Four of New Zealand’s top chefs and food writers are being brought together by Paper Plus for a VIP evening of entertainment and foodie banter. The canapé-and-bubbles-fuelled evening will be hosted by food-lover and Paper Plus books spokesperson Kerre Woodham, with the panelists discussing everything food-related about their latest books and favourite recipes.

In the lead up to Christmas, this grand foodie gathering will offer a bounty of inspiration for entertaining at home with family, friends and loved ones over the festive season.

Well known family cook Allyson Gofton, beloved by New Zealanders as the former host of TV One’s popular Food in a Minute, will be discussing her book Cook, which features her favourite recipes for entertaining at home.

Wellington’s own Martin Bosley, Listener food columnist and owner-chef of restaurant Martin Bosley’s at the Port Nicholson Yacht Club (2007 winner of Cuisine Restaurant of the Year) will be talking about his book Martin Bosley Cooks. The recipes are designed “for the home chef who doesn’t have hours to spend on making a splash at dinner parties or even a work night. I want others to enjoy that feeling of comfort and generosity that comes from preparing good food for others.”

Alongside Allyson and Martin will be Sophie Gray, made famous by her Destitute Gourmet philosophy of serving up tasty, fashionable and healthy home-cooked meals on a modest budget. The 10th anniversary edition of the Destitute Gourmet cookbook, Stunning Food from Small Change (centred around family, friends and good food) has just been published, and at the VIP event Sophie will share how she encourages home cooks to innovate and improvise, and shop smart – what you really need in your pantry, and what you can easily do without.

And the fourth guest, cookbook author and long-time Cuisine food editor Lauraine Jacobs, will be discussing the new book she has edited, A Treasury of New Zealand Baking, to which Allyson and Martin, along with more of the country’s top cooks and food writers, have contributed recipes. The book is being released to coincide with Breast Cancer Action Month, with all royalties going to the Breast Cancer Foundation of New Zealand.

“As we are coming into the Christmas holiday season, with its many opportunities to be with family and friends and enjoy delicious, seasonal homemade food, we thought it was timely to bring these great cooks and food writers together for an entertaining evening of canapés, bubbly and food talk,” Paper Plus Group Marketing Manager Lyle Hastings says.

“They all have great recipes and recommendations for fun, food-filled gatherings with loved ones. Kerre is vocal about her love of good food, so she will bring out the best in our guests.”

Details:
Date: 27 November 2009
PAPER PLUS BOOKS & BUBBLES FAB FOODIES
Date: Friday 27 November, 2009
Time: 6pm arrival for 6.30pm start. Approximate duration: 3 hours.

This is the final metropolitan Paper Plus Books & Bubbles event for the year, and will be hosted in the food capital, Wellington, with a great line-up of authors talking about their latest books and their love of all things food. The speakers are Allyson Gofton, former Food in a Minute host and author of Cook, Wellington’s own Martin Bosley, renowned chef and author of Martin Bosley Cooks, Destitute Gourmet Sophie Gray, whose latest book is Stunning Food from Small Change, and Cuisine food editor Lauraine Jacobs, who is releasing A Treasury of New Zealand Baking. Food-lover and Paper Plus books spokesperson Kerre Woodham will keep the audience entertained and the conversation flowing, and guests will enjoy a complimentary glass of Morton Estate bubbles on arrival with sumptuous canapés from Regal Salmon, with the chance to win a fabulous $500 hamper from L’Oréal Paris. Each guest will also get a goody bag to take home. A fabulous foodie night out not to be missed!

Location: Duxton Hotel, 170 Wakefield Street, Wellington
Tickets: $40 each and available from all Wellington Paper Plus stores or online at www.booksandbubbles.co.nz, with proceeds going to Cure Kids.
More about the panelists:

Allyson Gofton has been cooking for New Zealanders for over 20 years. During her varied career she has assisted Graham Kerr both here and abroad, and became the Chief Executive Officer of the New Zealand Nutrition Foundation. She was also Food Editor for Next magazine for many years and appeared nightly on our screens as presenter for Food In a Minute. Allyson has written 19 cookbooks, including the best-selling Bake and After Work Cookbook. Allyson is a working mum with two young children and a very busy husband who love her home cooking and baking.

Martin Bosley is one of New Zealand’s most highly-regarded chefs, and the owner of the Port Nicholson Yacht Club restaurant on the waterfront at Oriental Bay in Wellington. The restaurant won the coveted Cuisine Restaurant of the Year award in 2007. He writes a weekly column in the Listener and another in the Air New Zealand magazine Kia Ora.

Campaign Overview

Kim Crossman and Ido Drent celebrate with young friends after finishing the Fit2Fly adventure course. Image courtesy of the Western Leader, By Luke Parker

This July the school holidays were a buzz with excitement over the Botany Town Centre and LynnMall Shopping Centre Fit2Fly adventure course. In conjunction with the Foundation for Youth Development (FYD), the malls help launch the Fit2Fly campaign for the second year running.

The adventure course was set up to encourage kids’ activity and to put their skills to test, all for a good cause; the $1 entry fee went directly to the FYD’s Project K programme. 

The two week campaign gained positive media attention, especially with some celebrities who showed their support.  Studio 2 and Shortland Street stars Faye Smythe, Kiel McNaughton, Kim Crossman and Ido Drent all tested their adventure skills as did sporting stars from the NZ Breakers Acadmey and Steelers Counties Manukau.

Results

The Fit2Fly adventure course drew crowds of excited school holiday children; over 2700 children tested their skills on the specially built course and $2900 was raised for FYD’s Project K Programme. 

Sunrise TV included four live crossover weather segments, several ad-lib presentations and interviews from Botany Town Centre, concluding with Josh Aston giving it his all on the course. 

The NZ Women’s Weekly featured a lovely story about Shortland Street’s Faye and Kiel’s involvement in the campaign.

Howick & Pakuranga Times, Eastern Courier and the Western Leader were just some of the community papers who covered the Fit2Fly campaign with articles and great action images of children out on the course. 

Fit2Fly also received great radio coverage with the ZM Black Thunders visiting Botany Town Centre on two different occasions, the two Robbies from The Breeze testing out the Lynn Mall course and Desiree Clark securing an interview on Big FM. 

We also gained great online media coverage hitting both social and educational sites.  The holiday event could be found on Eventfinder and on supporting radio station’s websites, Shortland Street’s network as well as school and educational websites.

Manu Vatuvei and students from Ranui Primary school share a good book. Image courtesy of Photo Sport

In June 2009 Konica Minolta together with the Vodafone Warriors launched Rugby League Reads in Auckland.

The AC team was challenged to show kids that ‘reading is cool’ and to encourage them to learn that reading is a valuable life skill whether they dream of becoming a rugby league player, doctor, fire fighter or dancer.

Children were invited to write a short story or poem about their favourite Vodafone Warriors player for the chance to win a reading session at an Auckland library with some team members. There were four select libraries who hosted RLR 2009, a big thank you to Pakuranga, Waitakere, Glenfield and Manurewa libraries.

Konica Minolta received an overwhelming response from 50 Auckland schools and over 500 individual entries; unfortunately, they could only select eight winning schools.

In addition to the library readings, RLR 2009 included a surprise school visit from Manu Vatuvei. Dropping by Room 11 at St Thomas’s school, winner Zac Chan was presented a signed Warriors shirt by Vatuvei.

Results

The local community newspapers were very supportive and super keen on the involvement of the Vodafone Warriors. We achieved excellent coverage in the East and Bays Courier, Howick and Pakuranga Times, North Shore Times and the Western Leader.

The Vodafone Warriors Community Ambassador Manu Vatuvei was especially appealing and gained coverage in the New Zealand Herald on two occasions; Warriors fire young literary imaginations and Warriors at school spread the words.

Select Vodafone Warriors were also interviewed on radio; Kevin Locke and Manu Vatuvei featured on Newstalk ZB with Mike Hosking discussing their views on literacy and joking about each others reading skills.
Brent Jameson was interviewed on both BigFM and Radio Rhema regarding the RLR programme.

Online media also played a role on helping generate awareness about RLR with articles featured on times.co.nz, nzherald.co.nz, stuff.co.nz, infonews.co.nz and voxy.co.nz

Experienced PR Account Manager Role

You will see from our online newsroom that at Alexander Communications we are all about results. Consequently we have many national clients and run a busy Auckland office. 

Our business continues to grow at pace and we seek an experienced, self motivated and client focussed senior  account manager  to work with us in our Public Relations firm in Newmarket.

Our ideal candidate will already be working in a public relations agency (with at least 3 years experience in an agency setting) and will have strong media relationships and an ability to build rapport with our ambitious and driven clients. You will also be open to learning about how traditional and online PR can influence the client brief in a positive and strategic way. See some of our case studies for how we like to work.
 
With a great track record in achieving results for clients, you will be an organised person and a strategic thinker. Ideally you will have a flair for writing and be able to generate great ideas which result in coverage for our clients – yes our clients want it all!
 
You will present well to clients and always be looking for opportunities and know your way around a computer. 
 
No day will be the same. Apart from this, a professional approach and a “can do” attitude will be a key attribute we are looking for.
 
A sense of humour would be a bonus. If this is you, pop us an e-mail with a cover letter through our website.

We look forward to hearing from you

The Team at AC

About Alexander Communications

                    What do clients expect from a PR consultancy? 

Building media profile? Demonstrating opinion leadership in the media and illustrating industry leadership?Movement of KPI’s such as website metrics, new members, new client acquisition, sales , buzz, connecting them authentically with internal and external audiences?

We find that apart from these stated objectives that introducing one client to another is a highly valued experience – especially where there are potential commercial , idea sharing or mutual interest opportunities that perhaps only you would recognise.

It’s always about the commercial objectives.

Being able to understand and translate their corporate strategy and commercial objectives is a must in todays complex and highly demanding “recessionery” envirionment.

So setting up a coffee between like-minded people in complimentary industries or with skill sets that can add value to each other should definately be on your agenda. It’s a way to ‘pay it forward’ and ensure that your clients are benefitting from quality 1-1 profile opportunities as well as the larger scale conference speaking and multi-media profile building exercises that we do.

So, in whatever consultancy you operate in whether that be brand, marketing, online, PR or business strategy consider having “introductions” as a specific weekly goal.

Introducing clients to each other in a targetted and appropriate way presents commercial opportunities beyond the usual cocktail hour 30 person talk-fest.

PublishMe was created in May 2007 by Jane and Graeme Beals who established Zenith Publishing Group in New Plymouth 17 years ago. They identified self-publishing as a growth area due to the impact of digital technology and the internet on traditional publishing methods.

We interviewed Graeme for the nzherald.co.nz Inspired People blog last year and discovered what a wonderful business model he and Jane had.

The internet has made self-publishing much more exciting and accessible. With PublishMe’s wider goal of lifting the quality of self -published books, we could not resist working with them to tell more people about it.

Jane’s opinion piece Note to Self : Write my Book featured in the online Herald business section and was very well received and republished on getfrank.co.nz , grownups.co.nz and livemygoals.com.

Jane was invited to talk on TV1 ‘s Breakfast programme after this. She presented a great case for why folk who wish to write a book, whether for pleasure or for business – should self-publish. 98% of unsolicited manuscripts are rejected. PublishMe received unprecedented hits to their website after that interview adding around 300 new sign-ups to publishme.co.nz.

Jane has also been interviewed on Kiwi FM – Radio Wammo, EasiMix, NewstalkZB as well as having been featured in the Herald On Sunday and quoted in Unlimited and NZ Marketing magazines. NZ Business mentioned PublishMe in a review of ‘Deliver’ – Ray White NZ CEO Carey Smith’s first book, which he chose to self-publish and was pleased with the end result.

We introduced Carey to PublishMe, and he continues to be a good advocate for the business. He mentions PublishMe in his media where appropriate.

Of course we share their ongoing story to interested online communities on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

It does not end there. Jane and Graeme will continue to benefit from the growing numbers of businesspeople writing a book. Their website now caters for this growing sector .  Fred Stewart, Dr Tom Mulholland and Fiona Christie are also recent ‘featured” business authors.

Enquiries continue to grow. Many people are realising they have a book inside them. The Sunday Star-Times Magazine Sunday is currently interviewing a few of PublishMe authors.

This online community will continue to benefit from the confluence of new technology (like the Oce printer- an Amazon.com like super-printer), the world-wide-web as well as the growing feeling that self publishing is a viable, quality option for authors.

Thankyou YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and WordPress for making self-publishing accessible, easy and the creating confidence in authors of today to persue this route.

In an article in the online National Business Review, Auckland PR outfit Alexander Communications has picked up a trio of new accounts.

It’s won Konica Minolta, Brokers’ Independent Group (BIG) and Solutions Financial Services accounts.

Alexander Communications director Kate Alexander said each of the accounts will entail a strong focus on business to business communications.

She sees the tri-fold coup as a strong start to the year for her firm, amid many reports of redundancies and tough going.

“We’re proud that we’re continuing to grow at around 40% [2008-2009 financial year] and we expect the curve to continue,” she said. .. more

New Skills in PR? John Bell wrote in his blog Digital Influence Mapping Project about the “ideal practitioner of the future.” A kind of idealistic view of the skills and the person required for the new communications environment.

Skills

• Create an integrated marketing and communications strategy
• Deploy live ‘listening posts’ online and offline
• Design and deploy an advanced search engine optimization program
• Plan and run a new media relations program inclusive of head-of-the-tail and long tail “media”
• Identify & engage with influencers online and offline
• Manage communities
• Integrate new technologies into their own lives
• Model measurement and performance metrics including new “engagement” metrics
• Run quick pilot programs and evaluate on-the-fly
• Train staff and clients continuously

(What am I leaving out)?

I would add to this that to really communicate effectively in the New Zealand context on behalf of clients, communications advisors need to have, or have access to the traditional PR skills as well.

The two different skill bases (with some overlap) make for a winning combination. Would you add any skills to this list in the New Zealand Context?