RedBalloon at the Telstra Women's Business Awards
Watch Naomi's acceptance speech »
12th November 2008 at the Sydney Hilton 600 women came together to celebrate what women business leaders contribute to Australia. Hosted by Telstra and in its fourteenth year, women were acknowledged in five categories:
- Business Owner
- Private and Corporate Sector
- Community and Government
- Innovation
- Young Business Women (under 34)
The RedBalloon Team, present at the event, were excited to see their CEO named the winner of two of these categories: the business owner and the innovation category.
Naomi Simson founded RedBalloon in 2001, calling herself Chief Experience Officer (CEO) not because of the experience vouchers RedBalloon is known for but because of Naomi’s commitment to the customer experience. Naomi said in her speech for the Yellow Business Owner Award, "I call myself Chief Experience Officer, because I'm accountable for how people experience my business, whether it's customers, suppliers, affiliates, distributors or associates of redballoon.com.au. How people experience our business is fundamental to our future success and having people talk about us favourably. In fact, delighting customers will keep them talking."
The Nokia Business Innovation Award acknowledged the ongoing commitment to innovation such as godo.com.au which was launched by the RedBalloon group in 2004. GoDo does for activities what Wotif did for hotel rooms. It provides thousands of activity suppliers the opportunity to publish in real time their availability, which gives them instant global marketing opportunities via the 80 or more tourism distribution partners, such as Virgin Blue, Webjet, and Lonely Planet. Naomi spoke of 'Love Loath Lists' and how at RedBalloon, because of scarce resources, the team looked at how they could innovate to solve issues using technology wherever possible.
Naomi said "Out of tough times comes opportunity. It was in the recession of 1991 that my husband started his first business – simply because there were no jobs to be had. He made a great success of it – so when I decided to leave the workforce when I became a mother, it gave me confidence that I could start a business too."
She continued. "We all need role models... We need leaders who are positive and disciplined. We need people who see possibility and work really, really hard to get things done. Out of this current tough time new great stories will be created."
Naomi goes on to the National Telstra Business Women’s Awards in Melbourne on 9th December 2009.
For further information: Kate Rolfe, Communications Champion, kate@redballoon.com.au
