The discussion began with the opening mark of the panellists on the sea change that is happening in the advertising world with work from home becoming the new norm.
The Advertising Club, Bangalore organized a webinar on May 12th, 2020 titled ‘What will the future of the advertising workplace look like?’. The webinar had Tarun Rai, Chairman and Group CEO of Wunderman Thompson South Asia and Subhash Kamath, CEO and Managing Partner, BBH India as panellists and the discussion was moderated by Laeeq Ali, President, Adclub Bangalore. The webinar delved into the various aspects of changing workspace culture in the advertising sector during COVID 19 crisis.
The discussion began with the opening mark of the panellists on the sea change that is happening in the advertising world with work from home becoming the new norm.
“In this current situation no amount of past experience can help one during this crisis period. I started work from home with lot of scepticism and worry. In the last one month my team & I have got a hang of it despite being geographically restricted, taking into consideration the work of an advertising agency, at the end of the day, is about a bunch of people coming together to address a problem through creativity,” said Kamath.
Rai said that, it’s not just the Corona virus but the circumstances it has put them into are also novel to him. “At an individual level, I am used to people reporting to me while they are working from home. This time there are few differences, this is for the first time that the entire organisation has gone on work from home. The alacrity with which people have adopted to technology is praiseworthy,” added Rai.
The webinar further discussed about the advantages of work from home.
According to Rai, talents need not be consigned to a particular geography. He believes that work from home liberates the talent.
“We can push the talent beyond India. This is a liberating opportunity for the talents from the points of diversity, gender diversity, and geographies,” added Rai.
Commenting on the advantages of work from home concept Kamath Said, “Work from home is a wonderful concept and it will be a hybrid model post Covid 19 crisis. The traditional structure of hierarchy in the organisations, especially in the field of advertising, it is linear reporting structure and that’s going to be questioned now.”
The webinar further discussed how the people inside the organization are motivated during the crisis.
Rai said, “The pandemic has created a lot of pressure on people. The most important for me is to communicate with the team, which we are doing on a regular basis.”
According to Kamath, Communication and connectedness are the two ways to motivate the team.
He continued, “We have to make sure that we are accessible to the team at any time. In the last few weeks, apart from regular company meetings BBH has also conducted cultural events online.”
“At the end of the day, everybody in your organization needs to know what the management is thinking as next step. There are times when you have to deliver bad news, how well you do that and how transparent you are will give the team a huge level of reassurance,” Kamath added.
In his welcome note Laeeq Ali said that this is the time where you need to be standing with each other more than ever, share perspectives and learn from each other. As an industry body the Adclub been conducting a series of webinars on various topics pertaining to different aspects of advertising, media, and communication.”
The event was a huge success, with more than 250 participants on Zoom and Facebook Live.The webinar was put together with the Active support of the Ad Club’s treasurer Malavika Harita and the Managing Committee.
Arvind Kumar, executive director said, “Our endeavour to keep our members as well as all people from the Advertising Industry, engaged with relevant content through these Webinars is being recognized. Our Audience is on the increase from our 1st Webinar on April 6th and we hope to keep this momentum by catering to various aspects of our business, in the coming months “.
(We got this information from a press release.)
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