“I don’t like quiet agencies. I really don’t. In my mind, a walk through silent corridors where the only noise is the rain-like tap-tap of fingers waltzing on keyboards and where the only drama is spilt coffee is my idea of Dante’s Inferno. A quiet agency, frankly, is a bad agency. It is the kind of workplace where Mr. Predictable is the major shareholder and where the only electricity comes from wall sockets. That’s because creativity and quietness are the kind of bedfellows who never spoil the sheets.
Now you might think that, in saying that, I am advocating infighting, back-stabbing and the kind of behaviour you’d associate with Ukrainian members of parliament. Well, actually, I am. Well, at least without the back-stabbing bit. Electricity, you see (the non-socket type), doesn’t happen without friction and, however fragile ideas are, they actually happen to be the kind of plants that grow in hostile environments. Ideas – the ‘big’ type – are the result of organic warfare. They breathe in arguments, are fertilised by muck-hitting fans and are watered by the kind of internecine feuds that make Brutus look like the nice guy. By their nature, ideas are uncomfortable beings which you only enjoy when you realise the kind of nutritional value they possess.
However, this doesn’t mean that this conceptual flora is actually born from negatives, far from it. Indeed, the right environment for idea generation is just as delicate in its make-up as it is brutal in its manifestation. It is one thing to have an argumentative, fiery and passionate culture, but quite another to have anxiety-ridden people, loudly vomiting out their stress instead of turning it into productive soil. More to the point, and in the interest of objectives, goals and ambitions – all set in the context of the stressful environment that advertising represents – externalising worries only generates, well, more worries. Worse, it fosters a climate of fear that is detrimental to the very lifeforms you are trying to create. Indeed, there is only one thing worse than a quiet agency: it is an agency where anxious people do
