New Zealand was Thankyou’s first test outside of Australia. It turns out a lot of global brands test ideas in New Zealand. We loved the idea of New Zealand helping get this idea ready for the world.

When we went to New Zealand all major supermarkets had said they would stock Thankyou, which was great (no helicopters needed). The only problem is you have about 13 weeks to prove yourself. Products that don’t sell get dropped. We’d spent five years in Australia building awareness before we launched in supermarkets, and it was a success. To launch in New Zealand, we needed this level of support overnight.

We didn’t know how to launch in a new country, but we loved the idea of passing the baton. So we picked an impossibly small number, 300. We made 300 physical batons, gathered 300 Kiwi friends of friends, and literally passed the batons to them. We asked them to spread Thankyou to New Zealand, to ‘tell two’ of their mates asking them to ‘tell two’ of their mates. Showing how if they told two, who told two and this repeated just 13 times, the entire New Zealand population would know about Thankyou. We love the power of small actions with big impact.

Tell Two website

‘The 300’ turned up to launch events, and along with other supporters who’d followed our story, took over social media on launch day. We were so blown away with what followed. Big props to Matthis and Emily from Skydive Franz jumping out of an aeroplane over the Franz Josef Glacier from the world’s highest skydive point.

The first 13 weeks’ sales were incredible – one of the strongest launches to date. What happened after those 13 weeks became a two-year battle of our lives. New Zealand was a test market and it tested us. Those lessons informed everything about our global launch. You can read about that here.