As a journalist for more years than I’d like to admit, I have dealt with a lot of PR and branding agencies in my time.
One agency that rose to the top not long at all after it launched is Hustle & Bustle, with advertising, strategy and branding veterans Andrea Hammond and Gemma Ross at the helm. The pair came together as Hustle & Bustle three years ago when they put their heads together to formulate a marketing campaign for artist Dick Frizzell’s ‘Mickey to Tiki’, which was hugely successful and got quite a bit of attention. The project was spawned, quite literally while working at Gemma’s kitchen bench in Douglas Street, and before long word spread and the agency grew. “Since then we’ve been growing 50 per cent each year based on word of mouth for doing good work with a brilliant group of clients,” the pair tells me. “Our client’s brands attract like-minded brands who want to challenge their category, take a new space in the market or appeal to a new audience.”
They admit that they have become best known for being a ‘hybrid agency’: blending PR, marketing and social influence “for the purpose of making brands famous and talked about”. Gemma’s background is as a PR and activation specialist, while Andrea is a brand and marketing expert, and their team has been growing exponentially of late with yet another new arrival starting work just a week before we chat. Their base is a beautiful, light-filled office and showroom space in Eden Terrace, chosen both for its proximity to the city and to both of their homes. “We both live off Richmond Road so our goal was to find a showroom/event space inside the Ponsonby postcode,” says Andrea. From there they launch brands, build communities, create and share content, negotiate partnerships, arrange events and represent brands to influencers and media, and clients like international brands Bombay Sapphire, Grey Goose, Seed Heritage, French Connection, Nine West, King Living, Texas Chicken and LG call on them regularly to get conversations started. They also have international satellite representation in New York, London, Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore for
New Zealand brands wanting to spread their wings, with names like Blunt Umbrellas and East Imperial taking them up on the offer. “We offer this service to Kiwi brands looking to take on the world, one country at a time,” says their manifesto. “For them, distribution is everything, and PR is oxygen to distribution.”
Andrea tells me that the agency’s philosophy is all about “PR outcomes but with
a marketing strategy,” and that since their early days things have “been mashing up and combining and it has become key to what we do. We didn’t set out to be a hybrid agency as such, it just seemed to roll out that way”.
I ask her if it has been funny watching the more traditional agencies - both PR and advertising - in the marketplace trying to emulate that approach or at very least give it a jolly good go and she says, “But are they? I think a lot of the bigger agencies struggle with PR because they are genuinely concept/design-led and think that PR is just all about making the ad famous.” She adds that a lot of big names forget about getting people to talk about and properly engage with brands “In favour of trying to make an ad famous by doing a stunt or whatever. We want people to think about the ideas behind
a particular brand and to get talking on that level.”
When asked to name her favourite Hustle & Bustle activations, Andrea says she doesn’t know where to start as so many of them have been so much fun, for so many different reasons. Bombay Sapphire has been a definite success story and the brand has allowed Hustle & Bustle to reinvent they way that they do PR. Making the British gin company
a key element of the now famous Marr Factory runway shows has played an essential role in that and the yearly week-long event has been a highlight for the team to work on since the collaboration began.
Their increasing levels of success begs the question, how big does Hustle & Bustle want to grow? “We want to keep growing but we want to remain a small, tight, boutique team on the ground in New Zealand and work nimbly,” the pair agrees. “It’s an exciting time for PR. Customers are demanding deeper conversations with brands and editorial, whilst social media and marketing are blurring for brands to keep up the conversation with customers.”
“We’re really well placed to operate in the middle of this ‘blend’ and cannot wait to see what happens next.” (HELENE RAVLICH)