Mark Knoff-Thomas unveiled as the 2025 PRINZ Communicator of the Year

At the annual PRINZ Year-End celebration, Mark Knoff-Thomas was unveiled as the recipient of the Communicator of the Year award for 2025.

PRINZ partnered with Streem to relaunch the Communicator of the Year award this year after a period of post COVID dormancy.

This award sets out to recognise someone outside the public relations industry who has demonstrated excellent communication. PRINZ members were called to nominate someone who has sparked conversation or change, embodies the values of the PRINZ Code of Ethics and has inspired a ripple effect.

The nominations were narrowed down to three finalists, Knoff-Thomas, CEO of Newmarket Business Association; Morgan Maw, Founder of Boring Oat Milk; and Nathan Speir, Litigation Partner at Meredith Connell. These finalists were then voted on by verified PRINZ members.

Knoff-Thomas’s nomination, by Kelly Bennett of One Plus One Communications, highlighted his strategic fluency, credible transparency and respect for the fourth estate as the key attributes that make him a great communicator. As CEO, Knoff-Thomas advocates for local businesses, regularly meeting with ministers to ensure their perspectives are heard. He has contributed to the design and rollout of the Escape Hide Tell campaign which educates the public on actions to take during an armed offender attack in a public place. He has built strong communications channels for his community such as the NEWMARKET magazine, the Newmarket Vox podcast and his regular appearances on RNZ’s The Panel.

Knoff-Thomas demonstrated strong alignment with the PRINZ Code of Ethics when addressing a misleading reputational error earlier this year. After providing a brief comment for an NZ Herald article condemning a man covertly filming women, the paper’s print edition published a photo of Knoff-Thomas under the headline “Intimate recordings of women”. Knoff-Thomas demonstrated honesty, advocacy and independence when calling out this practice on LinkedIn, sparking a debate about editorial responsibility and libel with over 400 comments. This resulted in a printed apology from the NZ Herald which shows how Knoff-Thomas’s communication inspired a ripple effect and sparked conversation and change.

To announce the Communicator of the Year award, local PRINZ members gathered at Grand Millenium Hotel for an afternoon of drinks, nibbles and reflection on the past year. Supported by PRINZ’s partner Streem, the focus of the afternoon’s presentation was Podcasting. Brainchild’s Angela March and Ann Graham shared their insights on using podcasts as an effective PR tool and presented a live demonstration of how public relations professionals can make use of this medium. Dom Harvey and Jay-Jay Feeney of PodLab attended to present Knoff-Thomas with his award. They commented: “It was an absolute honour to be invited today to present the PRINZ Communicator of the Year. We’ve had a bit to do with PRINZ this year, it’s a fantastic organisation and it’s wonderful to be aligned with them. A lot of our success personally has been off the back of good PR, so we love the PR industry.”

Upon accepting his certificate, Knoff-Thomas said: “I am incredibly flattered to have won this award. I get a lot of help from a lot of people, and I have the privilege of representing a very complex town centre environment. I’m glad that what has happened through the course of this year has sparked some conversations and people are taking interest, having conversations around perceptions and fair media portrayal. I think underlining all of that is the importance of good PR because that’s vital.”

PRINZ is delighted to have reignited this award with the support of Streem. They would like to congratulate finalists Morgan Maw and Nathan Spier and celebrate Knoff-Thomas as the 2025 Communicator of the Year.

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