• Adam Bennett.

Life’s a party!

Local event director, investor and community champion Adam Bennett talks to Heather Barker Vermeer about working hard and playing hard on the Shore.

There are those who wander and there are those whose roots run too deeply to ever consider calling anywhere other than where they grew up home. Born and raised on the Shore, like his parents Graham and Gail and sister Olivia, Adam falls firmly into the latter category. He went to the primary school he lives down the road from, which his own son now attends, and is as proudly North Shore as anyone.

Schooled at Rosmini for his intermediate years, then Takapuna Grammar School, Adam left school in the fifth form. “I was the class clown; the cheeky one that used to have a laugh and muck around. School’s not for everyone!”
Adam always enjoyed a party. “Growing up around this area we used to throw heaps of parties! There were some good ones up North Head, and on boats off Stanley Bay Wharf. And, of course, heaps of house parties!” He was the party starter. “People started saying, ‘why don’t you do some paid ones?’ And I thought, yeah, why not.”
After a few years, he found his calling. “I had been in that sort of limbo space for a few years. And I could have gone down a very different path. But, when I was 21, I started to knuckle down. I decided to set some goals and go for them.”
Adam enrolled at AUT on a night school course in marketing, whilst also selling advertising for a magazine, working as a waiter and running another job in a nightclub as a ‘bar back’. “I was cranking!” He smiles. “I was working crazy hours just to get ahead. I’d decided I wanted to get into events.”
The first event he held was at Centro nightclub, followed by his first ‘proper party’ at Coast Bar in 2002. “It was good to be able to bring people together,” he recalls. “At first it was 50/50: half business, half enjoyment. Then we thought that if we had a few less drinks and racked up less of a bar tab, then we’d start making a bit more money!”
In 2001, he met his future wife, Joanna, whilst out partying. Though Adam has done his dash of living the high life at parties, which include Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z at the Yankee Stadium in New York, the Carpe Diem festival in Croatia and a hard-to-remember party in Las Vegas, the pair locked eyes close to home, in an Auckland nightclub. It wasn’t long until Adam persuaded the Eastern suburbs-based advertising executive to move over the bridge with him.
As well being a perfect love match, Joanna’s skill set was an ideal fit for Adam’s business and, after a couple of years operating as Secret Media magazine and events company from 2003, the Highlife Brand was born in 2005. The couple work side by side.
The events company has put on some of Auckland’s best parties since. Personal highlights for Adam include the Sounds of Summer events held at the now apartmentalised Masonic Tavern in Devonport. “That was one of my favourites. We’d run it on the same day at the Devonport Wine & Food Festival and it would just run on from that. It was epic. Even now, for me, whenever I drive past that spot I have so many memories of that place and those times.
“Devonport needs another nice new festival. We are all about doing events on the Shore and always get a huge level of support from the community. I love putting on events in our own back – or front! – garden!”
Feeling blessed with luck of holding the 2021 Sunsetter Festival at Smales Farm the day before the Valentine's Day lockdown was announced, Adam feels grateful whilst also moved by the impact the pandemic has had on the wider events industry. “We have been really, really lucky. We were really thankful to get our last festival in, the day immediately before lockdown hit and only had to cancel one event, the Fiesta Del Sol planned for November. We were really humbled by that. I know other promoters haven’t had that same luck and we really feel for them.
“When you have wins like that, it’s always nice to be able to give back.” And that takes the form of supporting various local charities. “We’re still a small business, but we like to help out the local community.” Next on the radar is a fundraising event for his son’s (and his former) Hauraki Primary School later this year. “We haven’t finalised the details yet, but the community can rest assured it’s going to be fun!”
Adam likes to help engender community spirt in the area and one of the ways he’s helped to do this is by linking neighbourhoods up online: He started the Takapuna / Belmont / Bayswater local Facebook page in a bid to connect people, share useful community information and help support fellow local businesses.
His passion for the area may even lead him down the path of local politics, perhaps? “I want to become more and more involved in the Shore community, so yes, possibly, when the kids are a bit older [his son is six, his daughter nearly two]. I want to work towards keeping this place safe and making sure we have some good, innovative things going on in this area.
“I love bringing people together. I’m all about progress, while also being mindful of the need to balance change. We need to maintain the overall look and feel of this special area we live and work in, to make sure we keep the magic! Because this is, without doubt, a pretty magical place.”
And Adam knows a bit about magic – his dad has been a professional magician for over 50 years. Sometimes you need a bit of magic and a little luck. Couple these with a lot of hard work, and who knows what you can achieve in your own front garden.