This Friday or all Fridays, at this end of this week, of all weeks, it seems appropriate to resurrect the Zoner of the Week.

For me Zoners have the following traits:
- A Can Do attitude
- Fun and energetic
- A desire to exceed expectations
- A willingness to learn as we go
- Open and positive
- Ego-less

These add up to extraordinary. It is a choice to act like this and we make this choice. Ordinary is not welcome.

This is our esprit de corps. Our mojo. And I am proud be part of a team that embraces these values.

With this in mind the Zoner of the Week goes to ALL our team, nationwide and coast to coast. In this pressure packed deadline demanding week I believe we all looked carefully at ourselves and asked ‘how can I make this better’?

Rich even bought coffee.

Next week will also have it’s challengers but we are now better equipped.

Welllll done, and thanks.

ENTERCATION

As we are all a bit brain-drained it might be likely that we miss that opportunity for a clever comeback

For example, if Churchill had been tired when Mrs Braddock said to him ‘Sir, you are drunk’, he may have replied ‘Doh’, and it might have been several hours before he thought of the rather keen comeback ‘Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.’

In French there is a rather nice expression for coming up with a clever comeback when it is too late…’l'esprit de l’escalier’

Entercationally speaking this means ‘stairway wit’.

Tatts

At TimeZoneOne we should, do and must constantly ask the question ‘how do I make this better’?

I believe this is one of the most important questions. It is an open-arms question and will lead to an improved situation. It is particularly valuable for us because creative can be a hard thing to review and this question opens up the discussion positively.

Right now we are in the middle of tough assignment, but each day we are working on making it better.  This includes additional resources, improved systems and a fighting attitude.

Right now it is 11.28pm on Wednesday night and the TimeZoneOne team is working tirelessly at both ends of the globe to get on top of this. This is the umpteenth midnight slog in a row. Thanks to all Zoners for your extraordinary dedication to this project.

Tatts

I have just returned (landed in Chicago late last night) from 2 weeks in NZ and some time in Sydney. As such this blog will be a little be random as my thoughts are still in another TimeZoneOne.

What is jet lag?

It is a physiological desynchronization caused by travel between different time zones.

The severity can vary according to the number of time zones crossed as well as the direction of travel-most people find it difficult to travel eastward (i.e., to adapt a shorter day as opposed to a longer one). The resulting symptoms include extreme fatigue, sleep disturbances, loss of concentration, disorientation, malaise, sluggishness, gastrointestinal upset, and loss of appetite.

In general, adjustment to a new time zone takes one day for each hour of time difference.

Well Done to the BancVue team…

During the last couple of weeks the TimeZoneOne BancVue team has been flat out getting the new campaign ready to market. This project has many moving parts and many deliverables but with hard work, creative thinking and a positive attitude we have broken the back of it. Upon my return to the office today I asked Hamish how he had been copying with the very late (1am) nights. See photo.

Lor on the road…..

This morning I caught up with Lor who also returned yesterday having had a week traveling around NZ with Patty.

How was the weather?

We had great weather. It only rained a couple of times when we were driving. It didn’t even rain in Doubtful Sound. (Where it rains 190 days a year, 230 feet annually).

Best moment?

We flew from Mt Cook on a small plane over the mountains and landed on the Franz Joseph Glacier. The landing was so soft and when the engine was off it was so quiet, nothing but clear sky and bright snow. The eerie blue ice of the glacier ice made it seem like we were standing on a huge slice of blue cheese. If only I had a giant cracker. 

How was the driving?

The driving went fine, although there is not as much hard shoulder as I would have liked. As the towns are quite small we had no traffic problems especially after I understood the ‘secret of the circle’.

One odd thing about NZ cars is that each time I went to indicate the windshield wipers went on.

Meet any good people?

I was on a jet boat going across Lake Horoko and the driver said ‘this lake is 98% fresh water’.

Another passenger asked ‘what is the other 2 percent?”

The driver replied, ‘fish shit’.

Gotta love kiwis.

5 Highlights…

1.       Mac Black beer

2.       See Mel in Queenstown, yelling at her until she couldn’t ignore me any more

3.       Getting slowly drunk on the wine tour

4.       Meeting Paul the Hump Ridge jet boat driver. Eating his BBQ.

5.       Paying $50 to see a 3D movie the Hermitage Hotel.

When biscuits become cookies….

A NZ trip always means a new office stock-up of biscuits. The aim is that our clients can get a wee taste of NZ when they visit, but they have to be quick as general office consumer is high.

Thanks to the Creative Team….

It was great to catch up with the C Team recently. Thanks to y’all for your hospitality.

Tatts

The top things you should know about Colorado now that TZ1 has an office here:

1. Outdoor Activities-the best skiing in the world, climbing, rafting
2. Crazy weather-two weeks ago it was 75 degrees on Tuesday and then on Wednesday there was a massive blizzard
3. People love beer, especially micro brews
4. It has more pet dogs per capita than any other state-that means we are all very friendly and loving
5. Denver has more professional sports teams than any other city-football (Broncos), baseball (Rockies), basketball (Nuggets), hockey (avalanche), soccer (Rapids), Lacrosse (Mammoth), Rugby (Barbarians)
6. 300 days of blue sky
7. Home to the second largest running race in the whole U.S.-the BolderBOULDER
8. The Rocky Mountains
9. Colorado is one of two states that no water runs into-the other being Hawaii
10. 52 of 54 14,000 foot peaks in the Continental Unites States are in Colorado
11. Colorado Spring is home to the Olympic Training Center
12. If you stand on the Southwest border of Colorado you can actually stand in four States (Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah)
13. Denver boasts the largest city park system in the country, 90 golf courses and 650 miles of paved trails.
14. Our city tagline is, “the mile high city” that’s because our elevation is 5,280 feet, which equals a mile.
15. Denver is considered the thinnest city in America and Colorado is the thinnest state.
16. It was on top of nearby Pikes Peak in 1893 that Katherine Lee Bates was inspired to write the words to “America the Beautiful.”
17. The famous Red Rocks Amphitheater is in the Colorado foothills

Fear-on

Well this is my first TimeZoneOne blog, actually the first blogging I’ve ever done. Since I’m the newest Zoner I would like to start out with a little introduction.

My name is Fearon, yes it’s spelled like Fear-on, but it’s pronounced like Fair-in-luckily because Fear-on sounds mean and unfriendly. Fearon is my great grandmother’s Irish sir name. So there you have it…everything and more you’d ever want to know about my name.

Denver is where I call home now, but I grew up on a small island across from Seattle called Bainbridge Island. I’m married to Perry (yes I call him by his last name and the Chicago Zoners call him Perry Perry) and we have an 11-month-old son named Beckett.

As for work, I’ve worked at Saatchi & Saatchi New York and Crocs (to name a few you probably know). Yes, that’s right I was once TimeZoneOne’s client for the YOU by crocs brand. I went from agency to the client and now I’ve found my way back into the agency world-and even better the “New World” agency.

Let’s see what else will be important for you to know…I’m an early morning person (not necessarily by choice, but due to Beckett) and I’m a late night person (just ask Mel and Lisa), but if you skype me late night I can’t promise I won’t be in my workout clothes or PJs. I like starting conversations out with a little chit chat and then jumping into business. I know this is horrible, but I’m addicted to the reality show Dancing With The Stars and usually every Monday night (like tonight) you can find me watching the show while riding my spin bike.

I am VERY excited to be a Zoner, happy to be opening the Denver office, and looking forward to working with everyone at TimeZoneOne.

Picture 1: Beckett and I at Christmas

Picture 2: My brother and I at a birthday party

Picture 3: Perry, Reilly (our dog) and I at the ranch

Picture 4: The family in Mexico

Fearon

Hi Everyone,

MadMen is one of my favorite shows on TV,  being in the Ad business it is a great look back at how this world worked in the 60′s and how much it has changed since this time…. and how much it hasn’t. With the US team in NZ this week I started to compare our Ad Men to the Mad Men of the show, and so with out further a do, I present to you The Mad Men Guide to TimeZoneOne. So print it out, pin it up, and the next time you call us timewarp back to the 60′s, poor yourself a strong 10.30am whiskey, light a cigarette, and do business the old school way….

Click on the image to embiggen it….

T

Like a university athletics department or fraternity/sorority, TimeZoneOne has it’s own quirky little traditions. Some of these have fallen out of use, but I have included them so that they might come back in. These are some of our traditions….

TIMEZONESUN :  Our Annual global get-together. We gather up the whole team and converge on an unsuspecting province of this beautiful constitutional monarchy to talk get to know each other face to face. We laugh, we play, we jump of bridges, we get our vans stuck in the sand, we eat huhu grubs, we camp out under the stars, we swim with dolphins, we look and glow worms with our friend Cory from Moeraki and eat lots of meat pies with Wattie’s tomato sauce.

ENTERCATION : A slick combination of entertainment and education (see also Edutainment). At TimeZoneOne, we love to expand minds through entercation.

“Richard entercated us for hours with his witty stories and politically conscious jokes.” 

WELLLL DONES : We have a ‘Welll done light’ whenever we achieve a success deserving of Welll Done light honours. At the present time the Welll Done light in the Christchurch office is burnt out – Wellll Done! It is also a tradition to always spell ‘Wellll Done’ with 3 or more Ls. In fact the more Ls the better.

FOOSEBALL: Our humble little fooseball table regularly gets a thrashing as TimeZoneOne’s alpha males fight for fooseball dominance.

ACCENTS: Kiwi, Australian, English, Scotish and American. It doesn’t matter what you sound like, someone else in the office thinks you sound funny.

SAVORIES: If you have an exciting announcement to make (Engagement, Pregnancy, Acquittal etc), it is tradition to gather everyone with a selection of small meat pies and sausage rolls (or donuts) to make your announcement. This tradition started when I told Craig I was engaged and he took the opportunity for a free feed and invented this tradition to trick me into buying savories.

THE SMURF: An award of a cardboard cut-out Smurf for any act of stupidity. If you do something stupid, the cardboard smurf will sit on your desk until someone else does something stupid.

WALKING SIDEWAYS TO THE PRINTER: We used to do this all the time. I don’t know why it started and I don’t know why it stopped.

THE YEAR OF IMPROVEMENT: Similar to how the UN declares a topic for each year, eg. 2008 the year of the potato. At TimeZoneOne every year is declared ‘The Year of Improvement”. We are constantly improving on our own awesomeness.

‘SPLODING THAT S**T! : A short lived tradition of bumping fists and unclenching as your fist made contact as if you hands had just exploded.

NO PANTS FRIDAYS: Okay, so this one I just is made up.

 David ‘No Pants’ McLeod.

A very, very, big, big happy birthday goes out to Richard “Tatts” Tattershaw this weekend from the whole TimeZoneOne team. It can’t be 40 years can it?

Blogger birthday wishes from the whole TZ1 team 

Happy New Zealand Day (or Waitangi Day) from the studio team. Wishing all Kiwis around the world a great day.

Nigel

I recently received a letter from a reader whose name is Brett King:

Dear Sir

My name is Brett King.

Does this mean anything to you?

Regards

Brett King

Thanks for this letter Brett. As it happens onomatology is a hobby of mine. So yes Brett King does mean something to me, as with every name there is a classical definition and a contemporary definition:

CLASSICAL: Brett / King = Lives in Brittany / Head of State

COMTEMPORARY: Brett / King = Rents in New Brighton / Head of Logos

Here are the classical definitions for some other Zoners?

Nigel = Black Champion (Latin)

Richard = Powerful Ruler (Old English)

Hamish = Supplanter (Scottish)

Folkes = Wombat (Australian)

Raewyn = Lamb (Welsh)

Topp = Mint sauce (NZ)

Lawrence = Crowned with laurel, as rotund as Hardy (Old English)

Tim = To Honor God (Unhappily)  

Liz or Lisa = God is my consecration (Old English)

Kim = Golden (Vietnamese)

Maria = Bitter (Greek) eg ‘I would like a pint of bitter please. And a pint of whiskey.’

Simon = Listener (Hungarian)

Murray = of Israel (Scottish)

Andy = Man (Old English)

David = Beloved (Jewish)

Mel = Black (Dutch)

Robert = Maker of trousers (Scottish)

Mark = Male (Russian)

Matt = A tall gift of god (Old English)

That’s the end of my blogging.

Cheers

Tatts