Marilla Akkermans
Independent agency Equality Media + Marketing has topped the AFR BOSS Best Places to Work list for media and marketing in 2025.
The Melbourne agency with 22 staff has been recognised due to its four-day work week, which also scored the agency top place in 2023's list.
In 2024, Equality lost out to The Royals.
“It really was an experiment to begin with. Can we make the research and the data that I see work for us? And it does. We’ve had the strongest 18 months of business that we’ve ever had,” Equality Media + Marketing CEO Marilla Akkermans told the AFR.
Published annually by The Australian Financial Review (AFR) and BOSS Magazine, the awards are based on an assessment process managed by leading behavioural science consultancy Inventium, including a written submission and a staff survey examining policies, practices and programs that help businesses support their team.
The list:
As well as ranking on the list, The Media Store also won the Belonging award, one of five special awards, on the night which make up the BEING acronym to what makes a best place to work – Belonging, Energising, Integrating, Nurturing and Generating.
The Media Store has all the ingredients for a best place to work, from meaningful staff benefits, individual flexibility, extensive learning and development and true collaboration, The Media Store chief operating officer Jacquie Alley said.
“We are honoured to be named in the special awards category, Belonging. As famous diversity speaker Verna Meyers once said, diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance. However, belonging is when they play your favourite song on the dancefloor," Alley said.
“We truly want all of our people to shine and be known as themselves, to be asked to dance and have their song played, to feel they are part of something bigger than themselves."
iProspect national managing director Marcelle Hoyek said the win is a testament to the ongoing work by the iProspect team.
"Culture is incredibly important to the overall success of iProspect, we are an engaged team who love coming to work and pushing to do better work than the day before," Hoyek said.
dentsu QLD managing director Chris Ernst said he is incredibly proud of the momentum the agency is experiencing as a team and am even more proud to say that every person in our agency has played a part in it.
Jaimes Leggett, managing partner at Today the Brave, said the industry needs to continue to look at new ways of working.
"It's an incredible privilege to be part of such a list and to be recognised for the work we are putting in. We are setting out to be the best place we've ever worked – and this is a great reflection of this journey," he said.
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