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Flag the old New Zealand flag

28 November, 2015

Flag the old New Zealand flag

Wellington company Shott Beverages says the cost of New Zealand retaining a flag virtually identical to Australia’s far outweighs the cost of changing it.

CEO David Shearer conducted an informal survey last week while at the Korea Cafe Show in Seoul, one of the biggest coffee products shows in Asia, and found zero identification of New Zealand’s flag among non-English speakers.

“At our stand, we had the New Zealand flag displayed prominently and via my interpreter I surveyed dozens of non-English speakers each of the four days. Not one person identified the flag as New Zealand’s,” Mr Shearer said.

“Everyone is focusing on what it’s costing to change the flag, but $26 million in one-off costs has to be balanced against hundreds of millions of dollars that is spent every year advertising New Zealand where Australia gains much of the benefit.”

“As a business, we always try to leverage Brand New Zealand overseas. This is done through using the flag to tie our product to our beautiful country.”

“Until the current flag debate, we had never asked overseas consumers about the flag, so I thought it would be interesting to ask non-English speaking consumers at random what country that flag represents – and the majority said Australia and the rest didn’t know.”

“Not one person identified it as New Zealand.”

“We sit there and hand out 50,000 samples of New Zealand fruit syrups and potentially 49,000 of those consumers are thinking ‘what an amazing Australian product’.”

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“That’s 49,000 who had a personal experience with a New Zealand product at a cost to a New Zealand business, who then associate that great experience to Australia.”

“The debate around the cost of the referendum is valid, but government agencies such as Tourism New Zealand are spending many millions of dollars promoting New Zealand and one of the primary symbols around Brand New Zealand isn’t being identified with New Zealand.”

When the new flag issue was raised, Mr Shearer said he was agnostic about it.

“But after this show I understood how many people are confused because our flag is so similar to Australia’s and I now realise change is vital.”

“Because New Zealand is so distant from markets, we need to be able to get a premium for our goods and when one of our major identifiers is not being related to New Zealand, it is a waste.”

“I feel the debate has mainly centred on how the flag looks or how much the referendum is costing and this is taking away from more important issue that the rest of the world is not identifying us through our flag”

“A flag is something a country rallies behind, and it is also something a country is identified by.”

“The country can rally beautifully behind our current flag because we know our flag, identify with it, and it has a history, but it is not doing the other half of what a flag should do.”

“We are not doing ourselves justice in this debate and are potentially going to miss an opportunity to enhance our national identity.”

“After the Korean show experience, I understood we need to have a flag that is distinctly New Zealand,” Mr Shearer said.

ends

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