Auckland-based PPR appoints Fairfax publishing veteran Sandra King in principle consultant – strategy position to spearhead new services

Leading Auckland based communication group PPR has hired Fairfax publishing veteran Sandra King as principal consultant – strategy to spearhead a new service, which will provide companies with access to more than 1600 specialist journalists and writers plus digital content specialists.

PPR is breaking new ground to help solve the major content marketing and management challenge faced by New Zealand companies.

Social and digital communications is today’s competitive battleground for businesses and organisations, according to PPR New Zealand executive chairman Sally Haysom.

Says Haysom: “Owning and leading the conversation is the content challenge. It’s about developing compelling, fresh and creative content, repurposed and using an integrated channel approach to reach target audiences.”

The appointment of King reflects PPR’s truly multi-channel communication agency status, working across owned, earned and paid-for content for clients in New Zealand, Australia and across its most recently opened offices in New York, Washington DC and San Francisco.

PPR has accelerated its integration of content creation and distribution across the agency through an exclusive strategic alliance with Australia’s leading content marketing company, King Content.

By introducing King Content to New Zealand, PPR now boasts access to a team of more than 1600 journalists and writers, to complement PPR’s in-house film and video production and distribution arm, and PPR Intelligence, for consumer insights and data evaluation capabilities.

Says Haysom: “Working with the PPR leadership team across the network, Sandra will strengthen our offering by integrating our new capabilities, so clients can depend on PPR no matter the channel required, to create and share their story.”

King’s deep understanding of marketing, the media, publishing and her commercial acumen around the needs of New Zealand chief marketing  officers and communications directors is critical to achieving maximum return of investment when determining the right communication mix for clients.

Says King: “The content strategy, creation and management approach we have designed at PPR is channel agnostic and will get the cut through needed for New Zealand audiences to socialise, source and share information, access news, drive influence and preference, and help them make purchase decisions.

“I am keen to ensure the new content marketing offering, which will be available either as a stand-alone service, or integrated into more traditional public relations offerings including activation, will amplify results and campaign ROI for clients.  Content creation and the management of owned, earned and paid channels are key. It means we can take a piece of content and repurpose it to reach across multiple platforms, including traditional news channels as well as social and digital platforms.  As such it is impactful, extremely cost-effective and measurable.”

Whilst traditional advertising budgets are being squeezed, conversely on average, Australian marketers are allocating *25% of their marketing budgets to content marketing, and *61% of them plan to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months.

Says King: “We don’t see the NZ market trending any differently.  Content Marketing has taken off not unlike how social media has grown exponentially over such a relatively short period of time.  Content strategy, creation and distribution brings together different disparate communication pieces, from core PR functions, client owned platforms, editorial publishing, newer sexier native advertising, through to paid social channels.”

King has most recently come from Fairfax Media, where she successfully headed up group marketing and the integrated commercial interests of the company.  Prior to that she was the general manager of Pacific Magazines NZ. King is well positioned to develop and position content strategy and management as the new currency of marketing in NZ. 

*Source: Content Marketing in Australia: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends Study – Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and The Association for Data-Driven Marketing & Advertising (ADMA)