Brand & creative partnership for the Tertiary Education Union
Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union · Brand & Creative Partnership · 5.5+ years retained · 2019 → ongoing
A continuous brand and creative partnership with Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union since 2019 — the founding rebrand and brand guidelines, the 10 Year Booklet, the teu.ac.nz website, annual reports, signature activist campaigns, and a flexible retainer-partnership that’s outlasted multiple National Secretaries, a COVID-era budget cycle, and an entire comms team turnover.
5.5+ yrs
of continuous retained partnership since 2019
24h
typical rapid-response turnaround for political moments
Weekly
cadence — TEU × OBVS Monday catch-ups
1
point of contact each side — TEU comms ↔ Obvious senior designer
When you get a pro to do something, it just makes such a huge difference. Having Obvious has been fantastic — they make us look professional to the outside world. I load the gun and these guys fire the bullets.Enzo Giordani — Communications Officer, Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union
Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union (TEU) represents the staff who keep New Zealand’s tertiary education system running — academics, organisers, allied staff, technicians, librarians; the people inside universities, polytechnics and wānanga who teach, support and operate. The union’s job is part advocacy, part industrial relations, part political campaigning. Obvious has been TEU’s brand and creative partner since 2019.
Across 5.5+ years, the relationship has evolved from a founding rebrand and the TEU 10 Year Booklet into a continuous retainer covering every creative discipline TEU needs — from print-ready annual reports through to 24-hour rapid-response graphics when politicians release blacked-out documents.
A union with a serious campaigning job to do
That mix demands an unusual creative partner. On any given day TEU needs a polished annual report for members, a billboard-ready campaign graphic for Parliament, a 24-hour rapid response to a Minister’s media release, a refresh of an old poster template, a new T-shirt design, a stress ball, and a video edit. The partner that can absorb all of that without losing brand coherence is rare. Obvious has held that brief — with the same single point of contact on both sides — since 2019.
Five and a half years, one continuous partnership
2019 — Foundation
Brand rebrand and 10 Year Booklet. Concept development with Kori Nētana (January 2019), brand document refinements through Q1, and the marquee deliverable: the TEU 10 Year Booklet — a substantial print piece marking the union’s tenth anniversary, finished in late June with both a standard print run and a special foil-stamped edition.
2020 — Embedded
Annual reporting and ongoing creative. TEU’s print-ready Annual Report (20MB CMYK production file, mid-2020) produced inside the brand system established the year before. The relationship transitions from project mode into proper retainer.
2021 — Documented
The TEU brand guidelines document is published (June 2021) — the system is now teachable, applicable across internal teams, and able to support consistency across multiple regional offices and campaign moments.
2022–2023 — Campaigning
Activist campaign cadence finds its rhythm. Recurring work like the ‘Save the Politics’ campaign cycles through the year. Member communications, social content scheduling, internal reporting, regional event support — the broad mix of discipline that defines what a retained creative partner inside a national union actually does.
2024 — Strategic
Obvious produces strategic concept work alongside TEU leadership on Co-Governance positioning (February 2024) — an example of the partnership operating not just at the production layer but at the strategic concept layer where brand and politics intersect.
2025 — Formalised
The formal TEU × Obvious Brand Partners Service Agreement 2025 is signed (December 2024 for the 2025 year), with a weekly cadence formalised as ‘TEU X OBVS Weekly’ and a single comms-officer-to-senior-designer point of contact model.
2026 — Current
Active retainer through TEU’s transition of National Secretary and Communications Officer roles. Election content management, teu.ac.nz Heroku-hosted maintenance with embedded calculators and CMS, and the early development of a 2027 campaign theme — workshopped under the working title “Education is our power.”
The actual work, by discipline
The founding system
The 2019 rebrand, the 2021 brand guidelines document, and ongoing brand application as new sub-brands and campaign sub-identities emerge. The bilingual lock-up Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union sits at the heart of the system.
10 Year Booklet to annual reports
The 10 Year Booklet (incl. foil-stamped edition), annual reports, policy submissions, occasional papers (“Talking Tertiary Education”, “Education Under Pressure”), and member-facing print.
teu.ac.nz
Built, hosted (Heroku) and maintained by Obvious. Embedded fee calculator, CMS, election content management, member-facing tools. Senior Developer Tomlin Leniston anchors the technical side.
From SELFIE edits to drone
In-house turnaround edits, documentary-style long-form pieces, live streaming for events, and drone photography/video for campaign and event coverage.
‘Save the Politics’ and beyond
Recurring ‘Save the Politics’ campaign cycle; rapid-response graphics for political moments (24-hour turnaround); International Working Women’s Day creative; chalk-stencil street activations.
Kate Shepard and the chalk kit
The ‘angry Kate Shepard’ stress balls (kitchen-cricket-tested), themed T-shirts, retreat merch, and the long-running chalk-stencil kit. Campaign tools that double as member rewards.
Press to member comms
Press release support, internal comms, tertiary update writing, member-facing copywriting — sitting alongside TEU’s own comms function rather than replacing it.
With Aro Digital
Performance-based digital marketing campaigns, paid and bought media across platforms, in partnership with Aro Digital — opening up national-level campaign reach.
The signature moments
The 10 Year Booklet (2019)
A substantial print piece marking TEU’s tenth anniversary. Standard print run plus a special foil-stamped edition. Still the artefact both sides reach for when describing the depth of work the partnership can produce.
‘Save the Politics’ campaign cycle
A recurring campaign that runs across the year, refreshed each cycle as the political environment shifts. The work that gives the relationship its rhythm — every few weeks a new prompt, a new design pass, sometimes a turnaround in a matter of hours when a Minister moves first.
Penny Simmonds blacked-out documents rapid response
When Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds released a document set with sensitive material redacted, TEU needed a graphic response in 24 hours. Scott Copeland turned it around — the kind of moment that only works because of the trust built over years.
The ‘angry Kate Shepard’ merchandise
Physical merch as cultural commentary — a stress ball featuring an angry depiction of Kate Sheppard, the suffragist whose face is on the New Zealand $10 note. The kind of artefact that exists because the partnership has room for ideas that bigger agencies wouldn’t sign off on.
Outcomes
What this enables for TEU
- One brief, one team. Whatever the union needs — annual report, campaign graphic, video, T-shirt, web fix, election content — runs through the same retained relationship rather than separate procurement.
- Speed when it counts. The longer the partnership has run, the less formal the assignment process has needed to be. Trust is the substrate.
- Consistency across multiple comms officers and National Secretaries. When TEU staff turn over, the brand and the institutional memory of how it operates stay with Obvious — including the templates, the working files, the rationale for past decisions.
- Strategic conversation, not just production. Obvious operates at the strategic concept layer too — not just at the production layer.
Why this kind of partnership works
The pattern this case study illustrates is one of the more durable in agency-client relationships: a flexible retainer, a single point of contact, a weekly cadence, mutual respect on both sides, and the willingness to absorb the soft edges of each other’s businesses. TEU’s budget pressure during COVID was met with Obvious flexing pricing down for a period; TEU has returned that loyalty by staying through multiple political cycles.
It also reflects a specific match between agency and client: Obvious leans into being part of the team rather than performing as an external supplier. TEU leans into operating like a creative client rather than a procurement one. As Daniel Francesc Benson-Guiu (Assistant National Secretary) put it in the most recent handover meeting: “We have a partnership, and it has to work for both of us.”
Running a union, advocacy organisation or campaigning group?
Obvious does retained brand and creative partnerships for organisations doing serious advocacy work — weekly cadence, single point of contact, every discipline on tap when the moment requires it. If that’s the shape of your work, we’d love to talk.
