Kiwi charm in Silicon Valley
The easy openness of Kiwi farmers and their potential to attach stories to meat, wool and other farm products is finding wide appeal among tech leaders in Silicon Valley.
Making the most of more story-telling opportunities, Kiwi charm and the country’s natural assets is the challenge that primary industry executives have put on themselves during the Te Hono Summit at Stanford University in July.
During the latest summit a line-up of business people including Lone Star Farms owner Tom Surgess and coauthor of Wall Street Journal bestseller Moments of Impact, Lisa Kay Solomon, challenged projects devised by the leaders in a session along the lines of the television series Dragon’s Den.
‘‘The thing that really blew them away [in] Silicon Valley, which is about transaction after transaction, was when the New Zealanders were up there it brought personality and culture,’’ said New Zealand Merino Company (NZM) chief executive John Brakenridge, a summit founder. ‘‘They felt that was the most distinctive thing for New Zealand, that provided something real and authentic.’’
Over six summits, previously called bootcamps, primary industry chief executives have represented companies behind 80 per cent of New Zealand exports.
Companies used to spend $0.5 billion to launch a big brand but could become the next big discovery by plugging into consumers in top end markets through social media and online channels, attach a story focusing on natural assets and see them being shared by peer groups, he said.
Brakenridge said the summit leaders were motivated to be ‘‘less about rhetoric’’ and had shaped nine projects which would go back to Stanford University professors as design challenges this year. Silicon Valley experts would also provide advice.
The executives were determined to shift from volume to more value trading, be more connected to markets and provide back stories linking to health, wellness and a care for the environment.
One of the speakers at the Te Hono Summit was former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who said the old structures would not deliver for the new economy. Summit executives have already invested $1 million in consumer empathy research in premium markets in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York to find out what drives buying behaviour and opened an office in Shanghai to connect closer to the Chinese market.
Another project was looking at opportunities for plant based foods. During the summit executives dined on burgers made by US company Impossible Foods.
Brakenridge said there seemed to be an attitude that synthetic meat and milk would only enter the bottom end of the market, but their marketing was also being directed at high end restaurants.