It’s been a brutal few years for New Zealand media businesses, but Kiwi brands and agencies are teaming up to support an industry that remains crucial to their success.
Reporting on the state of New Zealand’s media industry in the past couple of years has often brought to mind Yogi Berra’s famous quote: “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”
Although there were some glimmers of hope in 2025 – such as TVNZ reporting a full-year net profit of $25 million after a net loss of $85 million the previous year – we continued to see the red ink, job losses, mergers and closures that have plagued local media companies for years.
These included Sky buying Discovery NZ for $1, Stuff closing 15 community newspapers, NZME cutting almost 40 jobs from the NZ Herald, BusinessDesk and Newstalk ZB and Metro magazine losing its full-time staff and editor following a major restructure.
The key player behind creativity
New Zealand media’s struggles have raised alarm bells in the marketing sector. Now leaders, including YouTube NZ Marketing Awards Marketer of the Year 2024 Frankie Coulter, who was head of marketing at Goodman Fielder at the time of writing, are speaking out in support of our media industry.
Local media have played a key part in many of Goodman Fielder’s recent marketing campaigns, including the Meadow Fresh Quick Brekkie product launch with NBA star Steven Adams, which won Excellence in New Brand Development at the YouTube NZ Marketing Awards 2025.
“New Zealand’s media sector is like the Great Barrier Reef: if we don’t keep it healthy at the top, it damages the whole ecosystem – the producers, the artwork directors… the whole thing is just an industry in itself,” Coulter says.
“When you look from film to TV to studio to the other associated things you get with that, it’s massive and it’s all local. If you get rid of that, then you’re losing that industry, which I think is one of the best in the world.”
Shared values
Coulter’s belief in the value of local media is shared by Goodman Fielder’s new media agency, Auckland-based independent agency Together.
Penelope Brown, managing director – media at Together, says the different attitudes towards New Zealand-owned media were on display during a conversation she had recently with a local media owner and someone from a large multinational agency.
“The holding company person was using the word ‘cost’ a lot in that conversation, while I used ‘value’ and ‘partnership’. And the way that media partner was then able to interact with the two of us was very different,” she says.
Looking purely at cost can be dangerous when assessing media options, Brown says: “The equation is business outcomes and/or value in the partnerships we create. Not pinning the media owner up against the wall and talking about only a rate.”
TVNZ chief revenue officer Valerie Walshe says support from local brands (like Goodman Fielder) and agency partners is critical to the health of the local media ecosystem.
“That localness is in our DNA. One of our TVNZ core values is that we are ‘by New Zealanders, for New Zealanders’. We are listening to our viewers every day, and the content that resonates best with New Zealanders is local content.
“When you think about One News, Hyundai Country Calendar, Shortland Street and our documentaries, our local stories are so important.”
Innovative tools
Walshe says TVNZ’s priorities for 2026 are investing in local content and continuing to innovate, adding new solutions to make it easier for people to trade with them.
“We recently launched co-viewing, and we are offering AI tools to help some of those small businesses be able to make the most of our TVNZ+ platform.
“SMEs are crucial to our economy, but often creative assets can be a barrier, so we use those tools to provide packages that include everything from brand work through to measurement.”
While TV advertising has traditionally been the preserve of big advertisers with generous marketing budgets, Walshe says smaller advertisers can now get the benefits of TV as a medium.
“We offer such a premium, good-quality environment where you’ve got that level of attention and engagement,” she says.
“It’s great to be able to offer small businesses an opportunity to be on TVNZ+. For a couple of thousand dollars you can have a presence. We want the New Zealand economy to do well and helping those SMEs to grow is really important as well.”
One advertiser taking up this opportunity was economic development agency RotoruaNZ’s recent ‘Robe trip to Rotorua’ campaign, developed by independent Trans-Tasman creative agency jnr. The work won a gold and two silvers at the Effie Awards Aotearoa 2025.
Walshe says Rotorua has had a tough time post-Covid, and the campaign was a major boost for the famous tourist town.
“As part of the overall campaign, we did some integration work with the Breakfast show, and the campaign achieved really phenomenal results for an advertiser on a small budget.”
TV = social media?
It’s not just new technology bringing advertisers back to local content on local media. In a world increasingly obsessed with micro-targeting and individually tailored content, marketers are on the lookout for media that can offer shared experiences and cultural moments.
Veteran brand planner and advertising strategist David (DT) Thomason said recently that social media no longer deserves the word ‘social’.
“The vast majority of interactions now involve an individual scrolling the contributions of strangers, rather than connecting with friends and family, or anyone. It would be more accurately called ‘solo media’.”
Rufus Chuter, managing partner and co-founder of Together, says marketers need local media, as they offer “powerful local contexts and connection points” to build their brands and businesses around.
“If social media is becoming ‘solo media’ then you could argue that the real social media today is where brands get value from overhearing and cultural impact. So perhaps social media should really include linear and live TV, outdoor, live radio – media where I know other people are experiencing the same thing as me at the same time.”
He points to the example of The Celebrity Traitors, a linear show that quickly became the talk of the UK, garnering almost 12 million viewers per weekly episode.
“That’s a good example of an increasing desire for shared experiences and the importance of those for marketers, because without them we lose the irrational multipliers that drive brand and marketing success –
like signalling and norming.”
Transparency is key
Coulter says Goodman Fielder chose Together as its media agency not only because it’s local, but because they were looking for transparency.
“What I’m not going to get from Together is trying to push global tools and services to me where it may not be relevant for the New Zealand market, and bombarding us with complicated metrics as to why we should buy into a certain package.
“The second thing is transparency in terms of cost. When you have situations where your money is getting bundled up with other advertisers and then taken to the media houses as a big bag, the free space or the additional discounts that they get, it’s completely unclear how much you get as a client.”
Goodman Fielder is also excited by the creativity Together brings to the table, which Coulter says reflects the fact they are run by passionate local owners.
“When you have a local agency, you tend to get a bigger share of time from the senior intellectual people in the business on your account and their care factor runs through the business.”
Brown says they are thrilled about the new partnership.
“We’ve got New Zealand’s biggest FMCG company taking a leadership position to not only buy into a local agency, but to sit around a table with local media and talk the way he is, and to have set that ambition for his team. That is for us a massive tick for why this partnership is the right one.”
Global still important
Despite his passion for supporting local media, Coulter emphasises that he’s not having a go at global players like Meta or Google.
“We need them for the eyeballs and we need them for targeted and we need them for whatever brand objective we’ve got. But this is actually an opportunity for us to get our house in order from a local perspective and provide a clear and meaningful offer. For me it’s local and it’s global, it’s not an either/or.”
Chuter agrees, confirming that Together does a lot of work with the global platforms, and they have a vital role to play especially in amplifying cultural moments that often originate in local media – whether live sport, a must-see TV programme or loved radio show.
“This isn’t an either/or equation. It’s understanding that to impact culture and drive brand fame, we need to use all the levers we have at our disposal. Local media is often overlooked in this equation because our industry seems intent on reducing media value to basics like reach and cost – which ignores how brands are actually built.”
This story comes from NZ Marketing magazine issue 85, Dec 2025-Feb 2026. Why not subscribe? Get four issues a year for just $50 (including delivery) if you autorenew.
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