Shrek great marketer for NZ
Diana Dobson
It’s obvious after just a few minutes with Dust to Gold author John Perriam that he carries a story of huge depth.
And it’s not just for the obvious reasons that his book about Bendigo Station is one of entrepreneurial adventure and survival, and that it’s home to the iconic woolly hermit merino Shrek.
Perriam, who entranced a group of around 50 in Gisborne this week as part of a nationwide book tour, is all about turning what you have into opportunity.
He’s a marketer through and through, and while he was probably born with that, it’s a skill he has honed in more recent years
. . . his political period. His passion is to grow superfine merino wool . . . which has also expanded to wines and clothes and niche food production.
He wasn’t always such a jet-setting entrepreneur. When he first went farming, he did everything himself — but when he took on the establishment, he quickly realised you can’t achieve everything yourself and putting the right people in the right place pays dividends.
Perriam’s fame has most definitely been paved by Shrek — the big woolly merino whose image was beamed around the globe after he was discovered in the South Island high country.
Shrek was a renegade who probably would not have survived much longer up there — he was wool-blind and was an accident waiting to happen, given the dangerous nature of the terrain.
He had beaten the muster for five or six years.
And despite his wild and woolly times, he has the temperament of a Labrador. One Japanese film crew, who did a documentary on him in the early days — watched by a third of their population — recently came back to see if he really was a sheep.
“He doesn’t actually think he is a sheep,” says Perriam, who Shrek will happily follow up hill and down dale, and through thousands of sheep.
At 16, Shrek is still going strong, although he doesn’t travel quite as much as he used to.
“He’s as fit as a buck rat,” says Perriam. “But he’s very much the rock star.”
He walks straight through automatic doors, crowds and is more than happy to ride in planes — private jets are great — and limos.
He has his own complex at home, with a sun deck, radio and a wardrobe filled with his red jackets. He lives like a king on a special diet of white oats, chaff and lucerne hay — the secret to a long and healthy life.
But he has a knack of knowing who needs that one-one-one time.
Just the other day, he was by the bed of a 102-year-old, having a heart-to-heart.
It’s hard not to talk only about Shrek, and Perriam is the first to admit that his book would probably never have evolved had he and wife Heather not been on “an incredible journey with Shrek”.
All royalties from the book and Shrek’s other efforts go to Cure Kids — a charity established to raise money for research into life-threatening childhood illnesses.
“As far as sheep go, he’s probably the most worthless in the country — a merino wether usually reaches the end of its useful life at six.”
But the reality is, Shrek has generated an immeasurable amount of marketing for New Zealand, and raised thousands of dollars for Cure Kids.
The Shrek story is the perfect vehicle for Perriam to spread his own word — to inspire youngsters to get out and do things, to believe in good, understand humility, and follow their dreams . . . no matter how big their own Goliath may be.
The sales of Dust to Gold are unprecedented for a New Zealand book and Random House is already on its third reprint.
Perriam knows, through his own experience, that marketing is about emotion, and he’s confident New Zealand is perfectly poised to sell itself on emotive hooks.
It’s the story that grows a market . . . and Dust to Gold, with Shrek on the hill, fits that glove perfectly.