Curiousity and change at The Worthies

This article originally appeared on Stoppress - https://stoppress.co.nz/awards/curiousity-and-change-at-the-worthies-2026/

A small but mighty – and certainly very worthy – group of communications and marketing leaders gathered in the Grand Hall of Parliament this week for the first Worthies Conference and Awards.

The venue felt fitting, elevating the significance of what we were celebrating – work that drives impact and creates positive societal change.

Designed specifically for public sector and not-for-profit work, The Worthies is the brainchild of Paul Bowden and Vanessa Sheldrick. If you come from television and content, which I do, you’ll know Sheldrick for her tireless efforts on the Promax Awards in New Zealand and internationally. 

As I pointed out to her, her hair is much straighter now than it was back in TV days. A shift perhaps from the looser, wilder ride of media to the slightly straighter lines of the public sector? Who knows. It did seem worth noting.

Making meaningful change

Promax has always been a must-go for those working in television and content promotion. The intention is that The Worthies will become a similar must-attend event for those working in the public sector and impact space across communications, advertising, public relations and engagement.

It’s for people who are looking to make meaningful change through their work – and who work really hard to do so.

“We really don’t need another awards night,” an attendee says to me over coffee. “But we do need this one.”

It’s a cliché to talk about a room full of changemakers – but that’s exactly what it was.

A room of professionals, trying to make change, often against difficult odds, with tighter budgets, and in a world with ever-increasing channels and fragmented audiences.

Celebrating complex campaigns

Behaviour change is complex. So the work is worthy of being spotlighted, celebrated and explored.

It made for an interesting day of reflection. Attendees pondered: what was each piece trying to address? What creative techniques were used? And, most importantly – did it work? Is there evidence of behaviour change? How do we show that?

The issues being addressed were as wide-ranging as the communities they served: roaming dogs, drowning prevention, weather warnings, cyclone-ravaged communities and road networks, public transport uptake, Māori ward representation and voter participation.

The solutions and approaches varied just as greatly.

Passion and intent

Grassroots efforts included content creator Te Aorere Pēwhairangi (Ngāti Porou), who walked the length of State Highway 35 as a hīkoi to raise funds and awareness after Cyclone Gabrielle ravaged his hometown of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast. He raised more than $300,000 in the process for his community and local iwi. It was a reminder that, should the passion and intent be there, you can pick up your phone to make change.

There were larger-scale campaigns too. This included the now internationally recognised effort by Motion Sickness to position New Zealand, awkwardly but very memorably, as the “capital of herpes”.

‘The Best Place in the World to Have Herpes‘ was a campaign that couldn’t be missed and it won Campaign of the Year as a result.

Motion Sickness was also named Creative Agency of the Year, securing five Golds and one Silver.

Strengthening communities

The breadth of organisations and functions represented was interesting. Marketing teams, advertising agencies, councils, publicists, education providers, designers, content creators – and the police (the force were there in force, it has to be said).

Auckland Council, Taranaki Regional Council and Gisborne District Council were all among the winners, demonstrating the opportunity presented through communications to strengthen communities.

Speaker Seamus Boyer reiterated this point. Every year Seamus trawls through more than 630 New Zealand council and government social media pages so that we don’t have to (thank you Seamus!) to bring us some pretty interesting insights.

Among them: councils are doing some genuinely good things with social – reducing channel clutter, improving their approach and injecting creativity. Fan or not, I think we can all agree that Mayor Wayne Brown is absolutely smashing it in the social space.

Effective communications

Gisborne District Council’s ‘Tō Reo, Tō Mana’ was a call to action encouraging participation in local body elections and the Māori wards referendum. It leveraged the humour and authenticity of Pēwhairangi, who had shared his own story with us earlier in the day.

I was impressed to see police commissioner Richard Chambers appear on stage in full uniform. He was there to support the work of Jess Bovey and her team at NZ Police as they accepted the award for Marketing and Communications Team of the Year.

It provided recognition from the top that effective communications is not peripheral to public service, but central to it. And if the police commissioner publicly acknowledging the role communications plays in maintaining positive relationships with the public, in a room full of communications leaders, isn’t genius public relations in itself, then I don’t know what is. Thank you, commissioner.

Begin with curiousity

Good work begins with curiosity – and one of the things that made The Worthies different, perhaps because of the more intimate crowd, were the conversations throughout the day. People weren’t just politely networking, but actively discussing the work – who was trying to solve what problem, what techniques were being used and what could be learned.

Nick McFarlane of Semiotic (literally meaning the study of signs and sign-using behaviour) spoke about status shift.

And I, on behalf of our client Water Safety New Zealand, enjoyed talking with him during a break about the status shift we need to make to make lifejackets a sign of strength among adult men (who too often don’t wear them and drown as a result). Men… please sort your shit out.

Anyway, I digress.

Brave creative thinking

My favourite work of the day was actually a campaign from Auckland Council addressing the issue of roaming dogs through the perspective of a kuia afraid to walk to the shops to get milk. It won Gold – and rightly so. I noticed the work some time ago and genuinely felt concerned that the kuia had to go without milk for her tea because she was too scared of roaming dogs to walk to the shops. The work made me see and understand the issue in a way that I simply hadn’t done before. And that’s what it’s all about.

Shingy – a wild-haired “Digital Prophet” who has graced the pages of Adweek, Wired and Forbes – opened and closed the event. He spoke to the need for brave creative thinking to drive behaviour change and why brand still matters. Yes please. More of that.

All in all, for a first-year event, The Worthies seemed to quickly find its place and proved itself worthy of a spot on the awards calendar. Congratulations to all – and to the organisers. I am proud to have been there for the start of your story.

(On a personal note, I wouldn’t be a communications professional if I didn’t take this opportunity to communicate that These Guys I Know picked up a Silver for Consultancy of the Year – an unexpected bonus. But, seeing peers reference our work on Manu Champs and Heavyweight during presentations, not knowing we were in the room, was an added buzz for me!)