John Key almost as cool as Justin Bieber – Kiwi kids vote

According to Kiwi kids, our Prime Minister is almost as cool as Justin Bieber.

John Key narrowly lost the ‘cool’ spot to Justin Bieber with 51% of kids voting for the ‘Biebs’ compared to 49% for the PM when respondents were asked: “What famous person do you think is the coolest between John Key and Justin Bieber?”

It also appears that the Duke and Duchess were a bit conservative in choosing “George” as the name for their young Prince. Instead they should have considered Benji as the name for their first born, as that is what 39% of survey participants would have preferred. Sonny-Bill was the number two choice for the newest in line to the British throne.

More than 4,800 primary and intermediate students from 213 classes around New Zealand contributed to a national survey undertaken by Meadow Fresh milk and yoghurt.

Laurie Piggott, Meadow Fresh marketing manager, said the nationwide survey was run in conjunction with the Meadow Fresh “Cool our Schools” programme as a fun way to see what Kiwi kids believe is cool.

“We turned this into a class activity, so the teachers got involved as well. It was brilliant to see that kids think our Prime Minister is almost as cool as Justin Bieber – the votes were so close,” says Ms Piggott.

“We also thought it was great to see how many kids were interested in what the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge should have called their new baby – we loved the fact that they feel they should have named him after some of our best sports stars.”

In other results, Bubblegum may be the flavour of milk in the future if our kids were to choose as 49% of respondents scored this as the coolest flavour. However, despite Marmageddon it seems the popular spread was not a favourable milk flavour option for our Kiwi kids as it received no votes.

Kiwi kids’ love for sports was shown in the survey with 40% of respondents voting becoming a sportsperson would be the ‘coolest job.’ Becoming a teacher, Prime Minister or builder was seen in the eyes of our survey respondents as not a cool profession, with each receiving 5% of the votes.

Ms Piggott adds that if it were up to Kiwi kids, most would prefer to spend their days on the sports field as 43% voted that as the ‘coolest’ area of the school.  However, art was voted the ‘coolest thing about school’ with 35% of the votes, and PE came in second place at 30%.

“The Meadow Fresh ‘Cool our Schools’ programme provides the opportunity for schools to get a share of $500,000 worth of art and sports equipment, which is great given both sport and art rank quite highly among our Kiwi kids,” says Ms Piggott.

Primary and intermediate schools have until 27 September to collect stickers from specially marked Meadow Fresh products to be in to win their share of the total prize pool. Please visit Meadow Fresh website: www.meadowfresh.co.nz for more details.

The nationwide survey was distributed across primary and intermediate schools as a class activity, from Year 1 to Year 8, and a total of 213 classes took part.