At IPG shop FCB New York, employees are strongly encouraged to be in the office Tuesday through Thursday. And at 4pm on the dot every Thursday, after much of the week’s work has been squared away, they all come together over snacks, soft drinks, and wine for a little something the agency calls “TTT.”
What is TTT, you ask? It stands for “That Thursday Thing,” a nearly five-year-old tradition, and the agency’s weekly creative salon and team-wide meeting. At That Thursday Thing, agency employees— creatives and others—discuss everything from world events and company news to advertising and art that inspires them. According to agency CEO Emma Armstrong and CCO Michael Aimette, it’s become a critical weekly ritual that builds creativity, teamwork, and communication.
“When you have a junior strategist or someone who’s managing the office facilities talking about a piece of work and creating that common language and that belief in great creative work that drives meaningful business results, that shows rather than tells a core agency belief,” Armstrong said.
We asked Armstrong and Aimette to walk us through TTT and tell us why they do it. Here’s the run of show:
Catch-up: TTTs start with the team catching up on what happened that week, which has a “pretty loose interpretation,” Aimette said. Topics may include new developments in ad land as well as general world news.
New business: Management next dives into agency-specific business, Aimette said, and new hires will be introduced to the team by the staffers they report to. There will also be a rundown of happenings in the New York office, like pitches employees are working on.
Work crush: Each week, one employee brings in a piece of advertising or art to discuss with other FCB-ers during a segment of TTT called “Work Crush,” Aimette said. The employee discusses why it is important to them, evaluating the work on a scale of one to six. “Every single person at the agency does it at some point,” Armstrong said.
Question time: The agency finishes off TTT with a segment dedicated to answering employee questions, Armstrong said. Employees can leave questions and comments anonymously in a suggestion box, and the team will display them on a screen and answer them (provided that they’re not “wildly offensive,” Armstrong said).
Why TTT?
The structure of TTT is intended to encourage participation from across the company, as well as internal transparency. Asking staffers to introduce their new hires, for example, means the meeting is participatory for everyone, not just management, Aimette said, and sharing updates on major projects can help employees feel invested in other teams’ success.
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“I’ve worked at lots of agencies where you don’t really know what’s happening outside of your world,” Aimette told Marketing Brew. “People have blinders on oftentimes. They don’t know what another group might be working on, a pitch that you may not be involved in. People feel really invested in the agency because they’re able to talk about it and understand exactly what everyone is going through at the agency.”
It also allows for team-wide discussion and fun. During the Work Crush segment, for example, employees have highlighted everything from the Grateful Dead to an ad from Magnum Ice Cream. One particularly memorable Work Crush, Armstrong said, involved an employee talking about how she once used Absolut Vodka ads to paper her room’s walls in college, leading to a group discussion about famous brand assets. (This week, a Super Bowl-themed Work Crush is on the agenda, Aimette said.)
“We talk about creativity as an economic multiplier, and making sure that our work is driving our clients’ business,” Armstrong said. “But that is an all-team sport. Everybody here is creative. It’s everybody's responsibility to come up with great creative work.”
Perhaps most importantly, though, some staffers continue to hang out after TTT is over at 5pm.
“We have a tab at the bar around the corner. Normally we do TTT and then people wrap up their work. Then they’ll go grab each other and have a drink,” Armstrong said.