Paul Irwin
General Manager - Student Marketing at Education New Zealand
|
What's your background in IE?
I had no background in international education prior to joining Education New Zealand (ENZ) in 2015. However, I brought to the role a wide range of marketing experience in New Zealand and overseas. This included senior leadership roles in multinational advertising agencies, six years working in international publishing marketing with the Economist Group (London and Hong Kong), and working with a range of education sector clients, including the New Zealand Ministry of Education. So, lot’s of relevant experience, but a totally new industry for me when I joined ENZ three years ago! Can you tell us about the Education New Zealand, New Zealand – 1 million cents scholarship? What was the need for this campaign? Why do you think this campaign won the 2018 Marketing Campaign of the Year Award? We wanted to celebrate our huge milestone of reaching a global social community of 1 million followers, across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WeChat, Weibo and Snapchat. But, more importantly, we wanted to use this milestone to thank our followers for joining our global social community. Then to engage these followers and to encourage them to share all the great reasons why they would like to study in New Zealand. I think the campaign won due to its combination of a creative, cheeky idea, delivered for minimal cost (NZ$10,000 for the scholarship, plus production costs for two Facebook tiles), and the huge results we achieved across engagement levels and entries submitted. |
Any marketing and communications lessons learned/gained by working on this campaign?
New Zealand has a global reputation as an exciting, adventure-filled tourist destination. While this has helped to grow New Zealand’s profile, awareness of the high quality of our leading education system is low. We often find ourselves battling against the perception created by our fellow government agency, Tourism New Zealand. So with this campaign, we anticipated that we would receive many entries based around adventure tourism from the Study Abroad and English language markets. However, the opposite was true. Most prospective students who entered had a strong knowledge of the New Zealand education system, our global rankings and our innovative teaching and learning spaces. For many, it was our education system – not our environment – that was the major drawcard for studying in New Zealand:
“New Zealand has a good learning environment with a state-of-the-art education system. I also understand that New Zealand takes second place in the latest edition of Forbes' Best Countries for Business, just behind Sweden.” – Chin Lin Nguyen.
“I want to study a PhD in Pharmacometrics at University of Otago, they have a pharmacometrics research group that is a world leader in this field. I think it will be a great opportunity for me to participate in research projects in that department of great international reputation.” – Abdallah Atef.
As a result, our community became a powerful voice for our brand messages around New Zealand’s learning environment - a unique mix of our learning style, experiences outside of the classroom, and the opportunities created by a New Zealand education. In a world of increasing cynicism around advertising, these authentic voices became valuable advocates for New Zealand.
What was it like winning the Pioneer Award for your campaign? What does this mean for Education New Zealand?
Winning the PIEoneer Award has been tremendous for Education New Zealand. It’s a great reinforcement of the innovative work all our teams are delivering. We are a small government agency from a country that’s a small player in international education, but we like to think we do big things. And it’s been a really nice acknowledgement of my team’s creative thinking, agility and ability to be responsive to marketing opportunities.
Where's your most recent passport stamp from?
China. But my most recent trips have been to India and Australia which don’t require passport stamps!
Where is your favorite place you’ve traveled to?
So hard! I’ve been to more than 35 countries and have lots of favourites. Let’s say Laos, Nepal, India, Italy and China are all up there!
Where’s the next place you’d like to explore?
Bhutan has been on the bucket list for some time, for its combination of Himalayan majesty and Buddhist culture.
Interested in the PIEoneer Awards? Be sure to check out this year’s winners, and be on the look out for the 2019 awards - entries will be open next year.
New Zealand has a global reputation as an exciting, adventure-filled tourist destination. While this has helped to grow New Zealand’s profile, awareness of the high quality of our leading education system is low. We often find ourselves battling against the perception created by our fellow government agency, Tourism New Zealand. So with this campaign, we anticipated that we would receive many entries based around adventure tourism from the Study Abroad and English language markets. However, the opposite was true. Most prospective students who entered had a strong knowledge of the New Zealand education system, our global rankings and our innovative teaching and learning spaces. For many, it was our education system – not our environment – that was the major drawcard for studying in New Zealand:
“New Zealand has a good learning environment with a state-of-the-art education system. I also understand that New Zealand takes second place in the latest edition of Forbes' Best Countries for Business, just behind Sweden.” – Chin Lin Nguyen.
“I want to study a PhD in Pharmacometrics at University of Otago, they have a pharmacometrics research group that is a world leader in this field. I think it will be a great opportunity for me to participate in research projects in that department of great international reputation.” – Abdallah Atef.
As a result, our community became a powerful voice for our brand messages around New Zealand’s learning environment - a unique mix of our learning style, experiences outside of the classroom, and the opportunities created by a New Zealand education. In a world of increasing cynicism around advertising, these authentic voices became valuable advocates for New Zealand.
What was it like winning the Pioneer Award for your campaign? What does this mean for Education New Zealand?
Winning the PIEoneer Award has been tremendous for Education New Zealand. It’s a great reinforcement of the innovative work all our teams are delivering. We are a small government agency from a country that’s a small player in international education, but we like to think we do big things. And it’s been a really nice acknowledgement of my team’s creative thinking, agility and ability to be responsive to marketing opportunities.
Where's your most recent passport stamp from?
China. But my most recent trips have been to India and Australia which don’t require passport stamps!
Where is your favorite place you’ve traveled to?
So hard! I’ve been to more than 35 countries and have lots of favourites. Let’s say Laos, Nepal, India, Italy and China are all up there!
Where’s the next place you’d like to explore?
Bhutan has been on the bucket list for some time, for its combination of Himalayan majesty and Buddhist culture.
Interested in the PIEoneer Awards? Be sure to check out this year’s winners, and be on the look out for the 2019 awards - entries will be open next year.
