Te Pūkenga partners with Clemenger BBDO led collective for national launch campaign

Te Pūkenga – New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology – has appointed a Clemenger BBDO led collective to develop its national launch campaign later this year.

Te Pūkenga, is the newly established entity charged with bringing together the country’s 16 Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics as well as Industry Training Organisations (ITOs). Once established, Te Pūkenga will be one of the largest providers of tertiary education in the world.

The collective’s winning, collaborative approach brings together:

– Te Amokura, a Te Ao Māori policy, engagement and strategy agency
– Bright Sunday, a marketing creative agency with expertise in engaging Pacific and underserved audiences
– All is for All, a lived-experience centred disability consultancy and communications agency
– Clemenger BBDO’s behaviour change talents and
– Media expertise from OMD, part of the world’s largest media agency network.

Te Pūkenga director of communications and marketing, Graham Bethune, described the Clemenger-led partnership as critical to successfully introducing the organisation to the New Zealand public: “This is a significant milestone in building a vocational learning system that responds to the needs of a diverse range of learners. We’re a relatively new organisation, that’s been quietly working away to determine how best to organise and design the operating model for a new, integrated national network. As such, we’ve kept a pretty low profile.

“In the second half of 2022, that needs to completely change. From 1 January 2023, all of our more than 250,000 learners will be enrolling in Te Pūkenga, so we need to ensure that they know who we are and that they understand the relationship between Te Pūkenga and the former Institutes, Polytechnics, and ITOs.

“The collaborative partnership that Clemenger BBDO has put together to help us achieve this is particularly exciting and we can’t wait to see the launch campaign come to life.”

Clemenger BBDO managing director, Brett Hoskin said the agency has been building towards this kind of working model for a few years now and we’re excited to work with and learn from our partners to shape new ways of working to serve priority audiences: “A launch as important as this needs a non-traditional communications approach; it needs to find the perfect balance between grassroots engagement and national campaign expertise. We have brought together a group of people from right across Aotearoa, with lived experience, in communities and with real-time insights, community ties and respect.

“They are a seriously cool and knowledgeable collective and will bring a vast breadth of perspective which will be vital to successfully launching Te Pūkenga to New Zealand.

“Everyone is excited about doing different work in different ways, reflecting the diverse needs of all Aotearoa and, importantly, changing the education landscape, particularly for those that are currently missing out.”

The campaign for Te Pūkenga will launch in August 2022.