Winning in America

August 12, 2005

Presentation Summary

A speech made at the Gateway to America Trade Summit: Can New Zealanders crack the American market? Of course: in fact, they’re daring us to. Ten powerful ideas for taking it to the U.S.A. and beating them at their own game. New insights into Edge, leaders, Lovemarks and seduction. A recipe for success and a gameplan for winning: America’s waiting, it’s time for kiwis to rise to the challenge.


American flags

This is important. I wouldn’t have missed this. I got home from St Tropez Wednesday. Tomorrow Sydney for the game. I go back to America Sunday.

Cracking the US is as tough a challenge as it gets.

First our own economy needs ignition. It’s going sideways. Not enough big names or combinations. Inconsistent, unpredictable, out competed, unadapted to the global game.

The good news is we have the players. We have the fastest sharpest runners in the world. Lack of size and tyranny of distance are distractions and excuses. There’s an unbroken line of New Zealanders who’ve done impossible things.

Early Southland inventor Ernest Godward commuted to New York for 25 years. In the 1920s and 30s, from his premises on Chambers and Broadway, he became the world’s leading expert on the internal combustion engine. In the 1950s, country music legend Tex Morton was wowing North America. Today there’s a host of kiwis making waves, from Chris Liddell at Microsoft to Kerry Black, who is literally designing waves in Florida.

We are a phenomenon. Kiwi edge, pragmatism, and leadership make us go-to people globally.

The one-word equity for New Zealand is EDGE. Every world needs an Edge. Every industry, every company needs an Edge. That’s us.

As a metaphor for magic, Edge captures and harnesses our phenomenal potential to design, innovate and market. In place and time it’s our extreme location. In theory it’s how fringe ideas create mass markets. In biology it’s how change occurs at the margin of the species. In Australia it’s how we get recognition and spread insecurity.

Being Pure got us to 10th on a recent nation brand survey. Good on Tourism New Zealand and on Peter Jackson. To make the top five we need to promote more than our beautiful empty landscape. We have to build New Zealand out into the world, not just bring the world here.

Edge puts our heads and hearts into a higher entrepreneurial, internationally focused space. It gives us an inspirational, national attitude rooted in local uniqueness and global achievement. The Nothing is Impossible attitude we need to win the globalisation game.

The creative key, as Steve Jobs says, is in connecting things. And the first thing we need to connect with is our overseas population. On the numbers it’s our second-biggest city, bigger than the population of the South Island!! Our top talent has atomized.

We need mass reengagement. We have to kick-start a global sense of family. Build them back into our GDP. At www.nzedge.com we are doing this with an emotional bridge. Through celebration, inspiration and love for Aotearoa, we’re creating a Global Edge country.

Reengaging our top talent, our US vanguard, is a multi-billion dollar opportunity. The choice is stark. A dislocated domestic mindset or a connected global heart. Join us. Together, we are indestructible.

On my last trip home I gave some advice to EsseNZe, a hot new Kiwi design company opening in San Francisco. I’m going to share some of that.


To take you into the streets, minds and hearts of America, here’s 10 ideas from the Edge:

#1: Be Small , Be Big and Be Fine

Starbucks started with one small store in Seattle and the idea of your third home. It’s at 10 000 cafes and counting. Start small with a Big Transformational Idea. A BTI explodes boundaries. It’s emotional. It’s contagious. It’s optimistic. It’s visual. It’s at least 50% inspiration. Then pay manic attention to the last detail. It matters!! Success marries outlandish talent with gritty process.

#2: Step off the Edge

“Test fast. Fail fast. Adjust fast”: Tom Peter’s words. Great business takes risks. It’s inspired. Ray Bradbury: “First you jump off the cliff and you build wings on the way down.” If you try and measure your success in America up front you’ll never start. Once you’ve got the legal eagles and number crunchers out of their boxes, strap on your BTI, step off the Edge and fly with your heart. They call it the American Dream.

#3: Cook on the Coast

To crack the US, go there relentlessly; live there. For velocity, focus on the coasts. Focus where the Edge dwellers live. The most innovative, generative places are where you get traction and action. They are New York, LA, Miami, San Fran, Seattle and Silicon. That’s where the heat is. It sure ain’t in Michael Moore’s America.

#4: Lead with Kiwis

Lead with the New Zealand Edge. At the start, hire only kiwis!! The more crazies, the better. New Zealanders deliver the experience. We’re an “oh my god” action attraction. Hiring Americans is like living in an episode of Friends.

#5: Wear Black

Colour has deep cultural meaning. Bleed black. All Black. Black is our colour, the colour of passion and commitment, The colour of edge, emotion and energy. The colour of victory!! Stand in Black. If you stand for nothing, you fall for everything.

#6: Get Above the Line

There’s one sure way to get global attention: Advertise – just ask any retailer. Consulate Wine and cheese evenings don’t grow economies. To grow like Ireland, we need a coordinated global message, with budget to boot. You can’t PR, network or event-market your way to glory. Advertising is a NZ$800 billion business because it works. And it’s worked for tourism.

Riding on the back of Rings, Whales and Apes is great, but we have to mercilessly push New Zealand out front – as a country, as businesses, as people.

Here’s a front-foot example. To launch Air Tahiti Nui’s non-stop service from New York, Saatchi & Saatchi brought Tahiti to New York for an entire week. A week of fiesta, culture and seduction.

In America, advertise your socks off!! Sell your undies to pay for it. Put billboards up at LAX and head east. Get into print and onto the screen. Sight, sound and motion, SiSoMo, arrests attention. John Brockman’s father, a flower broker, once told his Impresario son: ‘you gotta move them, they’re going to die’. That’s the urgency you need in America. You have to hang it all out and pay for the privilege.

#7: Be Lovemarks

Lovemarks are built on mystery, sensuality and intimacy. Intimacy we’re naturals at. Fire up your mystery – the unknown exhilarates! Business acceleration is about stories not services – think JK Rowling and Peter Jackson. Be a dream destination, because that’s our positioning in America. Your business must be a sensory playground. From wine to jazz, Kiwi sights, smells, tastes, touches and sounds caress the soul. Southlander Kylie Harris broadcasts country music to 34 million US homes daily – her program is called The Edge of Country. Introduce NZ music, wine, food and design in every detail. For intimacy, donate NZ edge learning to local schools. Be more than irreplaceable. Be irresistible.

#8: Open Shopfronts

Sales and marketing is about touch points. Where is our permanent presence in the world’s leading cities? A movie here. An expo there. New Zealand has gone fishing. Rebecca Taylor and Peter Gordon in NoLita are our sole outposts. We need hot physical presence in America showcasing and selling the best of what we create. I want to see theatres of NZ dreams in America.. Let’s get physical on 5th Avenue, Rodeo Drive and South Beach. Weave your kiwi magic deep into American locals. America works on community first, States next.

#9: Seduce Washington

We need to become a Lovemark to Washington. I’m working with the NZ / US Council on securing a Free Trade Agreement. Americans’ capacity to fall in love with kiwis and Aussies is proven. This point needs to be tipped, not negotiated. The jet route through persuasion is seduction. Sure, we must sell steak to Congress. To seal the deal, we have to sell sizzle. Amazing New Zealand touch points to seduce the hawks, delight the doves and tickle the ladies who lunch. Let’s start with a fantastic, pulsing sensual NZ store in DC.

#10: Be Amazingly Relevant

There are two key ways to engage Americans. First, show them you like them. Second, be commercial – it’s always the economy stupid!!

Listen to JFK: ask yourself “What can I do for America?” It’s not just what we send them, it’s what we can do for them. New Zealand can be a learning lab for US companies. A place for US companies to innovate in research and, more importantly, production. We can be a secret site to get prototypes into test markets lightening fast. Many of the world’s top car manufacturers come to Wanaka for winter.

We can also be a base to turn the war on terror into a fight for a better world. That’s the emotional gearshift I gave officials from seven US intelligence agencies. America needs our soft power.

Where to for New Zealand from here? We’re sure not going to prescribe our way through the Gateway. We have to take Americans on an Inspirational journey.

Edward de Bono says: “There’s no point in being brilliant at the wrong thing.” I’m a believer. I have faith in inspired New Zealand individuals and organizations to do the right thing.

The New Zealand Edge is the right thing, the real thing. This is about who we are. Let’s go get em. They’re waiting for us

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