Emirates Team New Zealand Blog
The sport of Sailing in New Zealand is very serious business. Emirates Team New Zealand is an all out business that requires nearly 100 men and women to make racing on the water a thing of passion and beauty. But it’s not all beauty, it’s a lot of work in a competitive world of racing.
The Boss of Emirates Team New Zealand, Grant Dalton, is hard as nails. He’s a real tough guy who has won three Round the World Yacht races. In his spare time Grant does the Iron Man. Can you imagine being in the middle of the ocean for months at a time eating noting but freeze dried food and workings shifts of four hours on and four hours off? I can’t. After spending time with Grant it’s obvious we have been hanging out with the worlds most adventurous man. I think if he invites you to go on an adventure of any kind with him you just have to know what you could potentially be getting yourself into.
Grant translates his passion for adventure into how he manages the business of Emirates Team New Zealand. We immediately were given the impression that if we did not complete the job of launching their new website, we’d be held captive in beautiful New Zealand until the job was done. Any kidding aside, Grant and his team are amazing to work for. They are great partners and their culture is conducive to creating great things.
We were introduced to Grant and his crew by Andy Lark. Andy’s been a long time partner to RD2 and has recently worked withDell out of Austin, Texas. Dell was committed to the efforts of supporting Emirates Team New Zealand by providing them the funding to create a social media presence for the gang. The rest is now history and we’re watching the traffic come in and the press releases take root on the web.
A big challenge was to create a blog for Emirates Team New Zealand that would live up to the brand and beauty of Emirates Team New Zealand. Further, Emirates Team New Zealand was to comply with the rules set forth by America’s Cup which specifically states that the team must use social media channels such as blogs, , YouTube, and , to share community content and conversations. This mission was addressed by ensuring that in every way Emirates Team New Zealand was first and foremost a blog, a social media channel. Once again, we deployed the worlds most widely accepted and utilized blog platform, WordPress. Every portion of content on ETNZblog.com is published through the WordPress blog console. Additionally, this blog leverages Facebook and Twitter to make sure that all content is sharable.
The training is simple and RD2 will continue to work with Emirates Team New Zealand to ensure they have the ability to drive their own blog and engage users now and in the future.
After living at their headquarters for a week now, one thing I personally hope the blog does for ETNZ is that it communicates to the rest of the world the breadth and depth of Emirates Team New Zealand. As Andy said,
ETNZ is about so much more than just the America’s Cup. They are a sports brand that transcends one event and flys the flag for NZ sailing globally.
This is a team that is originated in a country where sailing is deeply rooted in the DNA and culture of all New Zealanders. And they are unafraid to go toe to toe with the best in the world. This is a team of winners if I’ve ever met any.
Congratulations to Grant, Lisa, Warren, Nick, Russel, and the rest of the Emirates Team New Zealand crew. Also congratulations to the RD2 team who supported us from Dallas and to those who made the visit to New Zealand. We’re proud to have been a part of this project.
