1997 – 2001
01
The truth of people's perceptions
The brand is the organising system
Before BrandCom was formed, Geoff Matthews spent more than a decade inside the Office of the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Working at the centre of national decision-making and running three successful election campaigns shaped a defining understanding that people's perceptions were formed not from what was being said, but how messages were being received. Viewpoint mattered.
After leaving government in late 1997, Geoff returned to Victoria University of Wellington to undertake postgraduate study in marketing, where he became naturally drawn to branding and consumer behaviour. At the time, branding was still emerging as a field and was for the most part treated as a subset of marketing.
Inquisitiveness set in. He authored the first academic paper on brand architecture to be published globally (Bradford University, 1999) and began to question the organising logic of the discipline. If brand was fundamentally about meaning, perception, trust, and coherence, then treating it as an output of marketing felt directionally wrong.
Marketing should be a subset of branding. The brand is the only element in the organisation that provides value to all four stakeholder groups, and therefore should be the integrating factor around which the organisation is built.
Geoff Matthews
Alongside academic work, Geoff held senior roles within two respected agencies: Sweeney Vesty, one of New Zealand's leading corporate communications firms, and advertising giant McCann Erickson. The McCann Brand Footprint methodology, which treated brand as a structured system, remains an enduring influence.
In 2001, he formed BrandCom with a central belief: that brand was not an output of marketing, but the organising system through which coherent strategy, trust, and value are built in an increasingly complex world.
He would write on the back of his business card:
The idea deliberately held two truths at once. Brands operate as living systems, shaped by perception, meaning, and behaviour. At the same time, brands live inside commercial reality they must create value or cease to exist.
2001 – 2003
02
Brand as a mechanism for structural change
Taking care of business
BrandCom's first major project would not be a logo, a tagline, or a rebrand. It would be a national conservation initiative a strategy to restore an ancient forest, rebuild an ecosystem, and return endangered bird species to the wild.
In the final year of his time in Parliament, Geoff had worked closely with the Prime Minister and Stephen King, one of New Zealand's leading conservationists, on a mission to halt the logging of indigenous forests on the West Coast. Four years later, the Department of Conservation and the Pūkaha/Mount Bruce Restoration Trust approached Geoff to develop a strategy to raise funds for pest control and regeneration of the Pūkaha/Mount Bruce Forest.
The jewel in the crown was Pūkaha – Songs from the Forest: a fundraising and awareness project built around a CD of native bird song. The work involved developing the narrative architecture, writing scripts, assembling hundreds of historical field recordings, commissioning design and production, and creating the materials that allowed the project to attract community, philanthropic, and government support.
It is your destiny to restore a native forest.
Stephen King, conservationist, to Geoff Matthews, 1997
The campaign captured the public's imagination. All the funds required were raised. The CD won a Conservation Award, and the guest speaker at the launch was Stephen King himself.
Listen Pūkaha: Songs from the Forest
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This beginning mattered. It set the tone for what BrandCom would become: a practice unconcerned with industry boundaries, comfortable moving between policy, ecosystems, commercial strategy, and creative production. Grounded in the belief that branding could operate as a mechanism for structural change.
2003 – 2008
03
Uncommon intellectual depth
Creative discipline
Queenstown was seen as an international settlement disguised as a small town globally connected, entrepreneurial, and unconstrained by capital-city assumptions about how and where serious work should be done. The practice assembled a team with uncommon intellectual depth for a branding consultancy.
Carryn Colton entered with a Bachelor of Commerce majoring in Marketing and a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Psychology from the University of Otago. Her combination of behavioural insight and analytical discipline made her a natural fit for BrandCom's intellectually rigorous approach to branding. She became a director in 2009.
BrandCom always treated strategy as a creative act. Clear thinking came first not to constrain design, but to create the conditions in which great design could emerge. That discipline shaped long-standing creative partnerships.
BrandCom began working with designer Luke Johnston in 2003. He designed the BrandCom logo an endangered mountain daisy of New Zealand's Southern Alps which remains in use today. Luke later founded his own design studio, Brandaid, with BrandCom as his first client. Jos Browning joined as senior designer, bringing depth and craft, and an unbroken collaboration that continues today.
By 2008 Rosie Turner BCA (centre) had joined the BrandCom team, pictured here with Carryn Colton (left) and Geoff Matthews (right).
2005 – 2015
04
The Ansoff rules, inverted
Capability bending constraints
The intellectual firepower assembled allowed BrandCom to expand across multiple dimensions simultaneously deepening existing work, developing new capabilities, entering new markets, and creating entirely new businesses. In classic Ansoff matrix terms, this form of multidirectional expansion is widely regarded as high-risk. BrandCom inverted that logic.
I remember after the first event going into an Arrowtown bar and having two nurses from Invercargill telling me of all the running events they had done, the thrill of running down the finishing line of Motatapu was the greatest experience of their lifetime. It was the very moment I knew we had succeeded in creating something really special.
Geoff Matthews, on Motatapu
Motatapu became New Zealand's largest mountain bike event, its largest off-road running marathon, and its third largest marathon overall in year one. Twenty-five years later it remains the largest off-road event in New Zealand.
One conversation in a Queenstown café in 2007 produced a sketch on a piece of paper. Across the top, Geoff wrote moneyfornothing.com. That sketch became TaxRefunds.co.nz the first non-government platform ever to connect directly with the IRD mainframe.
One million tax refunds processed in the first seven months.
Blueseventy was developing what would become the world's first high-performance swimming super suit. The prevailing assumption was that it would never be approved. Geoff and Carryn went straight to the rulebook and saw not ambiguity, but opportunity.
Something that weighs the same as a woman's underwear cannot aid a ninety-kilogram man.
FINA Executive Director, to Geoff Matthews, Lausanne
The suits were approved. More than 360 world records were broken worldwide. In the nine months the suits were legal, Blueseventy sold more than 40,000 suits globally. By the time the category was banned, every competitive swimmer in the world knew the name Blueseventy and a Blueseventy athlete had won Olympic gold at the Beijing Games.
Geoff Matthews pictured here swimming across Milford Sound to get images for Blueseventy's global marketing collateral.
Martin Van Weijen Olympic Gold medallist and World Open Water Champion with Geoff Matthews (right). Holland, 2008.
By 2010, BrandCom was producing Information Memoranda financial documents normally the exclusive domain of large accounting firms as complete commercial storytelling narratives. Mt Cook Alpine Salmon was formed by Geoff, with BrandCom authoring the original Information Memorandum. Approximately $30 million was raised. Geoff became Chief Executive, guiding the company to Deloitte Fast 50 status and six New Zealand Food Awards including the Supreme Award. Mt Cook Alpine Salmon was taken into The French Laundry in California's Napa Valley a benchmark few food brands ever reach.
Mt Cook Alpine Salmon conceived as an eco-sustainable brand from day one.
MacGregor's Pies the tagline "Baking at sparrow's fart since Adam was a cowboy" became a brand language system.
- 2009 TVNZ NZ Marketing Awards, Best Emerging Business: TaxRefunds.co.nz
- 2009 NZAEP Best Established Event: Motatapu Icebreaker
- 2010 TVNZ NZ Marketing Awards, Best Emerging Business: Red Witch Analog Pedals
- 2010 Winner, four NZ Food Awards including Supreme Award: Mt Cook Alpine Salmon
- 2011 TVNZ NZ Marketing Awards, Transformational Marketing: Mt Cook Alpine Salmon
- 2011 American Chamber of Commerce Export Award: Red Witch Analog Pedals
- 2011 Deloitte Technology Fast500 Asia Pacific: Red Witch Analog Pedals
- 2012 TVNZ NZ Marketing Awards, Transformational Marketing & Technology: Red Witch, Seven Sisters
- 2012 Merit, TVNZ NZ Marketing Awards, Marketing Excellence
- 2013 Deloitte Fast 50, fastest growing primary sector business: Mt Cook Alpine Salmon
2015 – 2020
05
Translating complexity into commercial reality
The builders needed inside
what they built
By 2015, BrandCom had a proven ability to translate complex technology into commercial reality, alongside an earned understanding of how sustainability pressures were already forcing systemic change. Geoff was invited to view a new energy-modulation technology developed at the Light Metals Research Centre at the University of Auckland, designed to smooth and modulate electricity demand of aluminium smelters.
If they get this to work, it could change the world of aluminium smelting.
Geoff Matthews, on first seeing the EnPot technology
BrandCom was engaged to create the EnPot brand and develop a comprehensive business plan to commercialise the technology. The work extended well beyond brand expression it required deep engagement with the aluminium smelting process, market structure, system integration, and long-term positioning within evolving electricity grids.
By 2016, the BrandCom tree had borne fruit. Gemma Boyle went on to become Chief Executive of Iconic Adventures (Motatapu). Tracey Neil became Chief Executive of Redwitch Analog Pedals. Geoff moved into the role of Vice President of EnPot. BrandCom paused taking on new clients but the intellectual and capability expansion of the now-dispersed BrandCom team never stopped.
EnPot translating complex aluminium smelting technology into a commercial brand and business plan.
2018 – 2022
06
Global thought leadership
Sleepwalking to 2050 is as bad as
predatory delay
Geoff became increasingly active on the global stage, spending half his time overseas visiting aluminium smelters across the globe, meeting with institutions including the IEA and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, co-authoring articles for academic journals and presenting at international conferences and forums.
He co-authored the first Pathway to Zero Carbon 2050 for primary aluminium production and was acknowledged as a "global thought-leader" by Aluminium International Today. He was the first New Zealander to be invited to speak at a Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit, Shanghai 2019.
By the end of the decade, global conditions had shifted dramatically. COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupted industrial operations and supply chains worldwide. With international travel halted, Geoff was back in New Zealand, drawing on four years traversing the globe and a fresh perspective on how the transition to zero-carbon was unfolding.
Geoff Matthews the first New Zealander to be invited to speak at a Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit, Shanghai 2019.
Watch Geoff Matthews keynote, International Aluminium Conference, Shanghai
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At best it's sleepwalking to 2050 and at worst it's predatory delay.
Geoff Matthews, keynote, international aluminium conference, Shanghai 2023
2022 – Present
07
Connecting the dots
BrandCom returns to its roots
Between 2022 and 2025, SIM-PAC Live was built as an ecosystem: conferences, long-form interviews, awards, and digital content designed as interconnected elements of a single platform. Australia became a focal market, and SIM-PAC Live evolved into a national platform with a commercial membership base of over 70 members.
The long-form interview series Conversations from the Edge allowed Geoff to have his own storytelling platform more than one hundred interviews published, documenting the full industrial sustainability supply chain from mineral extraction through to composting.
At the end of 2025, Geoff and Carryn agreed it was time to begin taking on new clients again, returning to BrandCom's roots as a strategic branding and marketing consultancy. What defined BrandCom over its first 25 years remains. In 2026, it is matched by serious depth and proven capability in sustainability, decarbonisation, and circularity the work that will define the next 25 years.
Watch SIM-PAC Live in action
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