Tori Lopez.
The AdNews end of year Perspectives, looking back at 2024 and forward to next year.
Tori Lopez, Managing Director, Special Australia
This year marked a huge milestone for Special Australia as we celebrated our 10th birthday. As Special’s first full-time employee, it was a particularly meaningful moment for me, and a chance for us all to reflect on the incredible people, partners, and clients we've collaborated with over the years. We brought the whole team together from Sydney, Melbourne, and Tokyo for an all-agency day and that evening we celebrated with friends of Special at our "Night of Ten Thousand Thank Yous." Having everyone come together was truly humbling, and I'm proud to have played a small part in this incredible journey.
Managing the juggle
For me personally, 2024 has been a year of fully returning from parental leave as a working mum of two. I've come to truly understand the balancing act and the weight of the mental load. It’s been a process to learn to set boundaries so that I’m properly present when I am either working, or home with my kids. It’s definitely a challenge, but I am grateful to be surrounded by colleagues that respect those boundaries and are flexible in making it all work.
Progress over perfection
At times, we’ve held off launching internal initiatives until they were perfect, but we have come to realise that this holds us back and we lose momentum. So this year was about prioritising progress over perfection, setting achievable, focused goals to get our house in order. We overhauled all our internal policies and our employee handbook, streamlined processes, kicked off our psychosocial initiative “Work Better Feel Better” and gained approval for our Reflect RAP. Reflecting on this year, I’m proud of the strides we’ve made and excited to carry this momentum forward into 2025.
Experimenting and innovating
This year has been an exciting one for experimentation in the production space. Through our in-house production offering, Special Made, we’ve produced standout work that shows how we can create content for our clients in a more efficient, agile way. This is only the beginning for Special Made, and we’re excited to keep building efficiencies into our processes by leveraging technology and AI.
Celebrating our work without the fear of negativity
The recent trade press commentary has seen some pretty big changes in this space, which will mean that we will be able to share our work with the industry without the fear of the onslaught of negativity that often comes with it. It will be a game changer for the type of work that we share and the confidence of our people.
Continue to put our people first
Our success is all down to our people and how they feel coming to work every day. In 2025, we will continue to prioritise our people - finding ways to improve our ways of working and opportunities for everyone including a supportive, flexible environment where boundaries are respected. And our commitment to building a diverse team of individuals and opportunities for all voices including those who have historically been underrepresented. We want our people to have the opportunity to create the best work of their careers and have a lot of fun doing it.
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