About Us
Dave Hayward
Europa Creative Partners is led by our founder, Dave Hayward, a high-energy, revenue-focused, and experienced sales and marketing professional with a passion for helping businesses thrive.
Dave’s career spans over two decades in both sales and marketing, during which he has held prominent roles such as Chief Marketing Officer at Auckland Rugby League (ARL) and Journey Digital, and General Manager of Marketing at Datacom.
He has worked on marketing activations or brand transformations for some of the biggest brands around, including ANZ, AIG, and Nike, while also championing the growth of smaller, high growth, home-grown hero brands. He’s worked on three world cups – Rugby World Cup 2011, Cricket World Cup 2015, and FIFA U-20 World Cup 2015.
Dave’s approach is characterised by kindness, fun, humility, and a genuine commitment to his clients’ success. Part of that commitment is a strong focus and expertise with marketing technology (MarTech): particularly AI and marketing automation.
Dave’s work in technology and AI led to him being appointed the Australia and New Zealand ambassador for Section School, the premier business and AI up skilling education technology platform founded by NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway.
Beyond work, Dave has served on Te Hapori as an advisor for eight years, aiding individuals struggling with addiction in their journey through the Court system towards sobriety, rehabilitation and reintegration.
Testimonials
Working with Dave as our Chief Marketing Officer was a great experience. From day one, he took charge of developing our growth strategy and brought fresh, innovative ideas to the table. He was able to take our very immature marketing approach (next to nothing) and conceptualise and direct content creation in collaboration with our clients. Dave’s leadership was a key driver behind multiple successful campaigns that not only boosted our brand’s visibility but also significantly increased our customer base.
Dave has fantastic networking skills too. He has a natural talent for building relationships and attracting new business opportunities. Whether it was through industry events, social media, or casual meetups, Dave’s connections always seemed to open new doors for us to new clients and great work.
His passion and sense of humour were excellent, making our team laugh, motivated and cohesive. Dave wasn’t just a CMO; he is a friend to the business. He left a lasting impact on our company.
Working with Dave is a true pleasure – he is genuinely engaged with the work at a creative level and goes above and beyond to ensure the project will be a success. He has amazing interpersonal skills and can nimbly navigate complex stakeholder relationships and projects with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities to help all parties to achieve their outcomes.
Dave was crucial to the development of our FIFA City Activation project – Fever Pitch – which began it’s life tight on time and budget and with a number of key stakeholders pushing for their own outcomes. Dave and the team at Orange Productions worked tirelessly to meet all the requirements, making changes, integrating new feedback and always returning with a polished and improved piece of work despite all the complexity. Dave is an extremely supportive collaborator and his presence in a project team brings out the best in everyone and serves to lift the quality of everyone’s contribution and of course of the resulting work, Without his commitment the Fever Pitch Auckland project would not have been realised so fully.
Highly recommend working with Dave on any project.