Kiwis have eye on cash register

Why can't we be more like the New Zealanders?

Why can't our small businesspeople be more like Kiwi sex industry entrepreneur Steve Crow? For eight years the enterprising, socially conscious Crow has arranged for topless strippers to ride motorcycles through New Zealand cities to highlight good causes (principally his own business, of course).

But this year they went and cancelled the Boobs on Bikes pageant Crow had arranged in Auckland - for no other reason than that the country is hosting a rugby World Cup. Crow had apparently decided to paint the naked torsos of his strippers in the colours of the teams taking part in the World Cup - to raise awareness of breast cancer.

Crow reluctantly canned the event because a majority of New Zealanders wanted to preserve the image of the rugby feast as a "family event" and he realised that the tide of public opinion was running against him. Apparently not your typical rugby-besotted Kiwi, Crow referred, in a statement announcing the cancellation of his event, to "the big rugby thingy that is happening all over NZ at this time".

AFP, meanwhile, reported that a match between a Spanish ladies' rugby team and a naked New Zealand men's XV had gone ahead. The Nude Blacks lost to the ladies from Barcelona in a game played in Dunedin 25-20. (Do yourself a favour and Google "Nude Blacks" and "Las Conquistadoras" - the name of the ladies' team from Barcelona. The pictures on the web are mostly hilarious; obviously pictures editors all over the world have had their work cut out choosing pictures that don't show any of the starkers male New Zealanders' naughty bits.)

The Daily Mail reported that this was the first time in nine years that the Nude Blacks had lost a match, but there is a likely explanation. It seems the Spanish opposition had promised that they would remove an item of clothing for each try they scored.

Reported the British tabloid: "Asked if they had let the visiting Conquistadoras score a few easy tries, Brad Henderson, a 23-year-old student, replied: 'Of course.'" (The naked fellers all had the web address of their sponsor temporarily tattooed just above their bums.)

Meanwhile, the Boobs on Bikes was not the only saucy stunt to fall foul of the moral majority in the land of the long white cloud (and so earn its backers more attention than they would ever have got otherwise). All Black sponsor Telecom ran ads featuring legendary ex-captain Sean Fitzpatrick exhorting New Zealanders to go without nookie for the duration of the World Cup - in the belief that this would somehow help the national team. Problem was that the idea was a bit half-cocked and wasn't terribly funny. And, most importantly, Brian Lochore wasn't amused. So the telecoms company backed off, admitting that they had misjudged public opinion after a predictable plethora of Facebook postings about how New Zealand's sheep population had breathed a collective sigh of relief at news of the campaign.

Even the prime minister had his two cents' worth about the abstain campaign, saying it was in the poorest taste. And then a cheeky NZ journalist asked the PM whether he was going to foresake his conjugal rights for the duration of the World Cup. John Keys wasn't amused.

Local business chambers all over New Zealand have been using the World Cup to promote local small business. Apparently, if you are one of the 95000 foreigners visiting the country and you are, in some way, shape or form a businessman, investor or entrepreneur you have no end of new best friends. You get invited to any number of barbies and paid-for outings to things like sheep farms, all sponsored in the hope of cementing new business relationships.

When that soccer thingy happened all over South Africa last year there was very little of this kind of opportunistic match-making going on. We also had a lamentable paucity of good publicity stunts. The Bavaria beer ambush was as crass as it was silly. Only kulula.com managed to raise a chuckle, but whatever the point was of what they were trying to say is now lost in the mists of time.

Maybe people were intimidated by the avaricious Swiss midget we allowed to run our country for six weeks, but we missed the opportunity to promote small business on the back of a big sporting event. The Kiwis at least are getting a few good laughs out of their event.