Mark Davey

SUE WARDS

Mark Davey figured out early what he wanted to do with his life: all it took was completing one exercise in the classic job-hunters’ manual ‘What Colour is your Parachute.”

"I never read it, but I did the first exercise: write seven paragraphs about yourself,” Mark said. It was immediately clear his skill was in having something to communicate and figuring out the best way of doing it.

Mark has now clocked 20 years in advertising, mostly with his boutique advertising agency ("a very classy way of saying small”) Black, which focuses on "compellingly communicating causes”.

Black has won a slew of awards, including the Davey Award last year - a creative award for Indie agencies. Black won it for a Salvation Army ad which depicts people falling at 1000 frames a second into darkness. It was the most successful Red Shield Appeal ever, Mark said.

"We’re good at doing a lot with not much, and eliciting a response,” he said.

Mark cites a World Vision campaign as one of his proudest achievements. The campaign aimed to get 1000 children sponsored in 1000 hours - double what had been done before. They reached the target and other World Vision marketing directors went on to use the concept successfully.

"That is one idea that went global and has resulted in a massive positive spiral of over 100,000 children getting sponsored and their families supported,” Mark said. "It demonstrates the power of an idea and the positive spiral of an idea if I can do my job well.”

After realising his life’s goal back in 1996, the business and communication management graduate and his wife, Lucy (they met at university in Palmerston North and married at 20), moved to Australia and Mark soon started working at advertising agency Pilgrim, which was set up to help charities.

When Pilgrim set up in New Zealand Mark moved to Auckland and got a position on the board of both companies. When Pilgrim decided to sell up in 2005, Mark decided to fly solo, and re-branded the agency as Black.

"I wanted something memorable, simple, and New Zealand,” he said. He trademarked Black and the NZ Rugby Union eventually came calling - which is why he now has an exclusion from selling sportswear.

It’s unlikely Mark would have the time for a sportswear business anyway. He and Lucy are "quite entrepreneurial”. In addition to Black, they’ve set up a boutique digital company - Halo - and are currently securing prime locations. Halo markets large scale digital billboards, which can offer six ads on rotation at eight seconds each, and can be customised to respond to the data around it (for example, the billboard can recognise the make of vehicle driving towards it and select an appropriate ad). Cloud-based, the billboards can be operated by Mark from Wanaka. "Someone can book something from overseas and I can get the ad up in minutes.”

The couple have also established two non-profit websites: truthcoaches.com, a seven session "life changing” course, and seektofindgod.com.

"I’ve had an awareness of God as long as I can remember. To me it’s the greatest story of love that there is. It’s a bit hard to get past the God who died for you,” Mark said.

It seems the couple have practiced what they preach for many years. They were giving soup and support to kids getting wasted at Bondi Beach back in the 1990s, and these days they are putting their money where their mouths are by donating 30 percent of their business profits. They’ve given "loads” to projects around the world, such as a community bank in Cambodia.

"People and planet before profit. That’s our M.O, to set aside profits for environmental and community based causes, most of which have an evangelical element,” Mark said.

The Bible doesn’t have the monopoly on truth, Mark said, and proves it by quoting a famous Steinlager ad: What you say ‘no’ to defines you.

"We don’t pick up clients when we can’t reflect their values,” he said. It’s all part of trying to change the world for the positive. Mark, who was on the board of the sustainable business network in Auckland around 2007, also ensures their businesses are sustainable (business cards are made from polypropylene and their vehicles and Mark’s flights are all carbon neutral - offset by tree planting).

"And now we’re virtual, really,” Mark said. People contribute to Black from all over the world, and a good example is a recent campaign for German client Christian Blind Mission International. Images of Uganda were sent to Wanaka; the script was written by a guy in a La-Z-Boy in Tauranga; it was edited in a Waiheke Island bach, and designed in a bungalow in Onehunga.

Mark pulled the whole thing together from Wanaka, where the family has been based for the past five years.

"We were in Auckland but not from Auckland,” he said. He grew up in Otaki, but Lucy’s parents live here and her family had an association with a holiday house in Tarras since the 1950s.

"It was always our desire to live here if possible,” Mark said. "It’s as natural as breathing.”

"There’s nothing as rich as meeting people in person, but I see clients about as much as I used to - it’s mostly email and telephone anyway.” But he travels every fortnight, and said the amount of travel takes its toll on the family. "When I’m away I’m working, but to them I’m just absent.”

Having Lucy, a director of both companies, working from home makes it possible, Mark said. Lucy is also a children’s author and songwriter - she’s had 12 books published with Scholastic, and more with Mainly Music. The Davey family includes Hannah, 19, Samuel, 16, Holly Grace, 12, and Hope, almost 2.

Mark has been in the business of helping people with "audacious and worthwhile” visions for 20 years, but it’s a long way from the relaxed young surfer he was when he first picked up What Colour is Your Parachute.

Years of planning for clients helped him transfer those skills to his own life. He and Lucy take time every year to examine their personal and family goals, and Mark said he no longer feels that life’s slipping by. "It’s very freeing to be purposeful. People don’t just get wiser by getting older - it doesn’t happen unless you make it happen.”

Surfing the wave at the Hawea Whitewater Park and helping to change the world: it’s all part of Mark’s plan.

PHOTO: Supplied