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Describing Jane King as passionate is an understatement. Every day, she channels her love for creativity, strategy, and problem-solving into her role as the Brand Lead at One NZ. Outside of that, she has recently launched Creators Aotearoa, which connects creatives with not-for-profits. Jane’s boundless enthusiasm is truly contagious, and we loved dissecting her perspective on corporate comms and a whole lot more.
Q: Kia ora Jane, can you tell us about your career journey? What led you to where you are now at One NZ?
Gosh, this is a trip down memory lane. I guess we could start from when I was studying. I always wanted to be in film as a director or in the editing room. I then found advertising, and I think it was a slightly safer space to play in as the daughter of two accountants and a perfect merging of commerce and creativity.
I then had a client, whom I really looked up to—and still do—approach me and ask if I wanted to join the “dark side” (marketing). I said yes, and that was One NZ (formerly Vodafone.) I haven’t left since, nearly eight years ago.
I love being part of a problem right through to the solution, which is what you get on the client side or in marketing. It’s a good dose of creativity and strategy.
Q: What are some of the biggest career challenges you have faced along the way?
I think my answer is not just about being a woman but about being a person with opinions. That’s sometimes a really hard thing to navigate in the workplace. I’m a person who leans into debates and can find passion in almost anything. Communication is about people by nature. So, some trust your working style, while others are not that inclined. I’m conscious of finding a balance between adding value and just adding noise to situations, and I'm almost obsessed with finding the balance between learning other styles of working with people while staying true to who I am and backing myself.
Q: What career moment have you learned the most from?
Yeah, this question is easy for me. It was definitely the moment we changed from Vodafone to One NZ.
I think working on a complete brand change is a once-in-a-lifetime for many marketers. We were able to plan from an owned/earned/paid perspective, which was incredibly satisfying from both a strategic and creative point of view. We were no longer owned by a big global corporation and were becoming a Kiwi business, so we were able to sit at the table and ask, ‘How do we celebrate this?’
And that’s how One Good Kiwi came about, from this ability and space to make decisions that celebrate Kiwi business and create something more meaningful and sustainable for our community.
I also learned so much from One Good Kiwi specifically. Developing an app and a website from scratch and balancing the intersection between a digital innovation product and corporate giving was a huge moment for me. I loved every part of it.
Q: What’s your view on corporate responsibility and community engagement? What do brands do well (and terribly) in this space?
I love this question, but obviously, it’s a big one.
What I’ve learned is to stop trying to dabble in every lane. You could apply that to almost anything in the comms space, but when it comes to ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), choose your lane, then double down on it. Become experts in it, and invest in the community surrounding that space. When I became a mum, somebody said to me, ‘You can’t do everything as a parent. Choose something and get good at it, and if you end up being good at multiple things, then great, but choose one.
I think that advice applies really well to ESG. Nike is a great example of this. They have diversity written into their mission statement, and they repeatedly push the boundaries in that space from an advertising point of view. From a local perspective, Hyundai completely stands for local innovation, and they execute it through their whole business at every touch point.
So, stay in your lane, you'll become known for it, and people will trust you more.
Q: Has that advice factored into your role at One NZ and your work building the One Good Kiwi initiative?
I've become quite passionate about the idea that you should completely own a space before you have the right to have a voice in it. I feel confident in acknowledging where we should and shouldn’t play as a business, whether that reflects our personal and individual values or not. For example, if you don’t have a commitment in a bigger strategic sense to te ao Māori and it isn’t embedded into your business, then you should be very conscious about whether you should be sponsoring something related to Māori Language Week.
With One Good Kiwi, our approach ensures that each of the charities we represent receives sustainable, ongoing funding. This means there is a lot of rigour around how many times a charity gets to be on One Good Kiwi and what kind of charities we represent. It’s not just about being a corporation chucking a whole lot of cash to charities to benefit our reputation.
Q: We know you’re passionate about connecting creators with the community. Can you tell us more about Creators Aotearoa and the idea behind it?
It’s a side project I’ve just launched that is very much inspired by the work I do with One Good Kiwi. It’s about connecting Kiwi not-for-profits with creatives and, in turn, linking people who are often not so good at marketing with those who are not so good at giving.
After working with around 90 charities at One NZ, it became glaringly obvious how epic these humans are. They’re legends in their own right but often kind of suck at marketing and creative. It was frustrating as a marketer to sit back and watch when I knew in my blood that creativity can solve so many of life’s problems.
Q: Is there a piece of work you’ve seen recently, whether yours or someone else’s, that has effectively used brand storytelling to engage the community?
I can’t not mention our (One NZ's) latest work - Let’s Get Connected. The world didn’t get to see the process, but the creative came to life from such a beautiful space. It came from a really deep insight into connection and who we are as a Telco and Kiwis. That turned into this story that was actually informed by a real history of Scottish people coming into New Zealand as immigrants. It’s stirred up a bit of controversy in the media. It’s been fascinating to watch the campaign self-moderate.
Another campaign that springs to mind is Rep Your Suburb from Motion Sickness. It was such a great example of a brand and an agency knowing the audience and pushing the boundaries of what is expected. Instead of just marketing to Ponsonby, for example, they went deep and looked into overlooked communities and pushed what was expected in a really edgy, viral, and creative way.
Q: From your perspective, what will be the biggest challenge for authentic corporate responsibility over the next few years?
This answer applies to the present and the future, but in my eyes, it’s all about transparency. I think the more transparent companies can be —from the way they engage with their community to the way they’re applying ESG—the more likely they will be to succeed.
It’s risky, but with more eyes on what you’re doing, transparency will be the game changer, and audiences will demand it rightfully.
