As one agency source told Media Insider in 2023: \u201cEveryone wants a bank. They spend so much, and it\u2019s stable money, even in an economic downturn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Westpac is one of New Zealand’s top four banks. Photo \/ Alex Burton<\/p>\n
Westpac is a major, multimillion-dollar account – in 2020, for example, it invested more than $20m in advertising in New Zealand, and was listed by Nielsen as one of the top-five biggest advertisers in Australia in 2025.<\/p>\n
The new Westpac-Goldilocks deal, announced today, starts on April 1, with major work on the horizon.<\/p>\n
Westpac says Goldilocks was created specially to help the bank accelerate a refreshed brand strategy. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe way New Zealanders think about their money is changing rapidly. Expectations are higher, competition is more intense, and brands are judged not just on what they say, but how consistently they show up,\u201d said Westpac chief marketing officer Sarah Williams.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith that in mind, we needed more than a traditional agency partner. We wanted a team that integrates across our business \u2013 helping turn our brand into a genuine competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goldilocks – the name obviously stems from the fairytale character and was chosen for the mantra \u201cjust right\u201d – will not be attached to any other brand.<\/p>\n
Practically, it means the Westpac and Goldilocks teams will work together much more closely day to day on projects, with high visibility on marketing projects as they evolve.<\/p>\n
Often, agencies and clients work at arm\u2019s length, with lots of \u201cta-da\u201d moments and \u201cagencies sometimes showing up like they have the magical answer, and they have to talk their client into taking it on\u201d, Goldilocks chief creative experience officer Dan Wright told Media Insider.<\/p>\n
Wright and his business partner Ahmad Salim left Colenso in 2021 for Deloitte and uncovered what they believe to be a critical formula for success for agencies and clients.<\/p>\n
Westpac chief marketing officer Sarah Williams and Goldilocks chief creative experience officer Dan Wright.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found very quickly that there was a different way, and that way was to work more collaboratively with clients who, as you can see with Sarah and her team, have amazing marketers with incredible track records after being inside ad agencies. <\/p>\n
\u201cWorking much more collaboratively with those teams got us to much better places much faster. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a big part of this \u2013 taking down those hand-offs, barriers, back and forths, and building a team that can be much closer to the business. Hopefully, we can feel like we\u2019re part of those conversations and make much more of a difference.\u201d <\/p>\n
Williams told Media Insider: \u201cNobody likes ta-da moments. Ta-da moments just put so much pressure on both parties.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, The Warehouse has paused most of its marketing and advertising spend, while it reviews the best way forward. <\/p>\n
Westpac’s Black Friday Hangover campaign, from late 2024. Photo \/ Westpac<\/p>\n
Williams believes it\u2019s never been more vital for a brand to market itself. While efficiency was important, the human connection was equally vital.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an industry, we\u2019ve been obsessed with efficiency for a decade or more. <\/p>\n
\u201cHumans are still humans. We don\u2019t evolve that quickly, and actually being able to be emotionally resonant with an audience is still, in my opinion, absolutely key to success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright said: \u201cI think we\u2019re seeing a kind of global recalibration back to emotion, back to where humans feel things, and we actually need to appeal to those emotions as brands to be resonant with them, to stay with them, to be memorable. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd yes, we need to be super-efficient about knowing when somebody is in market, and we need to contact them with the right message and encourage them to buy from us. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think the pendulum just needs to settle nicely in the middle rather than kind of keep going side to side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Omnicom\u2019s dominance<\/p>\n
Westpac\u2019s move is a further sign of Omnicom\u2019s dominance with New Zealand banks\u2019 advertising accounts.<\/p>\n
Omnicom companies will now have five of the top nine banks, although ANZ is still reviewing whether it retains Omnicom-owned PHD.<\/p>\n
Omnicom has previously said that the accounts are all strictly separated, with tight confidentiality. <\/p>\n
Both Williams and Wright are excited about the new Goldilocks agency – it would be nimble and able to adjust to meet Westpac\u2019s needs as required, but it also had the strength of the Omnicom Group behind it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe model gives us the vital ability to draw on specialist talent across insights and data, earned and owned media, technology, and production without the weight of a traditional structure,\u201d said Williams.<\/p>\n
She told Media Insider that the organisations doing well from a marketing perspective were those getting \u201cevery single part of the puzzle right\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re looking well beyond communications. They\u2019re looking more at what the customer experience is. They\u2019re really opening up all the bits of the organisation and going, \u2018where can we be more consistent and how can we make this better?\u2019 <\/p>\n
The Westpac brand is also commonly associated with Auckland’s rescue helicopter. Photo \/ supplied<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like the traditional agency models aren\u2019t necessarily set up to do that. If you think about the traditional agency model, and how it shows up, it really is more communications-based from a marketing perspective. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s just … we need to be better.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really looking for some people who would challenge us, that would almost hold the mirror up to us at times and go, \u2018Hey, what you\u2019re doing here is really good. We think we should pour some oil on this. Hey, but what you\u2019re doing over here maybe isn\u2019t so good. What can we be doing better?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cReally kind of challenge us in a way that I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve experienced before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wright, one of New Zealand\u2019s leading creatives, spoke of his time at Deloitte.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe needed to step out of this bubble and learn about what our clients and their businesses are, what are the things that are holding them back, what\u2019s getting in the way of the ideas that we would put forward as an agency, and they wouldn\u2019t get traction,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd find out how we can be a real kind of growth partner for a client.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said there were some important discoveries.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirstly, we found out our clients didn\u2019t think about advertising nearly as much as we hoped they did. And we also found out that everybody loves ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was also important to translate those ideas for different parts of an organisation\u2019s leadership \u2013 a conversation with the chief financial officer might be different from the one with the sustainability officer or the people officer.<\/p>\n
Wright believed Westpac would be one of the best brands to work on in the coming years. \u201cIt\u2019s a custom-built agency for a specific culture, for a specific set of needs and a specific ambition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams paid tribute to Publicis and its agencies Saatchi & Saatchi, Spark Foundry and Digitas NZ for its Westpac work over the past four years, and in particular the last 18 months since she started at the bank.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have done an amazing job for us. Massive kudos to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand\u2019s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As one agency source told Media Insider in 2023: \u201cEveryone wants a bank. They spend so much, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[14882,1032,3041,146362,6326,138,1656,1887,178547,2936,1073,1432,117,111,139,69,71299,64675,810,17239,102],"class_list":["post-332789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-accounts","tag-advertising","tag-agency","tag-bespoke","tag-biggest","tag-business","tag-company","tag-countrys","tag-goldilocks","tag-insider","tag-media","tag-model","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-shakes","tag-shifting","tag-up","tag-westpac","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}