About us

Callum fell into the world of content marketing by accident. Just before flying to Malaysia to embark on an overseas adventure, he was having dinner with a friend who had recently started a marketing agency. 

He offered to write a few blogs for a bit of fun, and it turned out that Callum was quite good at writing (to his surprise). The work started rolling in, which helped to fund his travels.

Whilst exploring South East Asia, Callum stumbled upon a range of scientific research papers about a native New Zealand plant called mānuka, the bioactive extracts that came from it, and the role it played in bringing native forests back to New Zealand landscapes.

This sparked his curiosity: what if we could use business & marketing to help solve our environmental challenges?

He returned home and founded the personal care brand, Mānuka Essentials, to create demand for native plant extracts - and therefore, reforestation. 

(This business was sold to new owners in May 2023.)

Whilst building Mānuka Essentials, Callum also operated as a content marketing freelancer and consultant.

He helped a diverse range of companies (and marketing agencies) to attract their ideal clients - by creating top-notch articles, social posts, case studies, lead magnets, press releases, newsletters, email sequences, websites, and more.

During this time, his capacity to deliver fantastic content was very limited due to other business commitments. He was repeatedly asked by a number of people to start his own marketing agency and increase the capacity for quality output, but was hesitant to proceed at the time.

In mid-2020 (soon after the COVID lockdowns), a series of events coincided that made turning Paste & Publish into an agency a no-brainer:

• Mānuka Essentials sales had dropped off a cliff (at the time) as the business couldn’t ship orders during the lockdowns.

• A long-time client, A2X Accounting, offered a sizeable contract to manage all of their content marketing on the condition that Callum developed a team of quality writers to meet their growing needs.

• A handful of colleagues and friends who were professional content creators and previous agency owners were looking for more work and loved the idea of joining forces to build Paste & Publish.

P&P the agency was born.

But there was a catch: Paste & Publish needed to be actively helping the environment to align with Callum's approach. So we created the P&P Environmental Pledge - a way to support community environmental groups by providing free and heavily discounted marketing help.

During the 18 months that followed, we expanded from one person to nine at its peak, to accommodate the expanding pool of client work.

Whilst the P&P team were delivering fantastic results for clients, Callum wasn’t quite satisfied. As the organisation grew, so did the workload, and this didn’t leave much time available to help environmental projects. 

He wanted to spend more time growing Conservation Amplified (and helping other environmental charities), and also felt that there was a better way to help clients reach the outcomes they desired. 

To facilitate this end, we scaled down our agency services (and team size) significantly, and Paste & Publish evolved from a marketing agency into a coaching and consulting provider.

We love working in an advisory capacity, and our clients do too. It means that we generate much longer lasting outcomes by building the capabilities of client businesses rather than just providing briefed deliverables.

As the saying goes, teach a person to fish and they will be fed for life...