Summer profile: Adman takes on new challenges in media game

Ad man turned media executive Roger MacDonnell. Photo / Dean Purcell

New Zealand's most influential adman is turning his sights on the media.

Roger MacDonnell has made an indelible mark on New Zealand advertising in the 41 years since he and three mates launched Colenso.

During that time, New Zealand has gone from being an adland backwater to a wellspring for creative talent.

And as our first home-grown agency, Colenso - headed by MacDonnell until 2009 - has been a big part of that change.

Now MacDonnell is looking for new challenges with roles in media - both big and small.

He left Colenso BBDO in 2009 and changed gears to work alongside his longtime friend and Colenso co-founder Mike Hutcheson at Image Centre and Tangible Media.

After leaving Colenso, Hutcheson had risen through the ranks to be managing director of Saatchi & Saatchi in Auckland.

Hutcheson left Saatchi to market innovative new businesses before becoming a shareholder of printing firm Image Centre Holdings.

Image Centre built its stable of magazines through its publishing arm Tangible Media.

Titles include Dish, Retail, Classic Car, and Idealog among others.

In August last year, the Government appointed MacDonnell to the board of Television New Zealand.

The man who had overseen the branding of TV3 at Colenso for two decades was defining the future for its dominant rival.

"I didn't think of it in those terms," MacDonnell said. "But I have some idea about the strengths and weaknesses for each of them."

TVNZ and Tangible are the whale and the minnow of the media world.

But, as MacDonnell says, both are built on content and both are facing upheavals due to the way that people consume media.

"You are looking to make ads that touch people and it is the same sentiment with media - ensuring you are connecting and the audience will respond."

"New media does not replace old media, it redefines it," MacDonnell said.

Advertising was moving away from the disruptive element toward engaging with its audience.

The advertising business can be volatile but one aspect of the industry has been stable over the the past 41 years: The rivalry between Colenso and Saatchi & Saatchi.

"We got used to being number one. Being number two was very difficult," he said.

The secret of being number one - and Colenso was there for much of the decade - was to understand people, he said.

That leads to a defence of the long lunch - the forgotten art of socialising and entertaining clients that reached its peak in the 1980s.

"Clearly there were excesses," MacDonnell said.

But long lunches and socialising were not all bad - they allowed people to get to know clients.

"I always liked to spent time with clients.

"You could understand them as them as people - and what they think.

"I don't think you get the real picture of people talking to people in a boardroom. You maintain long-time relationships - Air New Zealand, Toyota, Watties."

Hutcheson said there is no mystery why he invited MacDonnell to join him at Tangible.

"He's a friend and has been for along time," said Hutcheson.

But he's also very wise, he said.

It's a view backed by another of MacDonnell's business buddies - National Business Review publisher Barry Colman, who said MacDonnell has "an uncanny ability to read the mood of New Zealand".