Goodman Fielder New Zealand walked away from the YouTube New Zealand Marketing Awards 2025 with three of the evening’s most hotly contested trophies, alongside recognition as a finalist for Marketing Team of the Year, and a Highly Commended award for Vogel’s Precise Slice in the Best B2C Marketing Campaign.
The company’s wins celebrated not only strong brand performance but also fresh thinking and creative bravery across its marketing portfolio, something their CMO Frankie Coulter has been pushing the team and agency partners, DDB (Creative), MBM (Media) and Mango (PR) for.
The awards recognised Simran Wadhawan as Future Marketer of the Year, Meadow Fresh Quick Brekkie for Best New Brand Development, and Vogel’s as Brand of the Year. Together, the wins highlighted the breadth of Goodman Fielder’s influence in categories as diverse as bread, dairy, and new product development.
Brand Manager Simran Wadhawan has built a reputation at Goodman Fielder for strategic smarts, cultural insight, and an ability to turn bold ideas into commercial results. Her recognition as Future Marketer of the Year underscores her impact on the business and the wider industry.
Wadhawan’s portfolio has already spanned oils, flour, yoghurt, and cheese. Her projects include creating bilingual Hindi/English activations for Fortune during Diwali, a first for New Zealand supermarkets, and developing digital content designed to simplify cooking and baking for busy parents.
She also led the relaunch of Puhoi Valley’s first specialty cheese campaign in five years, achieving growth several times faster than the category average despite tough private label competition.
Frankie described her as “the kind of marketer every organisation hopes to grow; energetic, curious and relentlessly driven”.Judges praised her ability to combine consumer-centric insights with executional excellence and her commitment to mentoring and inspiring others.
Alongside these brand-specific honours, Goodman Fielder’s marketing team was also named a finalist for Marketing Team of the Year, for the second year running. This consistency highlights the company’s ability to deliver results across multiple categories while maintaining a strong pipeline of innovation and talent development.
What it means for the industry
Goodman Fielder’s triple win at the 2025 awards signals several wider trends in the New Zealand FMCG and supermarket landscape.
First, the rise of marketers like Simran Wadhawan demonstrates the importance of diverse voices and cultural fluency in building relevance with modern consumers. Bilingual campaigns, platform-specific digital content, and new ways of engaging communities show how marketing is expanding beyond traditional boundaries.
Second, the success of Meadow Fresh Quick Brekkie illustrates that even categories dominated by a single brand can be disrupted when cultural insight, strong R&D, and the right ambassador come together. It also shows that dairy brands can adapt to shifting consumption patterns by innovating in convenient formats.
Finally, Vogel’s success is a reminder of the enduring power of emotional storytelling. Price rises are rarely welcomed, yet by framing its product as a cultural icon rather than a commodity, Vogel’s strengthened its consumer connection and market position.
Looking ahead
For Goodman Fielder, the awards are both recognition of recent success and motivation for the future. With talent, creativity, and commercial discipline all working in tandem, the company has signalled its intention to keep pushing boundaries in some of the most competitive aisles of the supermarket.
As the FMCG sector continues to evolve, these wins provide a timely reminder that the combination of consumer-centric insights, bold creativity, and strong execution can deliver not just marketing awards but lasting impact.
