Tim Pointer

Finalist - EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2023 New Zealand

Reason Agency

In 2009, at the young age of just 21, Tim decided he was sick of the lack of transparency around media costs, poor measurement and smoke and mirrors of how the media industry put a value on the work it did.

So, with his first office being the spare room at his parents Porirua home, he set out to create Reason, a new-age advertising agency that would do things differently. The first step he and his business partner, Matt Rowe, took was hiring a developer called Seb Edwards. It was 2010 and the digital revolution was only just starting, yet here was this new ad agency hiring a coder. Other agencies thought it was crazy, but Tim and Matt knew they were on to something good.

“Our plan was simple, if Reason could fully own the digital and data space, then we could be fully transparent with customers around what advertising spend was delivering value back to the business, and what wasn’t.”

After a few years of finding their feet and really refining the formula – the business started to take off. Since its inception Reason has saved customers $5.6 million in unaccounted for media spend. In 2016 Tim was named in the Forbes 30 under 30 and today the business is the largest independent digital agency in New Zealand with more than 60 staff.

Tim and Seb have also spun the data analytics side of the business into its own entity called Rescue Metrics which has over 120 of its own customers.
From humble beginnings in Porirua to one of Australasia’s leading ad agencies, Tim has helped build a collection of businesses that are pioneering the way companies manage and assess the impact of their advertising.