Time on the side of advertising team

By YVETTE ADAMS

Richard McDonald is the first to admit that when he and two friends took a punt on a business idea three years ago, they didn't know what on earth they were doing.

"We were young and silly and had nothing else to do.

"We liked the idea of being our own bosses so we all borrowed $5000 off our parents, got a $15,000 overdraft at Westpac bank and employed a designer to start up our own advertising/design company in Christchurch," he says.

"We didn't come from any advertising backgrounds. So if anyone would give us a chance to do something, we would say yes and do it."

Today the three operate TimeZoneOne, an ingenious advertising business which capitalises on the time difference and exchange rates between Britain and New Zealand to carry out contracts faster and cheaper.

In the first few years of business for McDonald and business partners Andrew Carruthers and Richard Tattershaw, they did "a bit of everything", building up essential all-round skills in the realm of advertising and marketing.

The idea to expand with overseas offices came later.

McDonald had a mate who moved from Christchurch to a London marketing job who kept ringing him up at 2 or 3 in the morning - "He wasn't really keeping up with the time zones properly" - to ask for advice.

The company in question had a budget of £30,000 and eventually McDonald told him, "Look, we'll do it for £25,000 from New Zealand."

The job worked out "and that gave us the idea of well, maybe we can get more pounds!"

In 1999, McDonald packed up and headed to London.

"It was just to knock on doors and see what happened.

"I came with a credit card (a New Zealand credit card that is) and a licence to kill."

And kill he did.

Three and a half years on, TimeZoneOne employs about 20 staff in its Christchurch office, as well as one in London and one in Chicago (both Kiwis) and hires specialist freelancers as required.

TimeZoneOne's clients now include Scotland's largest transport provider, Strathclyde Passenger Transport (SPT); Chemkel, a household cleaning products company which is the biggest in Europe and the third-biggest in the world; and United States wine company Kendall Jackson.

The pitch to win the £500,000 account with Government-owned SPT caused a stir when local politicians and advertising executives called for home-grown marketing talent to be supported before the Kiwi business.

McDonald recalls that local agencies seeking the job raised questions about, "Why are they spending money outside of Scotland, oroutside of Glasgow, let alone on the other side of the world?"

However, TimeZoneOne had a strong case because "we were saying we can do it for half the price because were paying 80 per cent of our business costs in NZ dollars".

In the end, he says, "it made the client a bit more resolute to stick with us, because the reason they were using us was right, and they weren't going to be pushed around and bullied by the media".

McDonald likens TimeZoneOne's concept to contracting Asian companies for services at a saving to the corporate budget.

"Just like a lot of software companies get a lot of their software written out of India because it's cheaper, we're doing the same thing with advertising," he explains.

McDonald says the company is low on hierarchy and ego, high on "can-do" attitude and energy.

"We constantly talk about having a can-do attitude, the old number eight wire mentality - give us anything and we'll make it work. We're very down to earth and approachable."

McDonald says he loves his job. "It's so much fun meeting people. It's what spins my wheels."

TimeZoneOne