metal&gin | (a weblog by craig t mackenzie)

I’ve been working at my new job with Avenue A | Razorfish for about 2 weeks now, and thought it was about time I spoke a little bit about it.

The difference is amazing, coming from a small new media department to an international digital agency highlights many of the things that are wrong with your average small agency. The structure here is amazing, the work is spread so granularly, it really helps ensure that peoples talents are utilized to the full. The culture is brilliant, it’s a million miles from what I had before, and the caliber of work is stellar.

I’m going to touch on some of the larger more important differences in a bit more depth, but there are so many other smaller difference which I probably won’t be able to cover, like having dishwashers, team meetings in the pub and so on, but first a little history lesson.

History

The company I work for was originally called DNA, a very well respected and highly talented multi-discipline design/build agency. DNA were approached by many large companies looking to merge with them, but the board felt that these offers were always because of either their design strengths or their technical strengths, but never both.

About a year ago now, Avenue A | Razorfish (a merging of Avenue A, a massive design and marcoms player and Razorfish, a massive tech player) approached DNA to merge, the directors (Neil and Chris, who are great guys) felt that AA|RF cared about the same things they did, and let the merge happen.

So now DNA is a part of Avenue A | Razorfish, which is owned by aQuantive. aQuantive own two other companies; Atlas and Drive PM. Atlas is an advertising network, and Drive PM is a mechanism by which to target advertising to an amazingly specific level. So aQuantive is 2/3′s advertising driven.

A while ago the market was heating up with talk of online advertising, the big players were all trying to buy up companies that would let them flex this muscle, Microsoft approached the darling at the time (DoubleClick) but they said “no” and sold to Google (becoming Adsence) so Microsoft thought “fuck it” and decided to try and buy Atlas (the largest ad network). The result is they decided to buy the entire company, not just Atlas, for around $6billion. So Microsoft own aQuantive, but it really doesn’t filter down into everyday life at Avenue A | Razorfish.

Structure

The structure of a company is always going to be better / more defined when you have the number of employees we have. But the point is not how many people you have, rather do you have the right level of separation?

At my old place we had 4 members of staff sharing about 10 different jobs; We had department managers selling and not managing the department, project managers managing the department while the head was out selling, and then having to manage projects as well, designers doing IA, programmers doing design, flash designers doing interaction programming, everyone doing QA, the boss doing SEO and ad campaigns and the board chipping in on design direction.

The lack of separation caused a lot of confusion and misplaced resources.

At AA|RF we have a lot more people (about 160 and growing) so we can afford to spread the staff into very distinct teams such as: Creative, Design, Interface Architecture, Information Architecture, Flash Animation, Flash Interaction, Rich Internet Application, Java Developers, .NET Developers, Database Designers, Motion Graphics, SEO, QA, Search Research and probably a whole load more I have yet to meet.

Apart from the skill based teams we also have teams created to cater for specific clients, when a large job comes in PM’s, Producers, Account Managers and Resources will get together and allocate members of staff in certain ‘Skill Teams’ to join a Project team.

Overall the structure of both the ‘workers’ and the auxiliary is brilliant, the overall company structure is brilliant also, having a proper HR team is great!

Getting “it”

The thing that got me so excited about this job and working for AA|RF was the fact that after my interview with Paul and James I got a real sense that they “get it”. I expected that once I start it will be different, and there will be a lot of people that don’t get “it”, but man was I wrong!

Every member of staff in this company gets “it”, they all understand the best way to run a Digital Agency and the benefits of doing this versus that, every member of staff, every PM, every Producer, Every Account Manager even the Directors (especially the Directors) get “it”.

It’s a part of the company interview system, people are judged against wether they get “it” or not.

It’s amazingly refreshing to finally be working for a company that truly understands the industry, best practices, emerging technology, client needs and staff needs.

AA|RF knows this industry so well, it reflects in everything they do, the way projects are approached, the way clients are handled and (more importantly) the way staff are treated (which is very well as it happens).

Culture

Culture is a difficult thing to get right in a workplace, and I know only of two places that are internationally regarded as having an amazing working culture, and they are pixar animation studios and google. Apart from being the “Search King” google is (especially in tech circles) known for being an amazing place to work.

After my experiences in average small companies I was definitely looking for a more google-esque working culture, but had resided myself to the fact that unless I get some sort of obscure degree, or could borrow arfon’s brain I would probably never get a look in google (which is a shame, they feed their staff free gourmet food)

Luckily for me AA|RF has an amazing working culture, I’m literally blown-away by it.

First there are the official ‘benefits’ such as flexi-time, health insurance, pension schemes, gym-membership and the opportunity to work abroad. All very lovely, and a million miles away from what a smaller company can offer, but pretty standard for most ‘proper’ agencies, especially in London.

But it’s the culture driven benefits which are amazing, take for instance the policy on overtime; in our industry you are never ever ever ever going to get paid full overtime, so don’t even ask. What AA|RF do is different, they realise that we all work our butts off to get stuff done, because we are all passionate about this industry, so we can claim overtime as LILO or Leave In Leu of Overtime. Another great culture driven aspect is the way meetings are handled, AA|RF know’s we hate meetings so any meetings involving ‘workers’ are kept brief, taken on the roof-garden and last no more than 15 minutes.

Another great thing is the company policy on things like stress and breaks, we are all encouraged to take frequent breaks, and chill out for a bit if we feel stressed. In previous jobs management have tried to ignore stress, but in this job people are taken over the road for a coffee or a smoothie if they are stressed, this company really cares about their staff.

Attire, there is barley a suit in sight, everyone from the workers to the MD’s dress how they feel, no matter what that is, people are more comfortable, there’s no authority issues and it’s just nicer.

And the parties! Oh my the Parties! There are two ‘big’ parties every year, the christmas party and the summer party, I unfortunately just missed the summer party but apparently london zoo was hired for the afternoon, then everyone went back to work to have a barbecue in the roof-garden, then AA|RF took everyone to a club they had hired.

But that’s not all, AA|RF like to party, so there is a party every month after the monthly company meeting, the way this works is every team takes it in turns to spend £500 on the months party, which is used to cover things such as games and prizes, the company foots the bill for food and (lots of) drink.

This month it’s HR’s turn and they are throwing a mad hatters tea party on the roof, we’ve all been given materials with which to make a mad hat, the winner recieves an iPod Touch, 5 2nd place winners get a new iPod Nano, and there are 20 3rd place prizes of a crate of beer or something.

The culture at AA|RF is amazing, and it works, the MD’s can see that we all work really hard, and have tried to create a fun, relaxed and positive working environment, and they instantly win people’s loyalty. You end up looking forward to going to work no matter what.

Working in “The Big Smoke”

Working in London is both brilliant and annoying, having a plethora of lunch options, entertainment, fashion, shopping and night-life on your very doorstep is wonderful. And trust me, you never get bored. Never. London is the heart of everything, it’s the center of the world.

The only annoying thing is working in London and living in Kent, it’s difficult but not too bad, you get used to it really quickly and you look forward to your 1.5hours of down time at the start/end of the day.

The benefits far out-weigh the drawbacks, and I can honestly say that now I’m here I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. At my old place 4 out of 6 members of staff left to work in london, and all are very happy. As easy and comfortable as it may be to work in this industry from the comfort of Kent, only a few miles from home it doesn’t compare to being on the pulse, in the heart of it, where it happens.

The companies are better, the staff are treated better, the pay is better, the clients are (way) more interesting, the buzz is amazing, the people rock and you will likely find that your boss is just like you.

The grass truly is greener on the other side, take my word for it.