It was 1999 when the 100% Pure New Zealand Brand was born on a flight to Queenstown.

“I was at M&C Saatchi, and we were flying to Queenstown to get inspired for the pitch, and the little pottle of water they handed out on the plane had a foil lid with a picture of a waterfall and the line ‘Pure New Zealand water’.

I was sitting next to this English art director from M&C’s Sydney office, and I said: ‘Pure New Zealand – there’s ya line right there.’

I thought it was a bit cheesy, but the English guy liked it and asked if he could use it. What made it good I think was adding the 100 per cent logo to the front. Not sure who came up with that…Personally, I always hoped the campaign would grow from more than just scenic shots of New Zealand landscape,”

Vegas says. “When we went into the pitch the feedback we had from the client was that they didn’t want to see a campaign full of postcard shots, so I’m not sure how it all ended up the way it did – I left M&C just after the pitch.

“I always thought that there was an opportunity to build on the ‘Pure New Zealand’ positioning in other ways. Make the idea of coming to New Zealand about a totally pure experience not just green hills and blue water. The people, the interaction you have with kiwis. That kind of pure.”

“I just don’t think green hills and blue water cuts it anymore. If you look at all the tourism advertising around the world it is banging the same, old, tired drum. I remember a press conference with one of the bosses of the Taliban in 2001 before they got kicked out. This was around the time there was talk that some Taliban had come to New Zealand. In the press conference someone asked the Taliban commander about New Zealand. He had never heard of the place. There’s your New Zealand advertising campaign right there, I thought.”

From these less than illustrious beginnings grew a behemoth: 100% Pure New Zealand has taken on a life of its own.

Last year Prime Minister John Key mooted the expansion of the 100% Pure New Zealand branding to be a “master brand” for all New Zealand business, not just tourism. It is, it seems, an occupational hazard of the man with the top job also being the Minister of Tourism, the relatively narrow area the brand was initially designed to cover.

Yes, the 100% Pure New Zealand advertising shoots us straight to the top of the list of small, obscure countries with nice scenery. Right up there with the likes of Iceland and Liechtenstein. In terms of the national self- respect, we would like to think that beyond the stale clichés of ‘clean and green’ is a growing perception of our businesses as being steeped in innovation, creativity and sustainability.

Is there? Whereas many think our origins should afford us a foot in the door simply by virtue of the fact we were ‘little battlers’, does it?

Top Kiwi businessman, Stephen Tindall, heads the Kiwi Expat Association (KEA), an organisation dedicated to promoting New Zealand business around the world by taking advantage of our vast expat communities.

He is amazed at the level of awareness other countries do have of New Zealand, but thinks we should now be telling a more refined story of how we do business.

“People are amazed how much innovation comes out of New Zealand. We’ve got quite a few investments, particularly in the States, and they always say: ‘How could you have spawned that there in New Zealand?’”

Although the curiosity towards all things New Zealand allows us to get a foot in the door, when it comes to the crunch Americans still prefer to buy American made, he says. And why shouldn’t they?

“The most [being from New Zealand] achieves is it gets you an initial conversation. People have an initial curiosity about what New Zealand has to offer – we’re perceived as having a good reputation about being good to deal with, so it’ll get them to answer the phone. But if the product isn’t good enough then it’s not going to work.

“In terms of technology products, I don’t think the fact they’re from New Zealand really matters. People don’t really care where it comes from – it’s how good the product is. No one would buy a Nokia because it comes from Finland compared with Motorola if it wasn’t a better product.”

Kiwi electronics giant Tait Electronics prefers not to use the ‘Made in New Zealand’ angle at all. They say the country of origin effect matters to varying degrees in different countries, particularly when your product, in this case high-end mobile radios, is not an exclusive product of New Zealand. Marketing manager Gareth Richards says in their line of business it barely matters at all. “All our customers need to know is they’re getting into a relationship with someone who can do the job and deliver results. If, down the line, they discover we’re from New Zealand, then that definitely is a talking point, but it’s not what our customers base their decision on.”

Tait Electronics makes a point of not using ‘made in New Zealand’ logos, believing that style of marketing to be too in-your-face.

Rakon is an Auckland-based electronics manufacturer. Communications manager Justin Maloney says as far as its branding goes, Rakon is not a New Zealand company – it’s an international one.

“In the current context of our business we don’t really use [New Zealand branding]. It’s there and we don’t avoid it, and we don’t completely ignore it, but we don’t need to use it. That’s more just the nature of the business and how it’s developed. It’s an international company, not a New Zealand company.”

Having said that, Maloney recognises the importance of having a New Zealand brand under which New Zealand businesses can band together.

“I suspect that in the long run it’ll probably become of more and more value, although at the moment there is no direct benefit to us.”

So do we need a broader brand other than just being clean, green and 100 per cent pure?

“I think the image we keep coming across is so strong, and it’s reasonably embedded. I think it would be a mistake to go and depart from that too much,” Tindall says. “We do push the green image, and we probably push it to the limit, which does create a risk. But it is still the way people think of us. New Zealand now needs to work on turning its national characteristics into a comparative advantage. There may be a need to increase the situation with which the brand is presented now because I think people in the States have the high level perception of what brand New Zealand is. But once they get here and dig a little deeper they find it’s more sophisticated than they might have perceived.”

And brand sophistication is what businesses want to push.

Export New Zealand is on the same page. Director Catherine Beard says while 100% Pure New Zealand may work well for tourism, a different approach than simply relying on what God gave us is needed for the majority of our export sector.

“I think amongst some of the business leaders in New Zealand there’s a desire to get a more sophisticated approach to what is brand New Zealand.”

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) works with businesses to increase their profiles overseas. They commissioned research last year which found exporters were increasingly leaning towards a New Zealand brand with a bit more substance – “showing more ‘business grit’ than ‘dreamy landscapes’”.

This was particularly evident for exporters outside the food and beverage and bioactives sectors. Findings from the research show exporters want the New Zealand brand to communicate technology themes more strongly and speak to an international business context.

NZTE says exporters are less likely to downplay their New Zealand-ness than five years ago. So what do we play on? Do we actually need an overarching brand for New Zealand business? It may be good to have something for those who do want to live under one banner, but what happens if a company inside or outside that group steps out of line and brings the house of cards tumbling down?

Sitting on the same side of the fence are those who say 100% Pure sets us up for catastrophic failure, should anything ever happen to tarnish that image. And let’s face it, not much need happen to bring our reputation down if we’re claiming we’re 100 per cent anything.

NZTE Group General Manager Business Solutions Grant McPherson says broadening the usage base for the “100% Pure” idea would, for many businesses, not translate.

There is also a danger the “100% Pure” brand could be discredited and devalued by a product scandal – bringing down those aligned with it. McPherson says there is no one-answer-fits-all solution to the branding argument.

“The thing is it’s about what’s right for New Zealand, and it might be that at each granular level it’s different,” he says.

One option is for businesses to join NZTE’s Brand Partnership Programme, which allows member companies to leverage off a New Zealand fern logo applied to their branding. The programme pushes ideals that are associated with New Zealand – guardianship, welcoming, resourcefulness and integrity – without the constraints of “100%”.

“Our brand is valuable. It has good recognition in the market place and good linkage to our values. But what we have to ask ourselves is, is that still relevant and still current?” McPherson says.

So if we start looking at how a range of New Zealand exporters do this – would we be any nearer to a consensus? Pipfruit New Zealand is a recent example of how changes in global demand require quick adaptation to branding. CEO Peter Beavan says its recent “100% Pure New Zealand Apples” campaign raised eyebrows, but was given the green light after a lot of “long and earnest” discussions with Tourism New Zealand.

Pipfruit’s new production system emerged after European supermarkets demanded residue levels on their fruit be reduced to near the point of detection. They, in turn, responded with their ‘Apple Futures’ system, and Beavan says the system’s success “really created the impetus for the industry to think, ‘hey we’re doing some really smart things here, they’re unique, they’re world leading’. We’ve got to find a way to tell the world about them and use it as a point of differentiation.”

Beavan believes New Zealand’s export industries, including tourism, need to work more closely together in branding themselves to the world. “I’m not suggesting we should all have a ‘100% Pure’ banner, because that would have the potential to drag all of us down. We’re all promoting our product as coming from New Zealand and the environment we grow it in is the differentiator. New Zealand itself is actually the brand for us.”

The agricultural technology industry has already been pinned as an area we can take hold of on a global scale. By promoting the pasture-based grazing model, as opposed to confinement, New Zealand Agritech is pushing companies like Gallagher and Skellerup into the international domain, and is using New Zealand’s reputation in sustainability to do so.

However, NZ Agritech Chairman Jim Grennell says that “100% Pure” is not the right campaign to align with.

“It applies to tourism more than anything, so we don’t promote with 100% Pure because it’s not necessarily relevant in terms of what we’re talking about. As a tourism campaign it has been very successful, it is certainly a very good entry point to talk about New Zealand, and I think it has been very valuable in that respect.”

So let’s get under one banner . . . just not 100% Pure.

Rutherford Capital is in the process of raising NZ$50 million from overseas investors to invest in a portfolio of New Zealand cleantech companies. Cleantech is the new word encompassing technologies and concepts that improve performance, productivity and efficiency, at the same time as reducing cost, energy input, pollution or waste. Director Nick Gerritsen says the rest of the world expects broader sustainable solutions from New Zealand.

So should the big tech companies make more noise about being from New Zealand?

“Absolutely,” says Gerritsen. “The reality for all New Zealand technology companies is, when we’re out in the world we need to speak together. We need to support each other, we need to collaborate, we need to go out with the same message.”

While that’s all very well and good to say, the fact remains that you can’t dictate to an already successful group of companies that they need to re-align their marketing strategy to assist other businesses’ entry into the global market place. Projects like the Rutherford Fund are noble and along the right track, but need to maintain their focus on “cleantech” rather than just “tech”.

Tindall agrees that our prospects are looking up in producing ground breaking, sustainable technology companies, but says the big challenge is finding capital to push that growth – which is exactly what Gerritsen is trying to do. At the moment, playing on New Zealand-ness is more beneficial for certain sectors than others. But the current connotations of New Zealand-ness limit the players who can leverage off that.

It seems fairly clear, ‘100% Pure New Zealand’ is not a wise decision in terms of a master brand for all New Zealand exports to be under. Many want to leverage off a broader picture of who we are as a business nation. NZTE’s McPherson notes our values need to remain current with the rest of the world.

It may not be the case of creating anything new, but the case of joining two things together – clean, green and proud, with high tech and understated. Tindall says there is a whole lot more we should be adding to New Zealand’s brand story.

One thing our business leaders can’t agree on is how we tell this to the world.