Ed manages all aspects of The Village Press online communications and has done so since April 2015. This work has hands-on and strategic elements. Generating, scheduling and maintaining TVP Facebook and Twitter channels, and monthly email newsletters is a central focus but more recently Ed has been involved in the establishment and maintenance of key brand relationships with partners like MasterChef NZ, My Food Bag and top New Zealand chefs Al Brown, Ray McVinnie and Peta Mathias.
Ed’s role with TVP is to constantly develop and maintain a comprehensive and integrated online communications strategy across multiple channels and mediums. This means ensuring smooth integration with offline activity such as print, point of sale, events, TV and radio.
Who Are The Village Press?
The Village Press is New Zealand’s largest producer of olive oil. Growing their own groves and buying in fruit from third party growers, TVP harvests, transports, presses, stores, bottles and labels some of the finest oils in New Zealand. From a plant in Hastings, Hawke’s Bay, the TVP product range is available across NZ and further afield in Asia, Australia, Canada, the UK, US and South America. TVP takes an active role in NZ’s export economy as well as generously gifting and providing support to community organisations and initiatives. They’re a great company to be involved with and their stories are dynamic and satisfying to tell.
Key Tasks Carried Out By Ed For TVP
• Managing all aspects of online communications via marketing manager
• Creating custom graphics and image manipulation for social media
• Facebook and Twitter content generation, scheduling and management
• Email newsletter writing, content compilation and reporting results
• Third party relationship development and maintenance
• Website content management and integration with social media
• Writing and supply of narratives for radio, TV and all other channels
• Video and photography content generation
Regular Action-Focused Client Liaison
• Regular communication and task allocation with marketing manager
• Monthly communications meetings with top-level management
• Taking direct commands via management from board level
How Ed Works With TVP
Ed meets with TVP owner-operators Wayne and Maureen Startup once a month to extract the low-down about what’s going on in the olive growing and pressing calendar. This includes looking at TVP touch-points like tastings and events, third party relationships and upcoming news, updates and activity. From there Ed plans a calendar of social media activity, some of which is syndicated on partner websites. Ed also synchronises this planning across email newsletters and the TVP website. Regular activity includes weekly competitions, recipes, product-of-the-week, tastings, health benefits. Alongside this is the constant priority of driving traffic to the TVP website to create sales.
MasterChef New Zealand & My Kitchen Rules (MKR)
A big part of TVP’s business in recent years has been its strategic relationship with MasterChef NZ as a programme partner. TVP supplies olive oil to the show, their products stock the MasterChef NZ pantry and are used extensively by the contestants. Leveraging this opportunity is pivotal to TVP’s business strategy and Ed plays a central role, working closely with MediaWorks TV3. Ed collaborates with account management, and activation and licencing departments, working together to support the show’s online activity. Activity includes joint competitions, promoting show viewership and reinforcement of key messages following each episode. TVP is also a programme sponsor of another competitive cooking reality TV show My Kitchen Rules.
My Food Bag & Nadia Lim
Nadia Lim won MasterChef NZ in 2011 before going on to create one of New Zealand’s fastest growing and most successful food businesses. My Food Bag is a simple solution for busy Kiwis that lets them order a week’s worth of meal ingredients and recipes and have it delivered to their door. TVP oils and other products are regularly featured in MFB’s bags and Nadia Lim is a TVP champion specifically for their Avocado Oil, promoting the health benefits and versatility of the oil. Ed ties this key relationship into the stories and messages it tells on behalf of TVP.
Al Brown, Ray McVinnie & Peta Mathias, Brett McGregor
Integral to TVP’s widespread success and availability is its close relationships with some of New Zealand’s most reputable culinary greats. In partnership, TVP has developed individually influenced products specific to several chefs’ tastes. Al Brown, Ray McVinnie and Peta Mathias each have their own branded ranges of TVP products regularly marketed to target audiences appropriately.
Brett McGregor, winner of NZ’s first MasterChef in 2010, has teamed up with TVP for their Fundraising Programme. The programme rewards schools, sports clubs and community organisations for reaching sales threshholds with a visit and live cooking show from Brett. Those groups then use that as a fundraising opportunity through ticket sales. Ed’s role is to regularly integrate partner chefs’ online activity and promotions to maintain these relationships and leverage advantage from their reputations as thought leaders in the culinary space.
The Food Show – Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch
The Food Show is a series of events held annually in NZ’s three largest centres. These shows are the ultimate opportunity for TVP to showcase to and meet their client base face-to-face, share olive oil product samples and celebrate food, produce and horticultural excellence in NZ. Ed’s tasks for The Food Show include generating buzz prior to the events, running competitions for giveaway tickets, and processing and posting content live from the shows. Ed also promotes the various events at the shows TVP sponsors including The Whirlpool Cooking Theatre, once again featuring some of NZ’s top chefs using TVP products to cook up a storm!
Jimmy Boswell & Jonathan Spice
There are many other TVP partners and relationships that require regular, consistent communication and relationship maintenance. Weekly, the Facebook and Twitter feeds feature a ‘recipe of the week’ from Waikato Chef Jimmy Boswell, each using a well-paired TVP product. Also, the weekend sees Saturday Spice, recipes developed by spice extraordinaire Jonathan Spice, the mastermind responsible for injecting flavours into TVP’s range of infused olive oils.
Into The Future With TVP & Ed
Looking into the future as Ed continues to work closely with TVP, projects are on track to get more wide reaching programmes bedded in, established and to develop even more opportunities. New Zealand’s food industry and the demand for high quality products shows no signs of slowing down. For TVP, expansion both in NZ and abroad will continue in volume and breadth.
Ed will be with TVP every step of the way ensuring all their communications channels are working are hard as they are. Online channels will be integral to making sure target markets and audiences are aware and informed of TVP’s activity, with an upward trend in sales always front of mind. Offline channels will support that growth, activity along with customer and partner touch-points. And Ed will be ensuring every opportunity is taken and every chance to spread the TVP message across New Zealand, and abroad.