Marmite brings home 100 homesick Kiwis for Christmas

Media Release

8 December 2010

Marmite brings home 100 homesick Kiwis for Christmas

With severe winter storms hitting the Northern hemisphere, who wouldn’t want to come home for a Kiwi Christmas of beaches, baches and BBQs?

100 lucky Kiwis were overjoyed when they touched down at Auckland airport today thanks to Marmite. The 100 ex-pats on board the plane were the lucky winners of Marmite’s ‘Bringing Home the Kiwis’ competition. The whole plane cheered as they landed on the tarmac – pleased to be returning to family and friends and the warmth of a NZ summer!

To celebrate 100 years in New Zealand, Marmite put the call out to Kiwis who wanted to be reunited with their loved ones for Christmas, inviting them to enter at www.marmite.co.nz and tell Marmite judges why they, or their loved one, deserved to win one of 100 one-way flights home from around the world. The competition was incredibly popular attracting over 1000 entries from New Zealanders all over the world.

Head judge and Marmite brand manager Hayley Findlay says the job of selecting 100 winners was incredibly difficult.

“The judges had a tough job choosing 100 ex-pats. The standard of entries was extremely high with over 1000 people wanting to spend a Kiwi Christmas at home with their families and friends. We selected people who had the most compelling stories, and those people who had put the most effort into their entry.”

The competition site allowed entrants to upload stories, images and video footage to support their cause, while each entry could be edited and updated right through to the close of the promotion on October 31 – all in a bid to ensure Marmite judges could make the most informed selections on the day.

“The effort that was put into entries was overwhelming. Some people posted to their pages more than 100 times! Most entries came from the UK , USA and Australia, but we also received entries from Kiwis scattered all over the world - from as far away as Iceland, Chile, Uganda, Hungary, and Bahrain to islands closer to home like Tonga and New Caledonia,” says Findlay.

Marmite’s centenary marks 100 years since Marmite was registered and sold here in New Zealand. For almost 35 years, Sanitarium imported Marmite from Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England until a New Zealand version was formulated in the mid 1940s, making Marmite the brand Kiwis have truly made their own.

ENDS

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