Sean Wiggans is a Marketer of the Year finalist in the YouTube NZ Marketing Awards 2026.
The winner will be announced on September 2.
Name: Sean Wiggans
Job title: General manager – marketing, Turners Auto Retail
In a couple of sentences, sum up your career so far.
I spent eight or so years here and in London working in Adland finishing up at Colenso as an account director, before getting into marketing when I was lucky enough to be hired into Frucor to work on the energy category. From there to Cerebos Greggs, where I mainly worked on the coffee brands before starting at Turners at the end of 2015.
I hit 11 years here in October – which is not unusual in this company at all.
Overall when I look back I’ve been fortunate to have had some pretty amazing success along the way, with a couple of definite screw ups, but mostly I see the brilliant people I got to learn from and work with. I started to name them but the list got too long and I know I’ll miss out someone important to me. Hopefully they know who they are and how grateful I am! I don’t think we should ever underestimate just how much the people around you can shape your career, especially in the early years.
How have you used out of home in recent campaigns?
I’m a big fan of outdoor. I love the required discipline/simplicity in the creative execution.
The restriction forces greatness to surface and very quickly tests the strength of an idea. And I think there are several aspects that make it work really hard as a media channel.
We’ve been on large billboards for three or four years now and have been very consistent with our look and feel which has worked well for us, and we’ve always aimed to use the medium to entertain.
Recently we ran a trial in Hamilton with oOh! where we ran Street Furniture and Retail Digital. Topline – the results of the Brand Lift study were very, very positive. Unfortunately, these didn’t translate into measurable business outcomes – because a certain idiot started a war – not because of the campaign. We’ll be back!
How do you incorporate sustainability into your marketing initiatives?
Turners provides an easy and quick channel to get a large amount of old, gas guzzling, high emissions vehicles off our roads. We buy thousands of damaged and end of life cars from the general public each year and on-sell these to wreckers and parts companies. Many of these car parts end up back on cars at a much more affordable price than buying new and the rest are sold for scrap metal and repurposed that way. Sustainability in action.
A highlight from the past year?
Travelling around New Zealand with a small crew shooting the ‘Tina road trip’ ad.
If we were ever in doubt about Tina’s status in NZ, we definitely aren’t now. In Tirau we had a whole lot of school children walking past us while we were shooting and stopping to say hi. And then going home and bringing their parents back to say hi again. The people in a café that asked for autographs. Cars stopping in the middle of the road to enquire what we were up to.
My personal favourite was the grizzled farmer in his ute that drove past and just yelled Cars! Cars! Cars! out his window. We had a ball – and Bubbah (Tina) was brilliant with everyone. It’s pretty rare that you get to see real live feedback like that. I’m not a fan of the concept of brand love at all, but people definitely love Tina.
What are you looking forward to?
Turners Auto Retail realising its potential.
We’ve built a lot of momentum over the past decade or so – tripling our annual profit since 2016 – and we’ve got some big ambitious plans coming up.
We’re aiming to open 15 branches in the next few years and have a big part to play in growing our parent company (Turners Automotive Group) to $100m profit. It’s a fantastic growth story for Turners and for the 67% of the team that own shares in the company. And it really does feel like we’re just getting started.
This story comes from NZ Marketing magazine issue 88, Sept-Nov 2026. Why not subscribe? Get four issues a year for just $50 (including delivery) if you autorenew.
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