Waikato Business News | January 12, 2024

JANUARY 2024
Briefs…
Good warning
A recent warning to local
authorities by the Auditor
General about the double
digit rate increases proposed
– in Hamilton 25.5 per
cent and Waipā 14.8 per
cent – could be an issue of
governance, says Waikato
Chamber of Commerce chief
executive Don Good in his
recent mail out to members.
Pet projects will need to
be dumped or put on the
bonfire in favour of core
functions, he says.
New dealership
Hamilton-founded Ebbett
Group has this month
opened a new Great Wall
Motors pop-up dealership in
Pukekohe. Ebbett Group –
now based in Te Rapa - was
founded in Hamilton’s Hood
St in 1928 by Alf Ebbett,
later joined by his brother
Ron. The group represents
25 car brands at dealerships
nationwide.
Fixing up
Earthquake strengthening
is underway at the former
Duke St Cambridge home
of Inspired by 2 Florist to
make way for a new tenant.
Among those completing the
work earlier this week were
Titan Construction’s Potiki
Tupaea, left, and managing
director Logan Den Hertog.
Papal knight
Prominent Waikato
businessman Paul Barnett
will be conferred with
the Papal Order of Saint
Sylvester - one of five Papal
knighthoods - at the Catholic
Cathedral of the Blessed
Virgin Mary in Hamilton on
January 16. It is typically
awarded to recognise and
reward members of the
laity for active service in the
church..
George Bettle’s farewell
The commercial chapter of
George Bettle’s career was over
the day he shaved off his beard.
The founding guru of Hamilton
advertising agency Bettle and
Associates had his bushy grey beard
and blue glasses on in the morning of
Friday December 1 but then turned
up for his retirement event later that
night without them both.
The 52-year-old chuckles at the
reaction while sitting in his 15th floor
Wellington apartment, where he and
wife Emma now live, having sold
their Maungakawa property near
Cambridge a couple of years ago.
“We’ve got a view right down the
barrel of the harbour,” he says as he
turns to look at it and then comments
on the Dick Frizzell print of the Four
Square man on the wall which hung
in Bettle’s office for years.
Bettle is now non-executive chair of
Bettle and Associates, the advertising
agency he founded in 2002.
Then he had been working for
Walker Advertising in Auckland and
was headhunted to work with former
Hamilton mayor Michael Redman
at Grey Advertising heading the
fledgling digital division.
Grey had branches in Auckland,
Wellington and Hamilton and Bettle
was seconded to Hamilton to work on
the Economic Development Forum’s
strategy on how to attract businesses
to the Waikato.
“I came down to give them a hand
and started to believe my own copy
and thought ‘this is a pretty good
little economy’.”
When Redman left the agency
so too did many of his Hamilton
WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS 3
Taking it on the chin
clients, so Bettle’s options were to
either move with the multinational to
Sydney or Singapore.
Then when Grey decided to shut
the doors in Hamilton, Bettle offered
to buy the agency agreeing a delayed
deal on April 1, 2001.
“I said to them ‘You send me down
for six months as general manager
of Hamilton, if I like what I see I
agree to pay the price we just agreed,
not whatever I turn it into in the six
months, I’m there, you don’t get a
double hit’. It was an awesome deal
for me.”
Bettle turned the agency around
and 10 years later he went “mental”
trying to take on the world, setting up
an office in Australia.
“It wasn’t very much fun, and it
wasn’t very profitable.”
Bettle found himself managing
people instead of writing strategy,
which is what he loved.
“We got quite big. We had big
national clients, but the agency
model is when you lose one, you lose
a lot of people. And I didn’t like that
boom and bust.”
Flying under the radar was Bettle’s
community and philanthropic
partnerships from K’aute Pasifika to
Hospice Waikato but in his private
life, he was often an anonymous
donor.
He put in a succession plan in
place appointing Will Peart, who had
worked for Bettle as account director
on the Ihug account but then gone to
Australia to work at agencies.
Adam Lurman, who Bettle
employed years earlier on a
scholarship straight out of Wintec’s
Succession planning: George Bettle, now chair of Bettle and Associates, with from
left, managing director Will Peart and creative director Adam Lurman.
Photo: Supplied.
View from the top: George Bettle in the office of his Wellington apartment.
Photo: Supplied.
third year and who then left to go
to Tauranga, came back as creative
director.
Both returned as Bettle had moved
into the Riverbank Lane offices in
Hamilton the agency still works out
of today where it employs 17 people
and maintains a healthy client base.
“Probably one of the most
rewarding things is actually having
young guys with lots of talent go
away and see the world and then
come back.”
In 2020, as part of an exit strategy,
Bettle sold them a shareholding
in the business and told them he
wanted to ease out within five years.
“I said ‘Let’s make it not about me,
let’s make it about Will and Adam’. I
was quite happy in the background
and there was an ownership model
going through that didn’t rely on
me.”
One of Bettle’s clients was Swedish
farm machinery and equipment
company DeLaval. The Hamilton
company had been DeLaval’s global
agency for nearly a decade and he
had the opportunity to redo its 10
year strategy.
“It was a fantastic opportunity and
an awesome project. I wanted to get
that done, get it implemented, lock it
away. It was really rewarding, really
challenging. It felt very much like a
full stop. That’s about as good as it
gets. I don’t think I could surpass
that.”
By Mary Anne Gill
Bettle finished that work on
November 1 and left the agency a
month later where he turned up to
his farewell dinner beardless.
“I thought I better mark this and
so I shaved it off for the first time in
10 years. It was terrifying, my dad
started appearing in the mirror.”
Reaction from his family
was mixed. Wife Emily, who is
the co-founder of School Kit, a
Hamilton-based education company
that offers resource kits and learning
experiences to teachers, had lobbied
hard for him to keep it.
Daughters Maggie, 25, and Sam,
22, were on opposite sides.
In Wellington, Bettle takes turns
picking up his six-year-old nephew
from school and a friend’s child from
daycare, getting out on his e-bike –
cycling is so easy in the capital, he
says - and swimming in the harbour
where he recently got out as far as the
Baring Head lighthouse.
“It will be just a gross admission
and a lack of imagination from me if
I can’t find something to do.
“I’m sure I will be full of plans and
things, but I just want to give myself
a little time to chill out.
“I think genuinely the commercial
chapter of my life is over. I’ve proved
to myself I can do it, I can front
globally with the best of them. It’s a
challenge I feel I’ve met, and I don’t
feel I need to do it again.”
Time will tell.
Procuta Associates
Urban + Architecture
07 839 6521
www.pauaarchitects.co.nz
PŌHUTUKAWA HOUSE, WAIHI BEACH