AdNews asked industry figures for their assessment of 2022 and outlook for next year
Hannah McElhinney, Snack Drawer co-founder and chief creative officer
I’ve seen more commentary this year than I ever have before about the future of this industry. We’ve heard of the ‘Great Resignation’, the ‘quiet quitting’ phenomenon and a seemingly endless stream of quips about ‘meetings that could have been an email’.
The carrot of the 4 day work week has us feeling optimistic about cramming 5 days of work into just 4, while digital nomad visas have us scrolling Airbnb for far-flung places to be productive from.
We’ve arrived on the other side of the pandemic hyped up on a utopian vision for the future of work. As an industry we’ve pledged to be kinder to ourselves and our team, prioritise our health and mental wellbeing and be ever vigilant for signs of burnout. We can have it all, we just need to work smarter.
If we cut down meetings, optimise our workflows, streamline our processes and remember our Slack etiquette, we can get more done and enjoy all those aforementioned wellbeing benefits. But one thing I have noticed this year is that the outcome of all this timesaving hasn’t necessarily been rest or even idleness. It’s a dopamine hit as you hit ‘done’ on your digital to-do list, and the realisation that we could fit even more in!
To borrow the phrasing of sex-columnist-turned-Che Diaz-co-host, Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder whether this utopian new normal is not just ‘grind’ culture repackaged in laid back outdoor wear and marketed back to us.
At Snack Drawer, we’ve built our Good Sugars production model around efficiency and it’s paid off tremendously. But I have also found it’s important to defend moments of joyful inefficiency at work.
We use the phrase Uncanny Valley to talk about the eerie feeling we get when a replica or recreation of something strays too close to the original. Perfection feels wrong to us, even though we’re in constant pursuit of it. The same might go for work. We do need the ability to clock off and spend meaningful time with our loved ones and be intentional about our health, but creative brains also need idleness – when our minds are allowed time to wander aimlessly, they can end up in wild new places.
Work that isn’t efficient, productive or prioritised, those meetings that could have been an email – they’re like a twilight for our brains, that give us something in between the start-stop of work and rest. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I do think creative work benefits from wasted time.
A crew of creatives I once worked with started every day by playing the card game Punderdome. Another creative partner and I applied temporary tattoos to our faces before tackling a hard brief. These are things that couldn’t have been an email, and should absolutely never be a meeting. But I would still like them to exist.
At Snack Drawer we have tried to create a culture that embraces silliness; we’re still new, but in 2023 I’m looking forward to seeing where it takes us. I’m hoping that as we continue to create content that works harder and goes further for our clients and channels, we’re still able to take some of that precious, precious time saved…and waste it.
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