Why The future Of Work Is OOH

I want to be bombarded by a thousand advertising messages before I’ve had my porridge and notice the one that makes me laugh, and then notice the one that other people notice. Then I want to put my head down and play a stupid game on my phone instead of reading my book and then look up and see everyone doing the same and have a small existential crisis. I want to see the poster for Les Mis and realise that I’ve lived my entire life in London without seeing the world’s most popular and longest-running show (nearly). I want to impulsively book cheap last-minute tickets so I spend the rest of the week screaming: "On my own pretending he's besiiiiiiide me" in the shower or jauntily humming Master Of The House on the loo.

I want to force myself into the gym when it’s still dark and feel the difference the season makes to my skin, body and soul. I want to get there at peak time and see that the cardio space has been reduced again to make room for extra weight machines, and be wierded out by how roided up bodies are now becoming so normalised for men and young men. After showering I want to swear when I can’t find my hair stuff and panic that my mid-30s-balding-spot is showing and run to Superdrug and wonder why men’s hair wax is still the same as when I was 16. And then at my desk I’ll look around and acknowledge in a new light my similarly aged thinning-hair brethren with their hats and slicked-back styles and start to consider my alternative options. I want to be absolutely bloody starving by lunchtime and play Meal Deal Roulette, peruse the treat aisle and mark what’s on the top shelf, what’s on the bottom shelf and what’s got the end of the aisle. And I want to marvel at the latest unlikely vegetable to become a low-cal crisp.

I want to have to rush back from work so I’m not late for the one weekly date night I have with my husband, now that we’ve started scheduling it in to make sure we’re not ships in the night. I want to collapse into the cinema and appreciate how it’s the place where even people who hate PDA can relax, cuddle and can hold hands in public. And I want to not have enough time all week to get to the post office so that on Saturday I have to join the long queue to post my letter for the speed awareness course. I want to let all the laundry pile up so that I have to go to the laundrette where I can whack it all in at once into a big drum, still get a decent clean, and, because I’m trying to give up my addiction to crushing candies, read the stack of local newspapers with its feature on the community garden.

More than anything I just want to work in the national routine. In the crowd. On the escalators. And in the street. In the mood and the vibe. I’m scared of being removed. I’m disappointed that as industry we were shocked by Brexit, shocked by Trump, and blindly assume the politics of one another from a place of much too assured virtue. I’m scared of becoming part of a separate Laptop Class who lives a work-from-home life that is ironed out, whilst expecting the greatest proportion of workers in this country to get up, go out and run around doing all the jobs that make life possible - the jobs that are often the hardest and lowest paid. It's no surprise that those earning less than the average British wage are the most likely to never work from home, according to the latest ONS statistics. How much more of a separation do we want to create between us and the people we talk to, sell to and try to entertain. Is the value, identity and ideology gap not wide enough? Do we now want to remove ourselves from the routine of national life all together?

I do not want to write a cloistered brief. The majority of people leave the home and go to work. And work is the majority of people’s life. I do not want to slip into understanding the daily experience of the world round me in the abstract. I want to live in it. Albeit, I accept in a much, much more cushty and privileged version. And I want to be in that routine for as long as that’s what most people do. I do not want to remove friction from my life as much as I do not want to remove the tensions from my strategies and ideas. Paying people properly, creating real progressive flexibility around parental and caring responsibilities to ensure talent can enter our industry and thrive is something we can lead on. But we can do that without becoming an elite that resigns itself from the fundamental going to work pattern of everybody else.

As strategists we’ve worked so hard over the years hard to become broad and useful, and kill off the image of our discipline as the overly intellectual planner locked away in an ivory tower. I don’t want to retreat back there with my laptop under my arm. I can only speak for myself. Everyone is different. But I don’t want to work from home. I want to go to work like most people have to. I want to work from life.

Matt Waksman is Ogilvy UK's head of strategy