Celebrating Colin Ennor – Ten Years of Transforming People’s Lives
Last week, Orange and some of our dearest friends, colleagues and customers celebrated ten years of service for our extraordinary event director Colin Ennor. For ten years, he has lead the industry in New Zealand, all while remaining a fantastic, warm, humble and decent human being.
By David Hayward, Former Relationship Director, I Want Orange.
Colin’s 10 Year Celebrations
In the beginning
In 2008, huge seismic events were happening globally. 2008 was the year of the Global Finance Crisis (GFC) – the 21st of January became Black Monday for the worldwide stock markets, followed by a terrible year for commerce that would see bankruptcies for Lehmann Brothers and Washington Mutual; The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, described as the biggest scientific experiment in the history of mankind was powered up in Geneva, Switzerland; and Barack Obama was the first African-American president of the United States….
….and Colin Ennor joined us here at Orange.
Stu, Colin & Semele at Colin’s 30th Birthday
Writing about Colin’s career would require volumes of blogs, not a single one – so I’m going to write about five things that make Colin great. It’s going to be much briefer than Colin deserves.
1. He grows franchises and annual events in scale through creativity
The Property Council Awards
Colin has, since 2011, took the Property Awards from a good sized 500 people to the largest and most prestigious gala dinner in New Zealand – regularly around 1500 guests with a waiting list. That is no mean feat: the gala dinner format has some mandatory elements, and awards dinners even more so!
Every year, Colin, and our team here at Orange has continued to amazing and delight our customers, so much so that we’re still here all these years later.
2. He nails international events
When big international events with global audiences come to New Zealand, Orange has delivered and in a large part because of Colin. In 2015, we had the most nerve racking hour of television creating the Official Draw Show for the FIFA U-20 World Cup New Zealand 2015 – broadcast live to over 110 million people.
Sitting live in the audience, experiencing our innovative, integrated audio-visual entertainment centred on our “THE WORLD LOVES FOOTBALL” creative – I knew everything was in hand as soon as I heard “The Voice of God” booming through the PA system: Colin, calling the shots from the control room.
The official draw for the FIF U-20 World Cup in New Zealand 2015 at Sky City Convention Centre.
In 2017, we launched Qatar Airways new route from Auckland to the world, and our headline act Kimbra was lucky enough to get a photo with Colin.
Colin and Kimbra at the Qatar Airways launch.
3. He creates events anywhere, on any site
SeePort Festival at the Ports of Auckland.
Ports of Auckland, Colin and Orange started collaborating a few years ago on SeePort – the large scale community event on Auckland’s industrial centre Captain Cook’s Wharf attended by tens of thousands of people. It culminates with the Auckland Symphony Orchestra and our famous laser and fireworks show. This event couldn’t happen without Colin’s years of experience creating incredible, refined event experiences on industrial sites – everything from hard hat tours of industrial construction sites like bridges in Tauranga through to opening a new sewage centre – before it became operational naturally.
4. He’s got military precision that impresses the military
On a real-life Navy ship!
In 2016, an incredible collaboration with The Royal New Zealand Navy culminated in the 75th Anniversary of The Royal New Zealand Navy. It’s full of eye-watering, mind blowing details: twenty-two Navies from around the world, including the US, the Chinese, and the Indonesian, tens of thousands of people both on the docks, the International Naval Review (INR) and a public exhibition. It was a mammoth task even before you factor in a natural disaster, in the form of the tragic earthquake in Kaikoura that diverted the US and NZ Navies to help.
Throughout it all, Colin remained in control and project managed one of the most logistically demanding events in New Zealand history – and it attracted the accolades from people including the very highest officer in the Navy.
5. He’s an awesome person
Twinning is winning!
Finally, I have spoken publicly and hopefully enough privately about this – but Colin is hands down one of my favourite people, friend and colleague. We’ve worked together for eight years and if you know him, I probably don’t need to tell you that he is a generous, giving person who cares deeply about his friends and family – including his fantastic Mum, Maria and fiancée Serge; he is an incredible professional and gives everything for Orange and for his clients.