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Meanwhile, in Tararua Country....

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« on: August 20, 2009, 07:26:08 pm »


Tui's Nick Rogers: The ‘Yeah, right’ stuff

Tui is the most explosive brand in New Zealand beer. Nick Rogers is the man behind the marketing. He talks to about making over Mangatainoka, courting controversy and those famous billboards.

The Dominion Post | 5:00AM - Saturday, 15 August 2009

JOKER IN THE PACK: Nick Rogers at the Mangatainoka brewery. He had led the transformation of the site into a “boy's playground” that attracts 45,000 visitors a year. — ROBERT KITCHIN/The Dominion Post.

    JOKER IN THE PACK: Nick Rogers at the Mangatainoka brewery. He had led the transformation of the site into
                 a “boy's playground” that attracts 45,000 visitors a year. — ROBERT KITCHIN/The Dominion Post.


The worst billboard story Nick Rogers can remember is the one that went, "Here, take the beach".

Actually, because it was a Tui billboard, it went, "Here, take the beach. Yeah, right."

The moment it went up, right in the heat of the foreshore and seabed debate, his phone started going. "I got called the most racist man in New Zealand," he says. "Our stance was that it's actually for everybody. I got 180 complaints on that in about 24 hours."

The best billboard story Nick Rogers can remember is the one that went, "I past NCEA Inglish".

It's his all-time favourite, without a doubt, but the phone call that followed it was just as good, he says.

"I had some guy ring me up and say, ‘Nick, you've spelt “past” wrong’. It should be p-a-s-s-e-d. And I was like, ‘Yeah, but that's not the only thing’."

Mr Rogers has plenty of contenders for either category. "Camilla for Queen" got him into trouble when Prince Charles showed up in town — and Tui pulled it while he was on a television camera saying the opposite.

Last year's "Let's take a moment this Christmas to think about Christ" was No 1 on the Advertising Standards Authority's most hated list, with 86 complaints. (Dominion Breweries withdrew the advert).

"We were actually poking fun at the fact that no one remembers the reason," Mr Rogers says. "But I didn't quite realise that there's so many PC people in this country and oh boy, did they get excited, real fast."

Even this week, drivers through Mangatainoka were greeted by a portable Tui billboard backing the Education Ministry's call for rural schools to be shut down — ironically, of course.


A Tui billboard.

So controversy is just part of the deal for Mr Rogers. PC people, people who give him grief, people like the newspaper columnists who wrote their own mock billboard ("Tui billboards are getting funnier — Yeah, right") ... they're all grist for the mill.

"The thing with Tui is that it's never deviated away from who it is," he says. "It's never sold itself out. You get criticised that they're worn out or tired. And we go, ‘No, we're just going to keep trucking, and we're going to put a f--ing pearler up there that will shut you up’."


Nick Rogers, 38, grew up in Havelock North.

He liked drinking beer from an early age, liked Tui too ("growing up in Hawke's Bay, you didn't have any other option"). It might have been part of the reason he wasn't a model student, he says.

"Took me six years to finish secondary school. Most people it takes five. I repeated my seventh form, so I can say I've had a longer education than most."

But he got through it anyway, ignored his Dad's advice to become a builder, and headed to Otago, where he briefly changed his beer preference, lived it up, and studied for five years.

His first job was at the old Government Printing Office, but it was too Gliding On for him, so he switched to DB and has never left.

He's been on the Tui brand since 2000, conjuring up marketing campaigns and new jokes.

"I don't know if Tui's me or I'm Tui," he says. "It seems to morph into one sometimes. Definitely my personality comes through in it quite strongly."

For the first half of the decade, he was based in Auckland, but when he had children, he wanted to get closer to home.

Now he lives in Masterton, and works two days a week in Auckland and three days at Mangatainoka, the brewery's ancestral Wairarapa home. Until earlier this year, he had to catch a train to Wellington whenever he wanted to fly north.

"The Air New Zealand link out of Masterton has been a godsend, it's saved my marriage," he says.

So Mr Rogers is a hybrid of city and country. He's a provincial boy who's spent most of his working life in the city. His workmates are Mangatainoka brewery workers, but he's a marketing guru ("My philosophy is that Tui, it's not just a beer, it's a way of life," he says at one point). He wears a shirt as open as any farmer's, but his jeans and tapering leather shoes are pure city.

In the end, he says, his outlook on life is pretty simple.

"There are three types of people in this world: people who make things happen, people who watch things happen, and people who don't even know it's happened. And you always put yourself in the former.

"There's so many people that just don't want to make a difference in this world. And that's one thing that I like, or am quite proud of, I actually enjoy making things happen."


Mangatainoka is very small. Apparently it produces more beer per capita than anywhere else in the world — but that's because only about 30 people live there, Mr Rogers says.

He's been trying to transform Tui's brewery at the site since he landed, but real progress has only come in the past two years, he says.

Where industrial buildings used to crowd the brewery's famous brick tower, making for a harsh welcome to visitors, Mr Rogers has cleared acres of green lawn and built a bar, cafe, function centre and museum on site.

"My philosophy was ‘boy's playground’. Because every male in New Zealand has heard of Tui brewery or seen it on TV. What other tourism location or destination in New Zealand has that sort of marketing clout behind it?"

He even sees the odd car stop and unload a gaggle of lads who worship the tower — in the vein of a late 90s TV commercial.

Despite all the blokiness, he's also keen to widen the brewery's appeal. He's visibly pleased when an elderly couple walk through the door and says the brewery has hosted a number of weddings.

"People go ‘weddings at a brewery?’ But if they can have weddings at a winery in Martinborough, why can't they have them here?"

So far it's working. Four years ago, the brewery saw about 7,000 visitors every year. Now the figure is 45,000. They're also making serious money out of every piece of merchandise from garden gnomes to duvet covers. (And that's not to mention the huge trade they're doing in pies, tomato sauce and other food products at supermarkets around the country).

What do the locals think of all the change?


TUI'S COMPANY: Neighbour Jack Smith, a former brewery worker, enjoys meeting all the visitors around the town. “If it shut down, it would be hellish,” he says. However, not all residents agree with him. — ROBERT KITCHIN/The Dominion Post.

  TUI'S COMPANY: Neighbour Jack Smith, a former brewery worker, enjoys meeting all the visitors around the town.
                          “If it shut down, it would be hellish,” he says. However, not all residents agree with him.
                                                                  — ROBERT KITCHIN/The Dominion Post.


Across the road, Jack Smith, a 70-year-old who worked at the brewery for 31 years, says at first he wasn't sure about the new ideas, but now he's been won over.

He meets people from all around the world, jokes with the ones who can't speak English, and never has to leave his doorstep, he says.

"If it wasn't there, if it shut down, it would be hellish. I couldn't stand it."

But down the road at the Dudley Arms Tavern, owner Dave Wolland is less enamoured.

"Basically they've kicked us in the guts. They've gone out in opposition to us.

"They've brought a lot of people in, which is quite good, but they're a typical big company it's all for them and no one else."


Just more controversy, really, and Mr Rogers is used to dealing with it.

"Some people with the opportunity for tourism in the area haven't really realised it," he says about Mr Wolland's complaints.

But criticism can come from all sides. Aren't Tui's latest adverts, which are dominated by ridiculously beautiful women, pretty sexist?

"No, because we've never been degrading towards women. I don't believe we have," he says.

"I get really peeved off if they're referred to as Tui girls. They're not Tui girls, they're the Tui brewery girls. So they've actually got a reason for being."

After a horrific Invercargill car crash last month, the Dominion Post columnist Karl du Fresne wrote: "If I were on the board of Dominion Breweries, I don't think I'd feel comfortable about Tui's celebrated status among boy racers and binge drinkers."

Does Mr Rogers worry about marketing to destructive drinkers?

"It's called a freedom of choice. It's like people speeding in cars and blaming car companies," he says.

"It does hurt, I won't deny that. But we haven't forced anyone into any particular behaviour. I've got a conscience like everybody else, I suppose. I prefer to look at the positives that come out of it."

And those positives, he says, are simple.

"It's beer. It's not overly complicated. It's beer. It's great beer. And the thing about beer is that it denotes sociability, it denotes having fun with your mates. Because 95 per cent of the time when you drink beer, you're actually in a good space."

With the billboards and the ads, he says, Tui is usually just saying what everyone else wants to.

"Tui does have its fair share of complaints. We do create more publicity than any other beer brand. When the media reports come through, we're more than the whole liquor industry sometimes."

Even the billboard about rural schools is potentially out of order alcohol companies are not supposed to mention under-25s in their advertising.

Mr Rogers says cheekily that the school must have pinched the truck and done it themselves.

But it's easy enough to know which two words should come after that explanation.


A Tui billboard.

A Tui billboard.

A Tui billboard.

GETTING EVERYONE ON BOARD

  • There are 53 billboard sites around the country.

  • Half of them are on private property. Some owners, like one Taihape farmer, are paid with a pallet of beers (50 dozen) every year.

  • About 4-6 new slogans are put up every month.

  • Topical billboards are preferred — "Not Guilty" went up after Michael Jackson was acquitted in less than three hours.

  • Local topics are another favourite — Tui has run into trouble for everything from insulting Masterton's mayor to slagging off New Zealand Rugby Union bosses in Christchurch.

  • About half of the slogans now come from public suggestions. Again, their creators are paid in beer.

  • The rest come from advertising agencies and Tui's marketing people. "Sometimes we just go and buy the papers and open page 3 and go ‘That's fundamentally wrong, let's pick on that’," Mr Rogers says.

  • Wellington ad agencies still disagree about who came up with the campaign, which began in the mid 1990s, Mr Rogers says.

  • Some parts of the country are still relatively new to the campaign — the first Tui billboard went up in Auckland in 2001, and the first South Island "Yeah, right" was put up in 2003.

THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL BILLBOARDS[/size]

  • "I nvr txt whl drvn" — Taken down in May out of respect for a Horowhenua family whose two daughters died in a texting-related crash.

  • "Let's take a moment this Christmas to think about Christ" — Withdrawn after protests from some churches. Last year's most complained-about ad.

  • "When Winston says no, he means no" — Electoral Commission warned this could have breached the Electoral Finance Act

  • "Camilla for Queen" — Taken down in 2005 on the eve of a visit from Prince Charles.

NICK ROGERS' TOP BILLBOARDS HE CREATED

  • We didn't need Mehrts" — a Christchurch-specific creation after one of the rugby world cups.

  • "Of course it's true I saw it on CNN"

  • "It's not receding, I cut it that way"

NICK ROGERS' ‘BEST EVER’

  • "I past NCEA Inglish"

  • "No pressure Graham" — Before an All Blacks test

  • "Really keen to see your mother again"

  • "Let Paul fly us there" — After Paul Holmes crashed his plane.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/features/2754093/Tuis-Nick-Rogers-The-Yeah-right-stuff
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