Iron Road Communications

12/10/2026

When I was six or seven, I was an elf in a school play. Let’s just say I wasn’t exactly following the script.

Years later, I can see there’s a marketing lesson in that little performance.

Businesses can be busy posting on LinkedIn, updating their websites and sending emails, but if everyone is telling a different story, what message are customers actually hearing?

Sometimes, the answer isn’t more marketing. It’s getting everyone on the same page.

I’ve shared a few simple ways to check whether your marketing is working together or whether someone’s busy chopping down the apple tree.

Read the full article to find out more.

Plenty of marketing activity doesn't add up to a marketing direction. Here's how to check whether everyone in your business is telling the same story.

15/09/2026

A freezing Lake Taupō, a flat tyre and two very cold hands taught me something I still think about in business.

You don’t need every tool yourself. You need to know what you’re good at, what you already have, and what’s missing.

That’s the thinking behind Iron Road’s fractional approach to marketing and communications.

I can’t remember what year I did my first Lake Taupō Cycle Challenge, but I remember being bloody cold. The 160 kilometre ride around Lake Taupō is hard enough without the weather turning against you, and that particular morning it must have been less than five degrees, with mist and a gentle dr...

14/09/2026

What should you do with a 60+ database?

Knowing that a large proportion of your customers are over 60 is useful, but Harvard Business School research into older consumers suggests that age alone doesn’t tell us enough about who those people are, what they need or how they behave.

Consider a financial services business whose database contains thousands of customers between 60 and 75. Within that group will be people still working and accumulating wealth, people preparing for retirement, retirees drawing income from investments, people helping adult children into homes and others beginning to think about estate planning or how their assets will eventually be passed on.

There are likely to be differences in health, independence, social activity and attitudes towards technology as well, all of which can influence the services people need and how they prefer to deal with a business.

This means there is potentially much more value in the customer information businesses already hold if they start looking beyond date of birth. Purchase history, enquiries, website behaviour, conversations with staff and, importantly, interviews with customers themselves can begin to reveal groups with common needs and circumstances.

The resulting segments may cross conventional age boundaries, which is useful because the objective isn’t to find a better label for people over 60. It’s to understand enough about them to make better marketing decisions.

If people over 60 make up an important part of your customer base and you’d like to take a fresh look at how you’re marketing to them, message me. I’m happy to meet for a coffee and talk through what you’re seeing in your own market.

30/07/2026

Marketing isn't about being everywhere. It's about being consistent everywhere.

This week's article explores why disconnected marketing sends mixed messages, and how a clear, consistent approach builds trust with the people you want to reach.

(And yes... it all starts with a missing jandal.)

Or even punchier:

What does a missing jandal have to do with marketing?

More than you'd think.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-jandal-theory-marketing-colin-kennedy-ujkef/

This week's article looks at why consistency builds trust, and why "spray and pray" marketing rarely delivers the results businesses hope for.

Not long ago I had a shoulder injury that sent me off to the physio. I always keep a pair of jandals in the car.

29/06/2026

Have you ever been surprised by what other people thought of you?

I certainly have. Twice in my life, opportunities came my way because of the reputation I'd built without even realising it.

Today, your reputation isn't just being assessed by people. AI systems are increasingly forming opinions based on everything they can find about you and your business online.

Whether you're aware of it or not, those digital impressions can influence real-world decisions.

In this article, I share two personal stories and explain why understanding your AI Trust Footprint has become more important than ever.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you ever been surprised by how others perceived you?

👇 Read the full article here.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/room-has-changed-something-assessing-your-worth-right-colin-kennedy-76gge/

We were in standard nine, which in South Africa at the time, was the penultimate year of school. We were called in to vote for who we wanted as Head Prefects and Deputy Head Prefects (male and female) in our final year.

17/06/2026

Why brand recognition matters less than your online reputation

I asked three AI language models to recommend pet insurance for our 8-year-old dog (recovering from cyst surgery) and our 10-week-old kitten.

I'd never heard of PD Insurance NZ, but pound for pound, it came out on top, winning more head-to-head match-ups across the three AIs than any other insurer (ahead of household names like Southern Cross and AA).

What did PD Insurance do differently? It has a comprehensive digital footprint across the exact sources these models lean on when building a recommendation:

> Share of voice - Your brand turns up across many independent sources, not just one.

> Third-party authority - Comparison sites, review platforms, ratings bodies (Canstar, MoneyHub, Trustpilot).

> Structured, quotable facts - Hard numbers a model can lift and cite, not vague marketing copy.

> Timeliness - Actively updated content outweighs stale pages.

> Earned media - Independent coverage gets cited while self-published claims usually don't.

Your reputation used to mean what people said about you. Now it also means what an AI says about you before a customer reaches your website.

15/06/2026

Your reputation is now your search ranking

If you are thinking, 'Oh no, not more AI-related content’, think again, because there is no burying your head in the sand on this one.

Now that's out of the way, let's talk about how search behaviour is moving away from SEO to online reputation.

A McKinsey AI Discovery Survey (n = 1,927) reports that 50% of consumers (of all ages) are using AI-powered search, and 20-50% of traditional search is at risk. This is partly because people buy shortcuts and AI is the ultimate shortcut.

I recommend you ask yourself whether your online reputation is geared to meet how people are already searching and making buying decisions.

AI recommends service providers, suppliers and products based on different parameters to traditional search. Editorial content, articles and blogs are AI's most trusted source of information, followed by live commerce (selling through a live video screen) like Live Instagram, social media, review sites and also the search engines themselves.

The point being that reputation is increasingly important because AI does not rank only your website. It also reads the wider evidence across your entire digital footprint. What you publish, what others say, how often you appear, and whether those signals are credible enough to recommend you.

04/03/2026

Pressure doesn’t build strong businesses. It reveals how they’re designed.

Two businesses can face the same surge in enquiries or cash flow squeeze — one stays steady, the other scrambles. The difference isn’t grit. It’s structure.

Resilient businesses don’t rely on heroics. They build systems that reduce friction, protect customer connection, and create clarity when attention is stretched.

Growth without stability creates stress.
Stability before scale creates confidence.

If 72% of NZ businesses expect growth this year, the real question is — is your business designed to handle it?

By Elise Balsillie, Head of Thryv Australia and New Zealand Pressure has a way of sorting businesses quickly. Two businesses can face the same surge in