Finally, our long national nightmare is coming to an end. No, not that one. No, not that one either. The “work-from-home” one. At long last people are returning to their offices. And why? In order to finally do the work they’ve been ignoring since March of 2020? No, all that work got done.
Because of culture.
Apparently companies – advertising agencies among them – are “asking” their employees to come back into the office because the culture of those companies is dying. Not the work, not the profits, not the, um, whatever else there is. But the culture.
Now, there’s always a lot of talk around culture at advertising agencies, and that’s for two simple reasons. The first is because agencies, determined to convince clients that they can make them distinct in the marketplace, are desperate to show that they are distinct too. And they do that through culture. “Look, we have a foosball table! Look, we have bean bag chairs!” Okay, bad examples
And the second? Well, that applies to pretty much any company; it’s because people work with people they like - and more often than not, people they are like – and culture is in many ways a natural expression of the people in the office. If you like the culture you’ll probably like the people. If you don’t, you probably won’t. And if you can’t tell what the culture is? Well …
Now this culture is an expression of the agency because, it would seem to me, it grows out of the work we do together. If nobody cares about what they’re doing, if everyone’s just going through the motions, well then your culture probably reflects that. If the work is produced via a nightmarish clash of titanic egos, in which entitled bullies terrorize a nameless horde of navvies, slaves and drones – well then, I’m guessing that’s gonna come across at the Christmas party too (hopefully there’s an open bar. Or maybe not).
That’s also why it binds the agency together. Because its how we do what we do. And that “how”, as far as I can tell, operates along three distinct vehicles – shared experience, legacy and familiarity.
“Shared experience” has to do with what we do together (duh). When an agency all does something together, we become entwined in each other’s personal stories in a way that is more lasting than work. It’s actually kind of fascinating and it creates a kinship beyond simply “we all work in advertising” or “we all work at agency x” or “we all work on the Y account”.
“Legacy” has to do with the creation of tangible things. An experience lives only in the mind, but you can literally see a tangible thing, and that can remind us during dark, culture-less days, of who we are. Additionally, its strength is that it lives outside of the participants as a sort of icon or expression of the culture. It can even live beyond the lives of the participants as a sort of talisman – “Look, this is the standard. To do things like this. This is who we are.” To remind participants, as well as subsequent generations – and even those not in the culture – what the company is.
“Familiarity” is about the easy exchange of expertise, information and knowledge. It’s the strength of “many-to-many connections” and the bonding opportunity is particularly helpful connecting people who don’t normally share their expertise because they’re in different departments or different strata or whatever. Indeed it is these connections – as Gillian Tett explains in The Silo Effect – that can save companies from becoming siloed and doomed, whatever their culture.
And just as each of these vehicles can communicate the culture of the agency in terms of work, it can communicate it beyond work. A shared experience can be a client presentation or it can be an outing to a baseball game right? Legacy can be the awards won for the work or photos from holiday parties. Familiarity can be expertise about the client’s business or about music or films or just life in general.
And I can see where certain people might feel like the transference of that culture from “work” to “non-work” can only happen when we’re all breathing on each other. Especially because a lot of that transference probably happens passively, and work-from-home, as I’ve written elsewhere, isn’t great at passive action.
But here’s the other thing about these vehicles – none of them require you all be in the same place at the same time.
Can you generate “shared experiences” without all being in the same place? We do it every year with the Super Bowl and the Oscars. Can you create a legacy piece if you’re not all in the same place? Playing For Change has done it with people literally all over the planet as have school children with the Flat Stanley project. Can you become more familiar and share knowledge over long distances? I’m sorry, I was just checking my socials – what was the question again?
Hate these examples? Great! Think of your own. As advertising agencies we are literally in the business of figuring out how to do all of these things to create culture when we’re not in the same room as the customer. That is our job. Why is it not then incumbent upon us as managers at advertising agencies to figure out ways to make culture happen regardless of where we or our people are? To say that we have to be in the same room with people in order to have an impact basically discounts the efficacy of every tactic we sell to clients - except potentially for event marketing.
Look, if you want to be in the office because you like being in the office, because you like commuting, because you like riding in elevators and using coffee machines, then by all means, be in the office. But don’t tell me it’s about culture. That excuse is disappointing and disheartening and is enough to make one think that culture isn’t really the reason they want you to come back in after all.