“Leading with her Heart: Alex Peacock’s Role in Hamilton’s Newest Marketing Agency, fortyone”

Alex Peacock has been a creative personality since primary school. Throughout the years she’s been drawing painting or designing something new every chance she’s had. Naturally, she excelled in her tertiary design studies.

Alex completed her Bachelor of Design (Spatial Design) at the end of 2023 and returned to Wintec | Te Pūkenga this year to complete a Graduate Diploma in Communications. Although she has a qualification, she is “really looking forward to exploring advertising, publicity and digital marketing, further.”

As part of her course, Alex took the opportunity to apply for the role of student director for the third-year marketing agency ‘fortyone’. The ‘pop up’ agency is an annual feature of the communications programme at Wintec, and brings the students together in creative teams to work with real clients from the local community.

In the student director role, Alex coordinates the workflow of her fellow students, all of whom bring a range of skillsets and ideas to the workplace. Some of the team’s talents and interests include; photography, videography, design, writing, art, sport, and comedy.

Through taking on this role, Alex hopes to learn the key fundamentals of what it means to be a leader.

She places a heavy emphasis on her belief that the agency will work best as a team, collaboratively and said she likes to “autonomously undertake a leadership role when working with others in a team environment”. 

As Martin Luther King, Jr. so aptly said about leadership, “Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

Alex believes leading by example is the best way to promote a culture which values wellbeing and valuable use of time. She emphasised that this challenge requires ongoing communication with her team to address individual needs and concerns.

“I don’t want to be a boss, I want to influence, motivate and enable others to contribute as part of a team.”

If she wasn’t elected as the agency leader, Alex imagines herself working in her areas of strength in design and public speaking.

Looking back on her past three and a half years at Wintec, Alex says with assurance, “I am a lot more confident both within myself and communicating with others. I always felt so awkward talking with new people, but now I feel like I can talk to a brick wall.”

Following her graduate studies, Alex’s only ambition is to “ideally get a job!” On a more serious note, she seeks employment within the Spatial Design industry.

She hopes the communications diploma will give her a point of difference and build on the skills from her degree. “I am the first Spatial Design student from Wintec to have done this graduate diploma following the design degree, so I feel pretty proud to be standing out from the rest.”

Alex sees herself taking on a leadership role later in her career, whether that’s in Design, Communication or both.

Isabella Root, one of the media team, said that the fortyone team are “stoked to see her step into a leadership position, she runs our team well and pays great attention to everyone’s ideas/opinions”.

Outside of Wintec and her design expressions, Alex loves to dance. For the last 15 years, she has studied the styles of Tap, Jazz and Contemporary at Drury Lane. In 2022, she was nominated for a NZAMD Scholarship to Nationals in Tap Dancing. Now, she passes on her wealth of knowledge to students aged anywhere from 6 years old to middle aged adults.

This year, she is travelling to the United States for a dance tour where she will perform on stage at Disney Springs, Orlando. To help fundraise for this trip, Alex runs her own Instagram account where she designs car stickers.

Alex invites everyone to check out fortyone’s website and Instagram page for more information and access to their services.