Fraser Shrimpton is a Marketer of the Year finalist in the YouTube NZ Marketing Awards 2025.
The winner will be announced on September 3.
Name: Fraser Shrimpton
Job title: Marketing Director – DB Breweries (Heineken NZ)
In a couple of sentences, sum up your career so far.
Mostly FMCG focused, which I love because I get to balance my passion for creativity, commercial results and product innovation. And we do it at a sometimes outrageous pace, so there’s never a dull moment. I’ve worked across both sales and brand, and shopper marketing, as well as specialty fields such as innovation and insights. More recently, I’ve been dialling up my experience in digital and sponsorships. Focusing on breadth of experience (rather than just the next step up) has been critical to building strong commercial capability and strategic thinking. Taking opportunities based on what skills or knowledge can be gained – and what makes you a bit uncomfortable – has really helped me be a better marketeer.
Say hello to the other Marketer of the Year finalists 2025
Brid Drohan-Stewart
Cath Brands
Dave Pearce
Leanne Too
Matthew Pickering
PJ Morris
Susanne Hardy
The yardstick of success
How do you measure the success of a campaign?
It’s always a balance between short-term impact and supporting long-term brand power. I often go back to a ‘Foundation and Fame’ approach with campaigns. That is, balancing consistency and brand meaningfulness for saliency, mixed with shorter campaign bursts that drive excitement, talkability and distinctiveness. It’s essential to always stay true to your brand foundations – otherwise, you lose that brand clarity.
We are in the business of building strong brands for the long term, so the focus has to be on driving long-term brand equity through distinctiveness and meaning. Short-term campaign success will always be measured by standard marketing and commercial metrics, but we also ask whether it actually cut through? Are people talking about it and engaging with the brand? What did we learn from it for next time? And can we see that impact come through in our longer-term brand tracking?
Focus on sustainability
How do you incorporate eco-friendly practices in your marketing initiatives?
In the beverages industry, delivering impactful and memorable brand experiences is a key part of how we build our brands. We achieve this through what we call the “Greener Bar”. This means ensuring everything incorporated into the activation is either reusable, upcycled or easily recyclable – from the bar fit-out to the way we serve our products.
Like many other advertisers, we’re also seeing a greater shift toward digital out-of-home advertising, which has helped us reduce waste. In the case of static out-of-home, we run our campaigns for longer periods to reduce both production and waste. As we embed AI more into our business, I see an even greater ability to tailor assets to be more impactful whilst creating less waste – particularly when it comes to in-store or in-outlet activations.
How does Aotearoa rate?
On a scale of ‘deathly boring’ to ‘in a golden age’, where does Aotearoa sit when it comes to creativity?
Personally, I think we’ve become a little safe over the years. Not deathly boring, but as a nation renowned for creativity, we have been afraid to push boundaries and take risks. This is certainly changing. We are starting to see some really bold campaigns. I mean, who would have thought NZ was the best place in the world to have herpes until Motion Sickness told us through outstanding creative!
In the beer industry, over the last decade or so, we have lost some of the joy and humour in our advertising – something the industry was once renowned for, and is so important because, at the core of what we do, we bring people together to create good times. As a marketer, my main job is to help craft legendary brands. Critical to this are solid brand foundations, exceptional insights and pushing creative boundaries. You’re never going to appeal to everyone, and sometimes people may simply not like it, but it really comes down to knowing your consumer deeply, staying true to your brand. and being willing to take risks from time to time to stand out in the crowd.
Good stuff, hard stuff
Biggest win this year?
In a challenging year there have also been some real highlights. From a commercial perspective, it’s been seeing our legacy brands like Export, Tui, and Monteith’s shift back into growth. We do this by driving relevance with consumers and staying true to what the brands stand for, but with a more up-to-date expression.
I’m extremely proud of my team’s finalist spot in the Marketing Team of the Year category. They have truly been the driving force behind such significant commercial shifts. And from a creative perspective, it would have to be winning a Silver and a Bronze at Cannes Lions. A Grand Prix at Axis was also a real highlight! It was amazing to be recognised as part of the NZ creative community. It’s pretty bloody awesome to get nominated by our amazing agency village and be a finalist.
What are the most significant challenges for our industry at the moment?
With challenges come opportunities. We are seeing a far more fragmented media landscape, and increasingly tighter budgets are making it more challenging to reach consumers with impact. This is driving an even greater need to build creative platforms that can be adapted for new channels or platform first, focus on creativity that cuts through, maintain consistency to build memory structures, and lean into media innovation for first-mover advantage. AI is no longer just a buzzword – it’s rapidly changing how we operate. As advertisers, we need to embrace it and focus on how we can use it for greater production efficiency, targeting, personalisation and to support our creative efforts.
Economically, it’s still tough times out there for Kiwis, so we’re seeing continued pressure on discretionary spending. Consumers are re-evaluating how they spend their money and the brands they support, looking for value beyond price and seeking brands that truly meet their needs.
From an alcohol industry perspective, we know that more than ever, Kiwis want to make the most of opportunities to connect and have a good time. Our focus is on how we can make those experiences even better. For example, offering more utility through our brand activations and lightening the mood with how our brands show. Media channel fragmentation means we have to be much more considered in where we invest both above and below the line and using the power of creativity to stand out.
Our campaign for Export Ultra with Vanilla Ice brought fun and utility to the category over summer. Meanwhile, the Monteith’s Wild Food Challenge supported hospitality outlets to create amazing occasions for diners. There were unforgettable experiences at our Heineken events. And every now and then, we hit the right note with one of our Tui “Yeah Right” lines to bring a smile to people’s faces.
Coming up
What’s next on your to-do list?
I have a bit of unfinished business in my current role, so it’s about walking the talk – continuing to push creative boundaries, taking a few more risks, and focusing on bringing the fun and joy back to beer marketing. Beyond that, it’s about building further capability within my team. I believe Kiwi marketers have fewer on-the-job opportunities to learn and hone those classical marketing fundamentals as businesses become more trans-Tasman focused. Being part of the Marketing Association is an amazing resource to help close those gaps and to build talent and community.
At DB, we are very fortunate to be part of The Heineken Company. It provides us with exceptional tools to build strong strategic and executional capability in our commercial teams – from brand design and product innovation to execution, revenue and margin growth and media optimisation. My focus is to use these tools even more, along with our ongoing partnership with the Marketing Association, to help build exceptional future marketing leaders.
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