Design a new real estate world – Andy Cook

It is possible to see the world moving and growing from behind a desk, just ask Arizto's award-winning design lead Andy Cook.

The 2023 Outstanding Support Staff Member for New Zealand's fastest growing real estate brand, Cook has come a long way from his content creator days as a Youtube personality, to now leading the creation and design layouts for the national marketing, advertising and introduction brand material for a dedicated team of agents working around the country.

He marvels how just in this calendar year alone, as more high profile real estate salespeople join the brand, attracted by its digital platform and market-leading commission offering, how the quality of the houses they bring to the table has grown.

Arizto has never been a ‘discount' agency – sacrificing quality for lower costs – but looking over the photos and videos that arrive at his Auckland base Cook is not only seeing the classic three-bedroom stucco homes from small town New Zealand, but the up-market two storey prized house in Remuera, or the attractive lakefront properties in Rotorua.

"To allow those high calibre agents to come through, we've enhanced our level of internal service," said Cook.

"We're definitely branching out in assisting, and finding a balance in working with these new, talented people.

"They are bringing those high value properties in with the Arizto offering.

"It's fantastic to see those kinds of properties coming through – it just goes to show the Arizto offering is for all properties.

"Arizto is a top quality service that is also cheaper, so it's great to see that [message] across the line.

"The core Arizto offering worked well with the average house – the stock standard New Zealand property."

A Wellington lad for most of his life, Cook graduated from the School of Design at Massey University's campus in the capital, through the honours programme.

Passionate about creative arts, having made backyard films as a child and doing travel vlogs on his OE's, around the mid-2010's he had created a well-viewed YouTube channel from which he built a small full time business for himself with multiple revenue streams – via e-Books, advertising and sponsorship.

The theme was about teaching children and young people to get creative and explore the arts by building their favourite props and costumes from movies/games at pocket money prices.

"That was a self-led thing, all the way through university and beyond.

"After a few years of doing that full time post university, the market shifted."

Around 2016-17, YouTube began to impose stricter guidelines on content that was earmarked for children, and while Cook was simply making a range of movie props, "anything weapon-related" was going to be red-flagged, even if it lacked context.

"The algorithm shut that down, so my business decreased significantly overnight and continued to decline."

As this pathway whittled away for reasons not of his making, Cook started looking for his next challenge, which came in the form of a new start-up real estate company in Auckland that was going to change the game.

Meeting with the young and ambitious Pernell Callaghan, who innovated the idea of a digital company which took high volume paperwork out of real estate and had a centralised design-team to handle all salesperson requests for materials, Cook was there just before the company went public.

"It was an ambitious brief, I knew about the industry and what it is.

"I was hooked by Pernell and James [Bailey], I believed in their vision, right in behind them and was wanting to do my part.

"I had full confidence in Pernell and James, I'd never met anyone with such a driven goal – he knew what the market was, and you could follow him blindly into the void.

"For years I'd spent being my own entrepreneur, I was lucky to work with a lot of people who had that same mindset.

"It was an exciting opportunity to work in Auckland, so I fully wanted success from the job."

Initially a video editor in a small team of half a dozen Arizto staff based in the original office in Manukau, Cook and erstwhile partner Rachit Kushwaha were the listings media team, assisting the photographers to prepare their videos/photos for online listings, and then over the years they took on more branding and marketing roles.

A couple of years later, Cook learned through the pandemic the concept of having the home office, and now his six years experience at the spearhead of the brand's development has let him guide an expanding production staff.

Recent additions have included New Zealand-based Bridgette Taylor as a designer, while James Crisolo joined last year and assists from overseas.

"It lets us enhance our offering and cater to a higher volume of sales people across NZ," Cook said.

His easy-going attitude is highly regarded by the sales team, especially as it grows and more unique locations have an Arizto flag planted – such as the deep south in the Otago rural heartland, or the 12,000 sized Southland town of Gore.

"We've let them know, here's the Arizto model is actually better for them.

"We're slowly branching out to all the nooks and crannies of the country.

"So the marketing makes it easier for people to say, ‘oh, I've seen your branding' now."

The landscape's looking real good from behind Cook's desk, and a grateful team of salespeople would certainly agree with him.