OMG, look at all the pens.
Today in Aggregation, Tanya Dua of Digiday spent her Monday taking a deep dive into ad culture by convincing a bunch of agency principals to discuss the random shit they keep in their offices and the behaviors stemming from such fetish objects.
For example, Publicis Seattle employs “a strategically placed giant gong” to warn staffers when clients show up…or possibly to announce account wins and other important news. Chief strategy officer Britt Fero tells Digiday that it’s all about “creating a sense of community and collective celebration.”
David&Goliath, on the other hand, makes every new hire drink a chaser-free shot of Fernet-Branca as a kind of trust fall/Fear Factor thing. This almost makes sense in that it sounds like a nightmare we may have had in college. We might even have to bring it up with David Angelo, who once told us that he’s a bourbon guy who enjoys the woody tones of a Knob Creek or the sharper bite of a Bulleit but never mentioned the awfulness that is Campari.
Huge gives its employees an axe on their fifth anniversaries, because the agency is all about cutting away at the unnecessary stuff in the interest of minimalism. Thankfully, we did not see any Huge folks carrying axes at its recent holiday party at Park Slope’s Grand Prospect Hall. The event did, however, allow us to reacquaint ourselves with some ’90s hip-hop and one of our favorite local ads:
Vivaldi!
The Dua piece also introduced us, for the first time, to Grey’s “Heroic Failure Award” and Lapiz’s employment of a special Slack channel to shame staffers for bad behavior like “leaving behind their nail clippings” or other things that we presume were simply too gross to share with media. Also, can we agree that Slack is in no way a substitute or solution for old-school email and that it doesn’t come anywhere close to increasing productivity in the office? (Read this completely accurate, not-at-all overlong or self-indulgent Medium essay for more!)
In other odd agency behaviors, Havas Chicago CCO Jason Peterson says that the pins his shop creates to mark employees’ personal and career achievements “represent the unique aspects of our culture that set us apart.” Havas staffers “can either wear the pins on their jackets or keep [them] at their desks,” so they’re like Boy Scout merit badges in that they don’t count if you hide them away.
Saatchi & Saatchi New York CEO Brent Smart also hosts monthly Italian dinners at which members of different agency departments can bond over red sauce and debate “where we need to try new things and new ways of working.” It’s not quite clear where these dinners occur, but we’re pretty sure no one cooks in the Saatchi office and we hear there are still quite a few good pasta spots in the West Village.
Sadly, Digiday’s editorial team may now be classified as “anti-hug.” We get it, though–we’re not too big on physical affection among co-workers.