The pitch: Try a sledgehammer on your office walls - it really works

By VAUGHN DAVIS*

Most advertising agencies these days are open-plan. Look closely though, and you'll find organisational walls as confining as any you could build with a trailerload of 4x2 and Gib.

Start knocking a few of these walls down - start building a truly open plan organisation - and the results can be positive, dramatic, and rewarding for everyone involved.

We're moving offices soon at Young & Rubicam. We've got a few details to sort out, and no doubt the fight for the best views will be sharp, vicious and merciless.

Whatever the outcome, I'm sure that the table I sit down to after the move will be part of a very different creative department to the one I signed on to in 2000.

A lot's changed since then. Changes to our client list - not to mention the staff phone list - mean we've had to find new ways of working. And, you know, they work.

From a period of unplanned and unexpected upheaval, we've moved in a direction I wish we'd taken a long time ago.

As The Style Council sung in their brass-rich call for eighties rebellion, the walls have come tumbling down.

Walls between offices: our offices in Auckland and Wellington originally had a client list and creative department each.

By sharing people, clients and briefs flexibly between both we balance workload, give clients fresh perspectives and give creatives fresh challenges.

Walls between disciplines:we used to have specialists in retail, brand and direct. We still do, the only difference is they're each as likely to be working outside their specialist area as within it.

Specialist advice and guidance is on hand, so there's no reason why, say, a DM art director shouldn't write and produce a radio or TV ad, and enjoy doing something different at the same time.

Walls between partnerships: when I came to Young & Rubicam, the creative department was staffed with teams - four or five of them.

Today, we're down to just one team - but a team of six to eight people, in two cities, working on every account. Sometimes I'll work with my original art director, sometimes we'll work in a gaggle of three, or four, or six. I'm not saying we won't hire more teams - if the right pairing comes along they'll find a welcome - but they'll have to be prepared for a bit more promiscuity than they're used to.

Have we stopped swinging the sledgehammer? Maybe not. The wall between the studio and the creative department has been looking shaky for a while, and I think the roof would hold if we knocked out the wall between us and account service ... now, where did I put that chainsaw?

* Vaughn Davis is Creative Group Head at Young & Rubicam Auckland.

* Email Vaughn Davis

* The Pitch is a forum for those working in advertising, marketing, public relations and communications. We welcome lively and topical 500-word contributions.
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