Kiwi Business Story: Robin McDonnell from Phantom Billstickers

Robin McDonnell from Phantom Billstickers is a Owner Manager Programme 52 cohort alumni.

This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 29 October 2021, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.

What was your journey into business and where are you at now? 

Phantom Billstickers is the longest established outdoor advertising company in New Zealand. It has been around for 40 years. We have a network of six and a half thousand panels around the country.  We are promoting lots of different events, bands, and brands. We are recognised as one of the best in the world in that space.

My journey with Phantom started in 1999, there was an ad in the paper, it talked about pitching to Saatchi and Saatchi and negotiating with property owners and peers and putting up posters at 4am. I thought that sounds awesome - I want to be part of that. I applied and it turns out the job was mostly just putting up posters at 4am. I learned a lot from that, and over the course of 20 years. That was in Christchurch at the time, we are only a kind of a regional company, expanding our footprint into Wellington. I then moved up into Auckland in 2004, which is when I took an ownership stake in the business, and we have just grown the business and grown our capacity. We fundamentally just put-up posters, but we do it in a way that uses technology to streamline and automate certain processes to deliver the best customer experience we can. 

If you could tell your past self-something about your journey, some advice or heads up through business ownership, what would that be? 

To surround yourself with good people. It is a hard lesson for me because I like to do and learn things myself, but to realise that sometimes certain jobs are best done by other people.

When did you first hear of the Icehouse and the Owner Manager Programme? 

I had my eye on the programme for a couple of years and had been too busy to take the leap. Our accountant had done the programme and spoke very highly of it. I was like, I have time now. My travel has stopped. So yes, I jumped in then. 

Sum up your Owner Manager Programme experience? 

It was really about the people that you are surrounded by. Surround yourself with good people in the business to grow the business. Having good people around you to advise you and inspire you along the way was helpful. I learned a lot from the cohort. Obviously, the coursework was top notch as well, I got a lot out of it. 

What changes have you implemented into your business, but also your lifestyle since the programme? 

I think, really, critical to our success, I have stopped trying to do everything. Relying on the good people around me to take care of the patch. It seems simple, but it is, you know, when you have been doing it for 20 years, and you just know it inside out, and you intuitively know the answer to every problem. It is easy to get tied up and get captured by that. 

What excites you about the future of business and your business specifically? 

I love using technology to find new ways to solve problems, but still delivering an authentic experience to our advertisers. I am excited about it, being street level with innovation. The realisation, that we have carved out this specific niche and outdoor advertising, I am amped to see where our team can take it. We are onto something special here. Phantom strikes the perfect balance between respecting the values of the legacy, product, and system that we kind of promote and improve on that kind of customer experience.