“There’s all this love and admiration for the culture and there’s so much support and energy around it, yet a lot of the work that’s being made has not been made by Māori. It’s for Māori but it’s not by Māori.”
This sentiment, expressed by John Marshall (Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Maniapoto) General Manager of Special, was echoed time and time again during interviews for this article.
Instead of simply focusing on how businesses can incorporate te ao Māori into their branding and marketing in a culturally appropriate manner, it quickly became clear that a deeper examination of the underrepresentation of Māori in this field altogether is needed first.
According to the Commercial Communications Council Diversity Research Report released in October 2021 there is much work to be done to increase the presence of underrepresented groups within the communications industry.
Back then, only seven percent of respondents identified as Māori, and a mere three percent as Pacific Islanders, significantly below the census data figures of that time which were 16 percent and seven percent respectively. Numbers have grown slightly since then nationally with the current census figures putting Māori at 17.4 percent of the national population and Pasifika peoples at just over eight percent. So how do we fix this?
To help make the pathway into the creative industry more accessible, Special Aotea, the Māori led, creative, strategic and business rōpū within Special launched a fully paid scholarship with AUT earlier this year,
