WIPCE 2025
In December 2024, Māia was engaged to develop a media communications strategy and marketing implementation plan to support WIPCE 2025. Our team worked to promote WIPCE 2025 in the lead up to and during the event running from November 16-20.
Opportunities: WIPCE 2025 was an opportunity for Aotearoa to show our manaakitanga by welcoming Indigenous peoples around the world to New Zealand.
Audience: Indigenous peoples, mana whenua and tangata whenua, iwi taketake, educators, local and international media, Auckland community,
Key Insight: Indigenous stories are often relegated to Indigenous media.
Our job: To share Indigenous stories with the Western world without diluting their authenticity, while prioritising Indigenous platforms.
Creative Solution: Māia created the ‘Te Paringa Tai’ Strategy which planned waves of activity to lift awareness for WIPCE across a range of different communities. This included:
Developing and implementing a media approach to maximise awareness and participation in WIPCE 2025, key messages, tone of voice, creating and scheduling 8 months of content for social media, a digital advertising campaign, event pages and listings, seven eDMs, a risk management strategy, radio campaign, and writing MC scripts
Results: WIPCE 2025 united Indigenous peoples from across the world. It was the largest academic conference ever held in New Zealand, and the largest conference hosted in 2025. WIPCE 2025 generated an estimated $8.275 million for the New Zealand economy, and had 261 media mentions. The Māia campaign was named as a finalist in both the ‘Best Use of Media Relations’ and ‘Community Relations and Engagement’ categories at the 2026 PRINZ Awards.
