Her Magazine is New Zealand’s only women’s business lifestyle magazine! Her Magazine highlights the achievements of successful and rising New Zealand businesswomen. Her Magazine encourages a healthy work/life balance.
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/59614
thought. Maybe a Radio DJ? She told me I needed to be studying commerce, and marketing was the way to go. She picked all my papers at Auckland University and away I went. She had done a BA and got into marketing too but had to navigate her way there. She was looking back at me thinking my generation would be the first to really need a business career. She was trying to help me along to avoid the problems she'd had." Today Anna heads up operations for her husband's business, NZ Strong Construction, and nearly two decades on the marketing industry has exceeded the then '20-year-old Sarah's' expectations. "So often when you go to university you don't really know what you want to do or where these careers will take you. You do the papers, get the degree and see what happens. Getting into the business world was a huge eye opener for me over just how much fun it can be. I had struggled a bit academically but when I got into the workforce I suddenly found all the things I had learned came into clarity once I had the chance to apply them practically." Sarah remembers companies like Fletcher Challenge, Mobil, BP, Zealand Direct Marketing Association, the rejection only fuelled her, a determination she says comes from being the youngest of four. She spent the next few weeks convincing Air New Zealand they needed her and luckily, after some persuasion, they agreed – an opportunity Sarah will be forever grateful for. "It was an extraordinary experience for a number of reasons," she tells. "I met a very solid business grounding that I needed to work in any corporate environment, but more importantly, at the time I joined Air New Zealand the economy was going through a dramatic change with these big state-owned companies being privatised, allowing more competition into the marketplace. For someone like me at the bottom of the ranks seeing this dramatic shift was an incredible learning opportunity." The airline was largely privatised in 1989 and was able to adapt quickly to compete with overseas competitors. After her first year of training on the bottom rung she landed in the loyalty marketing department. This was before the days of airpoints and frequent flyer programmes in New Zealand, and the company quickly realised it was Air New Zealand and Qantas visiting her university campus inviting a selected number of commerce graduates to participate in training programmes. "I applied for all of them – I think we all did – we just wanted to get a job! I was especially gunning for the job at Air New Zealand as I was interested in travelling and Air New Zealand provided a great opportunity to do that. I was selected to do some capability tests at which I did terribly… and I knew it!" Having done the work to attain a Bachelor of Commerce in Marketing and a Diploma in Direct Marketing from the New giving their competitor's an advantage, and to stay current they needed to affect this; not only making it work, but making it innovative enough to be better than the rest. "They say necessity is the mother of all invention, and because things were having to shift so quickly they were open and willing to try new ideas," Sarah says. "I was on a crack assault team trying to figure out how to put a loyalty programme into the marketplace. It was so beneficial to be there at the time when they were willing to take such bold and different moves. It seems commonplace to have these things now, but at that time it was a huge financial risk." www.hermagazine.co.nz | 23