Jacqui Robins is a creative spirit with a love for anything artistic. So, it’s no surprise that this Up & Comer helps tell the story of some of the country’s biggest, most creative media brands. She shares with Mollie Edwards her passion for radio and why she relishes the challenge of marketing in the media space.
Since leaving university, Jacqui Robins has flourished through an impressive marketing career which helped her land her current role as NZME’s brand manager for radio brands ZM and The Hits. Although successful within her role, Robins says one thing many people out of the industry don’t appreciate is the amount of strategy and planning that goes into marketing, explaining it is more than a ‘glorified colouring-in-department’.
Robins set her sights on brand manager two and a half years ago as the opportunity to work in radio, alongside stations she had listened to growing up, was too good to pass up.
“I was really interested to pull back the curtain and find out how it really works and what goes into the production, and it was definitely more than I thought.
“The chance to do marketing for ZM and The Hits was a really cool prospect. They provide a great platform for full 360 marketing as well, so the opportunity to grow that experience has worked out perfectly.”
It is the ability to connect with audiences and entertain them that excites Robins most about her role.
“No matter what is going on in the world, knowing the work that I do has the ability to turn someone’s day around and to hear that positive feedback is really exciting. It’s a pretty unique position to be in.”
With her previous experience as account executive at Rapport Advertising and account manager at ICG, Robins has been able to produce exceptional marketing campaigns
for NZME.
Robins and her team won the 2019 Radio Award for ZM’s Friday Jams Live and were also finalists in the same category that year for ZM’s Flochella, New Zealand’s only festival floating on water. This year the team are finalists in the New Zealand Event Awards for ZM’s Float and are hoping for a good result come October.
“There is nothing that will replicate the feeling of watching 4,000 people chilling to Kiwi artists on the shores of Lake Tikitapu, Rotorua. It was the most collaborative project I’ve worked on to date and it forced me to learn so many new skills in event marketing and management.
Robins says being nominated for the awards still feels surreal.
“It’s really special to be acknowledged amongst your peers for creating some really great work. I hope the feeling never gets old.”
Many of those who aren’t in the marketing industry are unaware of what actually goes into producing successful campaigns. Robins says getting a project from an idea to having it rolled out live is a lot harder than just making some pretty pictures.
With Covid-19 having a hard hit on in the industry, Robins says the last few months have been particularly more challenging, yet also the most rewarding.
“All the tactics and strategy we’d been planning was put on hold and we had to make some very quick changes. I think the hardest part of that was figuring out how to work from home, whilst juggling a new workload and not stressing about the world around us.
“It’s actually pretty remarkable what our team managed to achieve, but I hope we never have to do it again!”
In terms of where she sees the industry heading, Robins says it can be hard to predict as there has been so much recent change. Personally, she would like to see some more traditional methods of marketing make
a comeback.
“I’ve learnt so much about the capability of print and radio in the last few years and it’s disappointing that more people don’t think to utilise them more. They’re definitely not dead.”
This article was originally published in the December/January 2020 issue of NZ Marketing. Click here to subscribe.
