Nicky Greville, Spark Foundry managing director

What’s the one word to sum up your mood as we look back on 2023 and look to 2024?

Defiantly optimistic.

How would you describe your year?

Momentous and beautifully chaotic.

What’s the best initiative/project/ campaign in your own business — and one you thought a rival did well?

There is so much work coming out of my team with our clients and partners it’s difficult to pick a favourite.

Instead, I’m going to say the best initiative by far was taking the team out for a day early in the new year (post the trauma of floods and storms) and spending it focused on how we wanted to turn the shared values they had all dreamed up at the end of last year into behaviours that we all committed to.

From this day, the team has lived and breathed these behaviours and celebrated one another every day — it’s real cup-filling stuff to see them achieving such a positive and forward-moving culture so soon in our Spark Foundry journey.

For work I admire, again there is so much from our industry to celebrate but I’m going to hang my hat up with the fantastic campaign from Special Aotearoa that won a raft of awards, including some at the Beacons.

Their work for Partners Life tied into The Brokenwood Mysteries, called The Last Performance, was such a creative and interesting take on an otherwise functional life insurance category.

How do you think 2024 will play out for New Zealand media — what’s the biggest priority for you?

I’m going to put my usual positive spin on things and state that I hope it’s not a year that has quite as much volatility as we’ve seen this year and that I feel like things will settle somewhat.

I do think we’ll see consumer confidence and sentiment start to creep back towards the latter part of the year, but the beginning of the year may still hold a few curve balls for the market.

That said, there are also great things happening that I believe will stimulate the media market:

● The launch of the Sky SVOD ad model is exciting for the market as they gear up towards a much bigger advertising ecosystem approach;

● The raft of exciting sporting opportunities to celebrate with tennis, Olympics, Paralympics and ETNZ;

● AI adoption creating new and exciting evolution across all parts of our marketing systems;

● A step towards a unified measurement system with the change for the TV networks from TARPs to CPM models;

● And hopefully, the end to the strikes in Hollywood, meaning access to much more great content for New Zealanders.

The biggest priority for me will be continuing our momentum whilst ensuring that our structure is future-focused, and our product is market-leading.

What’s the biggest issue that keeps you awake at night?

It’s usually my kids waking me up with bad dreams or sleep-talking, to be honest!

What’s the biggest mistake media/ marketing /advertising people need to avoid in 2024?

Saying any of the following sayings too often: new normal and flesh out. And talking about the weather too much; we’ve all had enough of the weather chat. I’m picking next year’s polite chit-chat will be consumerconfidence focused!

What are your plans for the summer break?

Play with my kids, go fishing, swim every day, and read the pile of books I’ve amassed for the break!