truly become the Peoples Republic of Christchurch again. We were in front in the past. We’re not now. Catching up requires a commitment from us all.
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