Industry Leaders to Marketing Hall Of Fame

Industry Leaders first inductees to Marketing Hall of Fame

Four New Zealand leaders in marketing are to be given greater recognition of their contributions by being the first ever inductees into the New Zealand Marketing Hall of Fame.

Laurie Enting, Steve Bridges, Bill Gianotti and Ian Brown will be formally accorded the honour at this year’s presentation of the annual Marketing Magazine Marketing Awards to be held in Auckland on 31 July, 2003.

Marketing Magazine publisher, Reg Birchfield, said the inauguration of the Hall of Fame gives deserved recognition to the application and strategic importance of the marketing discipline in business and in equal measure to the outstanding, often lifetime, contribution of the individuals in promoting and practising marketing excellence.

Laurie Enting was one of the pioneers of market research in New Zealand. He joined the advertising industry in 1946 and established and headed the Consumer Research Bureau, a subsidiary of the J. Inglis Wright advertising agency, which undertook some of the first market research for companies in New Zealand.

He was a foundation member of the Market Research Association of New Zealand, president of the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies from1973-75, a member of the Government’s Enquiry into Government Advertising in 1975, and chair of the inaugural Committee of Advertising Practice from 1975-77.

For many years after his retirement, Laurie Enting continued an involvement in the industry as a marketing and advertising consultant. Today, at the age of 89, his contribution and a lifetime of achievement in the industry will be recognised.

Steve Bridges arrived in New Zealand from the United States in 1970 and immediately set about changing the local marketing landscape forever.

Arriving here, he found a country almost bereft of any kind of formal marketing education and established what was to be the first ever marketing course held at a New Zealand university, at Victoria University in Wellington.

The career-path that followed has seen him revolutionise the country’s approach to consumer-focused marketing and effectively ‘write-the-book’ on professional services marketing in New Zealand.

Over a career of more than 30 years, his teaching has influenced the approach of literally thousands of local marketing graduates and the industry itself.

Today Bridges continues to run his own business, while teaching university short-courses in marketing practice.

The name Bill Gianotti is synonymous with the now familiar concept of “direct or data-base marketing” in New Zealand.

In the late 1980s, after 25 years in assorted data processing, finance and marketing management roles, Bill Gianotti established Aim Direct and in the process pioneered the growth and use of accurate and segmented marketing data in New Zealand.

Under Gianotti’s guiding hand, Aim flourished throughout the 1990s – being voted “Small Agency of the Year” on several occasions and winning numerous advertising awards, including the prestigious Echo Award in the US for outstanding direct mail.

The development of people within the direct marketing industry has always been a Gianotti priority and in 1998 he established a $10,000 creative scholarship to further incentivise the development of great creative and targeted communication.

Bill Gianotti served for three years as president of the Direct Marketing Association and was the chair of the RSVP Awards from 1992 until he stepped down from the role last year.

Ian Brown is an acknowledged leader in the study and analysis of consumer behaviour in New Zealand. Through the late 1960s, he headed NZ Data Ltd, the then J. Inglis Wright research subsidiary, before moving to Heylen Research Centre to bring mainstream recognition to the use and power of study in consumer behaviours.

In 1971, he opened Heylen’s Wellington office, where amongst many projects, he worked with National Business Review to pioneer business press research. In 1979 he moved to Auckland to take charge of the company’s head office.

Throughout this period, Heylen’s innovative combination of attitudinal and behavioural measurements made segmentation studies the most advanced marketing aids seen in New Zealand to that time.

Brown is credited with initiating one of the earliest omnibus surveys in New Zealand and equally with developing new methodologies – both quantitative and qualitative – to measure developing consumer behaviours and patterns.

He was an early and prominent member of the Market Research Society, the professional body that established codes of ethics and practice for the research industry, in turn serving as its president and becoming its first life member.

Since his retirement, Ian Brown’s advice has continued to be sought over issues affecting the whole marketing and advertising industry.

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