Team Talk: Mark Tallis & Cam Dowsett
‘Culture’. Is it a quarterly excuse to get Rugby League drunk, or a carefully curated environment designed to keep staff happy and generate awesome creative work? Senior creative team Cam Dowsett and Mark Tallis believe it’s the latter, and chatted about their personal Dos and Don’ts for the other ‘C’ bomb that’s constantly dropped in Agencyland.
Mark Tallis:
Don’t: Focus solely on ‘staff initiatives’
While endless holidays and work-from-home days are amazing perks, if you want to keep people who care about the work, focus some initiatives on improving it. To be clear, we are not against unlimited leave - it’s great and we’ve definitely taken advantage of it - but culture is there to balance the work side of things.
If your agency output can only be measured in mindfulness sessions, staff initiatives, off-sites and themed BBQs - that’s not culture. It’s a cult.
Do: Make an effort to engage with your peers
Agency events kind of suck when people pike. Sure, we’re a little guilty of this now that we have small children who depend on us (lol) - but we still try, and so should you. Even agencies with terrible culture have awesome people in them. Find them. Buy them a beer. Or a Kombucha or whatever.
Cam Dowsett:
Don’t: Glorify people working crazy hours
Especially when it comes at the expense of some sort of one-off life event like a buck’s or wedding. Yes, long hours are part of the job, everyone gets it. But when someone misses an important event to proofread an 80 page presentation deck, don’t celebrate it. Management should be apologising in all-staffers if this has happened, not holding these stories up as the gold standard.
No ad is worth missing out on your wedding anniversary, just ask my wife (it was the first anniversary, we won the pitch, I regret it to this day.)
Do: Find some balance
Beers are important (very), but so is getting good work out. It can’t be all work and no play because you’ll leave the office late and wake up on a terminated train parked in the rail sheds, but all play gets pretty boring when you go to renew your website and realise it’s empty. Plus you woke up hung in those same rail sheds, you pig.
Mark Tallis:
Don’t: Bastardise the word ‘collaborate’
The idea that everyone’s opinion is gospel on a job sucks. Ideas can and do come from anywhere in the business, and every voice should be heard, but every suggestion needs to be put through the same rigour - does it make the work better?
The best places we’ve worked out have been great at hearing everyone on a job, but ultimately letting the right people decide what to take on board.
I shudder to think about how the work would have ended up if every suggestion made along the way was actioned. Remember that car Homer designed?
Do: Find the dumb game that unites your office
Every place has one. Leo’s had Crack Ball, Havas had Ping Pong when we were there. Find your Pong and play it, because nothing brings people together like a good old fashioned waste of resource. It makes the late nights and occasional weekends easier to stomach when the everyday is fun.
Cam Dowsett:
Don’t: Reserve the glory for management
Some places funnel the glory briefs straight to the CDs and bypass the creative teams. Yes, sometimes the CDs will crack the brief. Yes, sometimes the creative teams don’t. But if all the award-winning work has only CDs credited, it’s probably safe to assume that most of the creative department is polishing up the old Squarespace (and rightly so).
Do: Be really fucking harsh on the work
That doesn’t mean screaming a lot and throwing tantrums - the best agencies do it in a nurturing, positive way.
It’s easy to get to average work, but adding the extra 10% or 15% that makes it really cool is tough.
That’s why an environment that’s politely ruthless on your creative output is a great place to be. It’s one of the hardest things to get right in an agency’s culture, but when you do…*kisses thumb and forefinger like a chef*
