CASE STUDY — EDITORIAL, FIXING, PRODUCTION
Retracing an ancient trade route for National Geographic.
Client
National Geographic
Services
Editorial, fixering, production
Location
New Zealand’s South Island
Sector
Destination editorial
Output
Print, digital & social
THE CHALLENGE
National Geographic's editors came with a challenge: find a fresh angle on New Zealand. Not the fiords, not the hobbit holes — something genuinely untold.
After years of covering the country extensively, Justin proposed retracing the pounamu trading route used by Māori clans across the Southern Alps for centuries. Pounamu — greenstone jade, deeply sacred in Māori culture — was carried over some of the most demanding mountain terrain in the Pacific. The story of that route, and what it reveals about the ingenuity and spiritual life of the people who walked it, had never been told for a global audience.
The vehicle for the journey would be the TranzAlpine — one of the world's great train journeys, crossing the full width of New Zealand's South Island — stopping at key towns, landscapes and retreats along the way to document the living legacy of the pounamu trail.
“The most powerful travel stories aren’t about destinations. They’re about what those places meant to the people who came before us.”
THE APPROACH
Bringing the story to life required coordinating four major organisations — National Geographic, Tourism New Zealand, Tourism West Coast, and Great Journeys New Zealand — alongside a network of operators, accommodation providers, cultural guides and local contacts.
As National Geographic's fixer on the ground, Justin managed all of it: stakeholder relationships, logistics, access to culturally sensitive locations, scheduling across multiple regions, and the on-the-ground problem-solving that complex editorial productions always require.
Once on the ground, Justin collaborated with New Zealand photographer Adrienne Pitts to document the journey — dividing the editorial and visual responsibilities to ensure the story was captured with both the depth it deserved on the page and the quality National Geographic demands from every image it publishes.
The result was an editorial piece built around a story that was genuinely new — one that respected its cultural subject, served National Geographic's global audience, and gave Tourism New Zealand and Tourism West Coast an authoritative piece of content.
WHAT WE DELIVERED
01. Original story concept, location scouting and destination research
02. Full fixering and stakeholder coordination across four organisations
03. Exclusive photography assets for print, digital and social publication
04. Long-form feature article retracing the pounamu trading route
THE OUTCOME
The story was published by National Geographic Traveller across print, digital and social — bringing a genuinely untold piece of New Zealand's cultural heritage to a global audience for the first time. For Tourism New Zealand and Tourism West Coast, the editorial provided authoritative third-party validation of the region at the highest possible level of travel journalism. For National Geographic, it delivered exactly what the editors asked for: a fresh angle, rigorously reported and beautifully photographed.
All photos below provided courtesy of Adrienne Pitts.
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