Rings maker crowned king of Kiwi business world

Nick Smith

Saturday 17th April 2004

Lord of the Rings director, producer and writer Peter Jackson has received another accolade to add to his movie trilogy's 17 Oscars he is New Zealand's favourite business leader.

The NBR-Phillips Fox poll measuring business leader favourability shows Jackson is the most respected business leader in the country, at 84% nearly 20 percentage points clear of perennial favourite, The Warehouse's Stephen Tindall.

Jackson also had the highest recognition factor of business leaders, with only 6% of people having never heard of him.

By contrast, business legends Ralph Norris and Roderick Deane are Messrs anonymous. One in three claimed ignorance of Norris, while Dr Deane suffered the ignominy of being the least known business leader (42% did not know him) with the public.

Both gentlemen fared poorly with those who did recognise the names, with favourability ratings of 18% and 16% respectively and a negative reaction of 8% (Norris) and 10% (Dr Deane).

Dr Deane's executive offsider at Telecom, Theresa Gattung, also fared poorly, recording the third highest unpopular rating of 12% and languishing third to last on the favourability ratings.

Eric Watson, who seems to have as many former business partners as litigants, manages the unusual feat of being the fourth most popular and second in the unpopular stakes, with 14% thinking of him in unfavourable terms.

Leading the unpopularity contest with a 37% unfavourability rating is Sir Michael Fay, the highest negative rating in the history of the poll.

Lots of people know about Sir Michael and Mr Watson but neither can match the top two for name recognition: Jackson and Tindall.

Both boast name recognition above 87%; although it is hard to believe that after three Lord of the Rings movies and the accompanying saturation media coverage, there is 6% of the population that does not know Jackson.

Kiwis love outsiders and even more they love outsiders who win, so Jackson's success in taking on Hollywood has proved a predictable crowd-pleaser.

Then there is his engaging honesty. When asked whether the 11 Oscars would bring him respect in Hollywood, he blurted out that Hollywood respected only the box office and he had already delivered on that front.

The trilogy to date has brought in $4.4 billion, $1.7 billion of which is from the third instalment The Return of the King.

The third most popular business leader was the Auckland cereal king Dick Hubbard, with a 63% approval rating and only 3% unfavourable. Others on the list include New Zealand's richest man Graeme Hart. A third of those polled had never heard the name of the Burns Philp majority owner, another third had no opinion of him, more than a quarter thought of him favourably and only 7% held a negative view.

The National Business Review
Phillips Fox poll

The UMR Research omnibus is a telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 750 New Zealanders aged 18 or older. Fieldwork was conducted from March 25 to 29 at UMR Research's national interview facility in Auckland. The margin of error for a 50% figure at the "95% confidence level" is ±3.6%. If there are any inquiries about this poll, please contact UMR Research on 0-4-473 1061 (phone), 0-4-472 3501 (fax) or umr@umr.co.nz (email).

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