Fallout for Brand New Zealand a timely wake-up call
1 00% Pure – or 100% hogwash? The most lasting legacy from the infant formula scare may not be the damage done to Fonterra’s brand, but New Zealand’s brand.
Internationally, the ‘‘100% per cent Pure New Zealand’’ tourism campaign, launched more than a decade ago and ‘‘refreshed’’ for the Hobbit trilogy at a cost of $10 million, has been one of the most successful tourism campaigns ever. But as it is increasingly used as a stick to beat New Zealand with over its environmental record, has it become a monkey on our backs?
China’s Xinhua news agency labelled ‘‘100% Pure’’ a festering sore – and it was not alone in using this week’s food safety scare to revive criticism of New Zealand’s environmental record.
The Daily Mail headline yesterday screamed ‘‘100 per cent’’ manure – and slated New Zealand’s environmental record.
‘‘For a country that markets itself to the world with the slogan 100% Pure, New Zealand’s environmental credentials are not as impeccable as many would think,’’ the Mail said.
Environmental Defence Society chairman Gary Taylor said New Zealand’s environmental record was mixed.
‘‘It’s certainly not 100 per cent clean green, but at the same time it’s not 100 per cent manure.’’
But New Zealand needed to face up to poor freshwater quality, largely due to intensive dairying, though urban run-off from the cities was also having an effect. Our record on biodiversity, meanwhile, was also poor and a number of native plants and species were either extinct or facing extinction.
The Fonterra crisis had reinforced the importance of cleaning up our act.
‘‘It’s a twin coin of food safety and environmental quality that we [as a nation] rely on.’’
The Government had recently made some good moves in adopting recommendations for cleaning up New Zealand’s waterways, Mr Taylor acknowledged. But it was a Jekyll and Hyde approach.
In Nelson this morning, Environment Minister Amy Adams is announcing proposed changes to the Resource Management Act, which could include removing some of the environmental bottom lines and introducing economic development imperatives.
‘‘I think these changes are going to be bad for the environment and they’re going to lower environmental quality across the whole country, especially private land, when the timing couldn’t be worse,’’ Mr Taylor said.
The Fonterra crisis will not have come as a surprise to many who have warned that we have been playing Russian roulette with our ‘‘clean green’’ brand.
MASSEY University lecturer Mike Joy ran foul of Prime Minister John Key in 2011 when he suggested New Zealanders were ‘‘delusional’’ about being 100 per cent pure.
Dr Joy cited a study that showed that per capita we were the 18th worst out of 189 countries on a range of environmental performance measures.
A report last year, titled Greening New Zealand’s Growth, said New Zealand was poised to ride the crest of a worldwide ‘‘green’’ wave but warned that we were also highly vulnerable to any undermining of our 100% Pure brand.
Former Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe sounded a note of warning even earlier, saying in 2007 that rising environmental awareness overseas posed a real threat to New Zealand’s tourist industry and economy.
Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O’Reilly said 100% Pure was a ‘‘fantastic campaign’’ and had been incredibly successful, but it was a tourism campaign, not a brand.
‘‘The New Zealand brand is actually New Zealand.
‘‘We in New Zealand often confuse a tourism campaign with a national brand.
‘‘I look at some of those people hitting us over the head [about our environmental record] and I say ‘hang on a second – glasshouses and stones’ . . . It’s an advertising logo; it’s not supposed to be some scientific statement’’
Last year the Government commissioned three government agencies to develop the ‘‘New Zealand story’’, partly in response to the lines between 100% Pure as a tourism campaign and a national brand becoming blurred.
Mr O’Reilly says 100% Pure is one of the most powerful tourism campaigns around the world. But it doesn’t work for many New Zealand companies and it doesn’t represent the other qualities this country is valued for, such as its transparency, lack of corruption, and safety.
‘‘Is ‘100% Pure’ past its use by date? I don’t know the answer to that. But we do that campaign a disservice when we say ‘OK, we’re going to let that campaign define New Zealand.’’
Trade Minister Tim Groser said 100% Pure had slipped out of the tourism box. He agreed it had become a stick to beat New Zealand with.
‘‘It did a trans-genic jump from tourism into trade. How could we ever be 100 per cent pure as long as there is a mammal on the surface of Aotearoa. It’s unfortunate but we are going to carry on with this work in rebranding and come up with something that’s credible and defensible.
‘‘Because when you [boast] ‘100 per cent’ one single food safety scare is inconsistent with it.’’