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In Detail
Some clients hire Payper to sell something. Meridian's Community Decarbonisation Fund exists to give money away — to hospices, food rescue charities, conservation trusts and community pools swapping diesel and gas for electricity. Stories like that are the reason we got into journalism in the first place.
In 2026 the fund made its biggest ever distribution: $1.8 million to 37 community groups, from Tai Tokerau to Otago. Payper ran the national PR campaign announcing the recipients for Meridian Energy — the press release, the press kit, the pitching and the interview briefings that carried the story into newsrooms across the country.
A campaign like this lives or dies on localisation. A national release about 37 grants is one story; a hospice cutting its power bill to free up money for patient care is big news in Whanganui. So we built the campaign the way newsrooms actually work — a master release for the national desks, then individually tailored pitches for the regions, each one leading with the local recipient rather than the funder. Our approach was hyper-localised, and it turned out to be hyper-effective.
The unglamorous work mattered as much as the writing: interview briefs so every Meridian spokesperson walked in prepared, fast answers for reporters on deadline, and photos hunted down before anyone had to ask twice.
It travelled. The Press ran it in print and online, three more regional dailies followed in print, and the Neighbourly network carried recipient stories from Auckland to Invercargill. Nineteen stories, every one of them positive, an estimated 328,500 New Zealanders reached.
Our favourite part: every one of those groups got to see their mahi celebrated in their own local news. Some results don't fit in a spreadsheet.
