NZ Electoral Commission Launches 2025 Local Election Campaign With Iconic Orange Guy

The Electoral Commission has launched its 2025 local election campaign, with independent creative agency RUN Aotearoa leading the creative, strategy, design and production, and media partner FCB Media managing media strategy, planning and buying. The campaign features the iconic Orange Guy and Pup, delivering vital enrolment information to over four million New Zealanders.

The campaign, which launched earlier this month, is a nationwide multi-channel initiative, with hundreds of assets rolling out across TV, digital, OOH, direct mail, social, radio, print, press, media partnerships and search -- running from April until August 2025.

To ensure the campaign resonates with the diverse communities of Aotearoa, stakeholder materials were produced in six te reo Māori dialects, alongside English, Samoan, Tongan, Simplified Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

Additional focus has been placed on building understanding of the Māori Electoral Option among Māori, through tailored advertising and stakeholder engagement. The 2025 campaign builds on the success of RUN’s previous work for the Electoral Commission, in partnership with FCB Aotearoa, for the 2023 Māori Electoral Option campaign, featuring The Sandman, artist Marcus Winter (Te Roroa, Ngāpuhi).

RUN co-founders, Raymond Otene McKay and Laura Cibilich, said, “Leading a campaign of this scale, reaching millions of New Zealanders, is a true privilege -- and being the first independent agency trusted to deliver an election campaign is a milestone we’re incredibly proud of.”

Raymond added, “This campaign carries extra weight in 2025, as it marks 50 years of the Māori Electoral Option -- a powerful expression of choice, voice, and mana for Māori voters.”

With a strong kaupapa and trusted characters at its heart, the campaign aims to make enrolling to vote in the upcoming local elections easy for every eligible voter in Aotearoa.