Things and ideas

Ad Age’s annual Best Places to Work in Marketing & Media 2010 top 30 list is out now. Unlike ranking the best agency, which focuses on the top creative product , the Best Places focuses on the culture. I’ve always liked reading the stories about the winners. It gives you a chance to see what it would be like to work in other shops. Some of the places in the top 30 have workout facilities, compressed work weeks and many had philanthropic efforts. Big Spaceship hosts something interesting they call IP Fridays where everyone in the agency spends half a day working on the agency’s own intellectual property projects, and agency organization varied widely from shop to shop – like Concept Farm’s heavy commitment to life without silos. But this year I noticed something pop up often on the list: multiple shops mentioned their lack of tolerance for big egos. “100% jerk-free” is what Red Door Interactive called it.  McKinney called it a “no jerk policy.” So I couldn’t help but wonder if this is a happy side effect of a brutal recession. We all just went through a big priority refresh. As an industry, we lost buckets of jobs, took pay cuts or had clients turn their focus to less creative projects. It’s been a tough few years. And I think in there somewhere, what matters in our industry may have shifted a bit…for the better.  And now it seems there is room for nice and talent to live together in one shop.  Will this happy symbiosis affect the work product? Do you need the tension and energy and chaos of egos to make breakthrough work?