Back in 2019, we produced a documentary on the nascent four-day work week movement as a few agencies started to reduce or compress workers’ hours. The pandemic has hastened the conversation into something the whole world is talking about. At a roundtable discussion hosted by The Drum Network, we gather figures from the movement, including leader Charlotte Lockhart and two agency groups walking the walk, to field the wider industry’s questions.
It’s been a banner year for The Drum Network and its members. We’ve launched new hubs in New York, San Francisco and Amsterdam; welcomed brilliant new members from all over the world; bolstered our internal team; and seen more great work than ever before. Here, the editor for the Network, Sam Anderson, takes a look at some of the highlights.
Jonny Tooze has been chief executive officer of Lab since founding it 18 years ago. In September of 2019, he took the company into a new phase: from independent agency to independent agency group. In the last two years, a string of acquisitions and spinouts have resulted in a group of five agencies, which relaunched and rebranded last week. In the first of our new series Founders’ Syndrome, we talk to Jonny about building a group during a pandemic and the complex pleasures of being able to hire a team that just might be better than yourself.
The importance of rest and what agencies are doing about it – part 2 thedrum.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thedrum.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Michael Hedge
It was the repetition that did it for Alex Hirst. The same 5.30am alarm. The same 6.30am bus to the Tube station. The same District Line carriage, the same Starbucks coffee and croissant, the same meal-deal lunch. The same clients, the same problems, the same-shaped weeks. “Don’t get me wrong: I loved my work and didn’t resent doing it,” he insists. But at 33, leading a team of eight as a head of account management at a growing creative agency, Hirst began to wonder whether he had his priorities wrong.
“I always thought the more time I spent working, the more successful I would become,” he says. “It was a badge of honour. Being the first in and the last out of the office was important to me. I thought that I was leading by example. In fact, I just became more and more detached. I stopped enjoying the highs. I didn’t care about the lows. Eventually, my wife told me that I’d become a shadow of my former self.”