‘Be interesting’: The driving force behind New Zealand’s large agency of the year

Earlier in my career, former Newshub news boss Hal Crawford offered some sage advice when he told me that every journalist should have another journalist write about them. It’s confronting, he said, to see what they leave out and what they think is important. Rarely, if ever, does it coincide with your own views on the matter. 

Sitting here penning the story of One Plus One Communications, I feel the shadow of Crawford’s advice hanging over me with the realisation that writing about your boss can be as confronting as having your own story told. 

As it turns out, I’ve already erred because One Plus One Founder and Managing Director Kelly Bennett dislikes nothing more than when I call him boss. My hope is that he permits that transgression as I try to capture his story in the limited spotlight of 800-1000 words. 

Kelly Bennett has always been an over-thinker, battling the whisper of impostor syndrome, and never had that whisper been louder than when he decided to leave his safe network agency job to start his own thing.

If you’re looking for an entrepreneurial story that started in a garage of a student flat after someone dropped out of university, this isn’t one of them. 

Kelly was 43 – borderline geriatric in an industry obsessed with youth – when he decided to give business ownership a crack. By every sensible estimate, he’d enjoyed a successful career and was leading a growing agency, so it made no sense for him to go out alone.    

But having built the TBWA network agency Eleven from the ground up over several years, he wanted something that he couldn’t get from calling someone else “boss”. He wanted autonomy and to test himself without the guardrails of an existing agency structure.

“This wasn’t an insignificant move for me,” says Bennett. 

“All those feelings of self-doubt came creeping back. Yes, I had done well at TBWA, but as I exited the building on Mayoral Drive around 12 years ago, the reality is I had no job, no clients and no idea whether I’d made the biggest mistake of my career,” he adds. 

Those early days were hard work. Kelly had to get stuck into everything, offering the full suite of services that he previously had a team to help him with, with one loyal colleague helping out from the get-go.

Bit by bit, however, he started to assemble something meaningful, with momentum. He started winning accounts and was able to hire young talents who would quickly grow under his mentorship. It’s an approach that maintains to this day, despite the agency being far bigger than it ever was.“I’m enormously proud of having played a small role in giving so many young people a starting position in this industry, which can be notoriously tough,” says Kelly. 

“One Plus One wouldn’t be what it is today without talented practitioners like Emily Ding, who joined the agency straight out of university but is now an account director. I certainly don’t take credit for her career. That’s all her, but it’s been gratifying to give her the space she needed to excel in the way she so obviously has,” he adds.

One Plus One grew steadily in those first years, adding new clients and competencies as the story progressed. Kelly and his team were moving in the right direction and growing annually, although for someone as ambitious as I know he is, not quite at the pace he wanted. 

But business fortunes often come down to moments of serendipity. A phone call. A cup of coffee. A long lunch. These are the moments that can quickly change the trajectory of an organisation. 

For Kelly, such a moment came when he first invited Max Burt in for a chat about joining the company. It seems strangely fitting that the author of this piece today served as a referee for Max, when Kelly was deciding whether to hire him and join the team.

In Max, Kelly has discovered an ideal business partner: a strategic foil to the impatient hustle and people-centred focus that has always served him well. With Max installed as General Manager at One Plus One, they’ve both been able to shift their focus and attention to growing the business together, which has doubled in size over the past three years.

It’s a trajectory that has also come with industry recognition, with the firm awarded the PRINZ large Agency of the Year title for the last two years running, coupled with the 2025 PR Asia Boutique Agency of the Year, in Hong Kong. 

“Max and I are both big believers in outputs, and ideally those outputs have to consistently help our clients be that thing we all want to be: interesting,” says Kelly. 

“It’s not about following the easiest path. It’s about doing the right thing, even if it seems difficult to execute. Having an awesome team means we consistently back each other to solve  communications problems and challenges for our clients, and that sense of quiet self-belief helps us win new work, too.” he adds.

When he looks back at the work he’s most proud of, Kelly often points to two examples: the COVID-era story involving the establishment of the New Zealand Food Network; and, secondly, Nigel Latta sharing his personal experience of cancer recently through a warts-and-all integrated campaign for long-standing client nib. 

Both of these examples from the One Plus One team serve as a testament to their belief that creativity, energy, action and momentum can push businesses in the right direction.

That may be true, but we are currently witnessing massive change across the industry, which is leading to concern among young practitioners about how their jobs might change in the future.    

Asked what advice he would give to these young practitioners, Kelly doesn’t hesitate. 

“Half the trick in our game is simply doing more interesting things more often than anyone else – and being genuinely curious about the people, businesses and brands around you, ” he says. 

“At a time when everything feels like a copy of something AI-generated, I reckon it’s more important than ever to just be yourself – and be completely comfortable with that, regardless of where you are in your career. It’s the only thing that can let you stand apart from the crowd,” he adds.

As I make a risky leap of my own shortly and return to journalism as the Money Editor at Stuff, I will carry Kelly’s words and encouragement with me. Because, while he’s been my boss during this recent chapter, he and Max have also been great professional mentors and even better friends.

By Damien Venuto on behalf of One Plus One Communications