Alex Casey attempts to unravel the years-long, frequently frustrating family mystery that is One NZ’s Let’s Get Connected ad campaign.
Here in Aotearoa, we adore a good long-running ad campaign, even when it means being haunted by the same faces for years, and sometimes decades. It’s why The Briscoes Lady essentially lives a wig-based double life to stop herself getting mauled by hedgehog mug enthusiasts, why I thought Vince Martin from Beaurepaires was also Santa Claus for a [redacted] number of years, and why everyone on TikTok wept when they found out that Tina from Turners was dead (turns out it was just boring old Tina Turner).
But sometimes, multi-year ad campaigns feel like they can outstay their welcome. After soaking up some luxury terrestrial television time on holiday recently, I bore witness to the latest chapter in One NZ’s Let’s Get Connected campaign, which played roughly 450 times in a matter of hours. “It’s been on TV for about five years,” I posited in our editorial meeting on Monday, my watery gaze downcast, skin as crepey as the famed Titanic meme. Reader, the One NZ Let’s Get Connected campaign launched just over two years ago.
Although the campaign has somehow been named New Zealand’s favourite ad of 2026, I know it’s not just me who has tired of Jade’s elaborate global hunt to find his “Scotlandish” mother and his “was in an ad once” father. You don’t have to look hard to find dozens of Reddit threads devoted to slagging off the “piece of crap” ads deemed “annoying and cringe” and a “money sink” (although it’s worth noting Reddit also loathes Skinny’s AI spokespeople and Spark’s split-in-half car, so maybe all telcos are just doomed forever).
Chapter one arrived in May, 2024. We met the wide-eyed, bleach-blonde Māori lad Jade sitting in the Scottish highlands, telling a fiercely unbothered highland coo that he recently found out he was not the biological child of his hot tub-loving Pākēha parents. With help from his “good friend” Pepper at a One NZ store, Jade was able to trace the tartan on a family heirloom to locate his birth mother in the fictional town of Lochboon. There, by way of steamy montage, she recalled a salacious fling while travelling New Zealand in the 90s.
Aside from why a One NZ retail employee is meddling in sensitive family mysteries on company time, viewers also queried the light-hearted approach to adoption in the campaign. “Adoption is cellular trauma,” one complainant to the ASA wrote. “It is not something to be flippant about sharing hot tubs and following a stone.” Writing for The Conversation, Annabel Ahuriri-Driscoll said that “for a number of us who have experienced adoption directly, this first episode all too easily glosses over the pain and loss at the heart of adoption.”
Over a year later in June 2025, chapter two revealed that Jade’s biological parents had a fling in the 90s on the set of a FruJu-inspired ad for Icy Pops. “I tried everything to find him,” his Scottish mother pined. “I knew I couldnae give you the life you deserved on my own.” Meanwhile, One NZ employee Pepper had moved in(?) with her customer’s(?) adoptive parents, sharing in both a spa(?) and a scone(?) all at once. Jade also found his grandfather, who speaks entirely in indecipherable Scots, and flew them all home to New Zealand.
But while everyone tried to figure out what in God’s name that old fella was saying at the dinner table, another controversy emerged. In October 2025, activist and actor Acacia O’Connor, aka Pepper of the spas and scones, shared Winston Peters’ personal address while livestreaming a pro-Palestine protest outside his home. In response, One NZ said it would remove O’Connor from the campaign. “We don’t back any behaviour that puts people’s safety at risk. What’s happened doesn’t line up with our values, so we’re taking the character out of our marketing.”
In chapter three, which arrived in April 2026, One NZ addressed the removal directly: “I found my Scotlandish mother and grandfather – and Pepper turned into an entirely different woman!” Moving on! The gang then tracked down the lead actor from the (fake) ad within the (real) ad, discovered Jade’s father was called EJ, and that he once dated Claire Chitham from Shortland Street. “He had a big massive noggin,” Chitham reminisced from her indoor pool(?) while playing a remix of ‘You’re Not in Guatemala Now’(?) on a floating electric keyboard(?).
And if all of that seemed like too many elements on the plate, the group then headed into the mountains with a DOC ranger to disturb a man unleashing thunderous farts while scrolling his phone in a remote long drop. “Are you EJ?” Jade asked after dragging the poor man out of his bout of gastrointestinal distress. “No, I’m Neil. EJ’s gone overseas I think,” he said.
So we’re essentially back where we started, and I feel like a babbling Scottish grandfather at the dinner table. Why did they ever think Neil in the toilet was the dad? What is Pepper’s contracted role at One NZ and is she getting overtime and per diems for all this travel? Why does this cinematic universe include Shortland Street and Claire Chitham? What does EJ stand for and is it Elton John? Why do Jade’s adoptive parents spend so much time in the spa pool? And why has this all taken longer than two seasons of The Pitt?
As we await the next instalment of this glacially-placed wild goose chase, I just think we need to acknowledge that David Lomas would have sussed it in about a week. These amateurs have flown thousands of kilometres, but at no point has anyone even bothered to look up EJ on social media, which just happens to be what most people use their phones for, or even the White Pages. This is New Zealand for crying out loud – how hard can it be to track down a charismatic Māori man with a distinctive name who peaked in the mid-90s and has a “big noggin”?
Hmm, if only someone involved had an address for Winston Peters.
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