Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Commerce Maree Thyne is the fourth academic from the Department of Marketing to be elected President of the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC).
Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Commerce and Dean of the Otago Business School, Professor Maree Thyne, is continuing a stellar Otago tradition – she’s the fourth academic from the Department of Marketing to be elected President of the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC).
Established 27 years ago, ANZMAC is an association that draws together marketing academics from across Australia and New Zealand (and beyond) in a bid to advance scholarship and collaboration.
Since its inception in 1998, ANZMAC has sourced four of its 11 presidents from Otago, with Maree following in the footsteps of past and present marketing colleagues, Professors Rob Lawson, Ken Deans and Rob Aitken. This is an impressive strike rate given that the Academy currently has more than 30 institutional members and over 500 individual scholars.
Asked why Otago has punched above its weight on the representation front, Maree believes the department’s geographical isolation increases its deep appreciation of collaboration and all the abundant research opportunities therein.
“Because we’re right at the bottom of New Zealand we’ve been really driven to get involved in that community – to make sure we are known, heard, understood and included. It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to meet and work with our colleagues from Australia and the rest of New Zealand. There wouldn’t be many people in our department who haven’t met important collaborators through the ANZMAC community – I think we’ve just always understood the value of it.”
Given that ANZMAC members only meet up en masse at an annual conference and have to make the most of their contact via Zoom meetings, good connectivity is essential. Professor Rob Aitken thinks ANZMAC is in great hands on this front, for building rapport is one of Maree’s fortes.
“She’s open, honest, genuine, generous. She’ll bring her strong individual personality to it. She has an infectious enthusiasm – she galvanises people and that’s an important thing. ANZMAC is prestigious but, like most organisations, it’s bureaucratic and slow-moving so trying to get people involved is difficult. One of the things Maree is very good at is enthusing people. She’s a great listener, really inclusive, and non-judgemental. She also has a flair – a nice, outgoing way of representing the best things that you can do. I think she’ll be a powerhouse in there.”
"There’s no point in all of us trying to reinvent the wheel – we’ve got a massive community here and we can all be sharing resources, ideas, support and innovation around teaching.” – Maree Thyne
So, what initiatives does this personable powerhouse plan to drive during her term as president?
“We’ve got an opportunity to start really drilling down into the curriculum that we’re developing for Marketing and how we’re delivering it. We’re in a really different era at the moment with AI and with the increasing demand for online learning, so we need to look at what that means for how and what we teach.
“I’m keen to get the academic community to open up with some of the new and inventive areas they’re researching and teaching in and encourage collaboration across the universities. There’s no point in all of us trying to reinvent the wheel – we’ve got a massive community here and we can all be sharing resources, ideas, support and innovation around teaching.”
One of the main reasons Maree accepted this new role was to maximise the mentoring and networking opportunities for Otago’s marketing students. Having been an ANZMAC-nurtured postgraduate herself, she’s keen to give back to a community that helped her flourish professionally.
She points to the fact that one of the department’s PhD students, Pham Van Hau, is on the leadership council of DocCom – a newly launched incubator for doctoral and HDR (higher degree by research) students that sits under the ANZMAC umbrella and aims to grow collegiality and fellowship.
“It’s an excellent testament to how much we value the Academy. I think we owe it to our students to lead from the front – if I’m serious about ANZMAC being important and valued to me and my past as an academic, then I should be involved and supporting the community.”
– Kōrero by Claire Finlayson, Communications Adviser (Otago Business School)