Tash Menon: The future of creative work is already here

By Tash Menon, managing director and founder of creative services platform, Mash.

 

The future of work isn’t just remote. It’s global.

Recently, a number of big-name agencies have been making headlines for rethinking the traditional big agency model, and championing remote and hybrid working. Ever since the pandemic, there’s been a broader conversation about our industry moving away from an office-centric model to working with the best talent, wherever they are.

Far before the pandemic, brands were starting to assess more creative ways to facilitate their creative service requirements. Building internal agencies. Engaging freelancers. Working with agencies on a project basis. Recently, Forbes predicted that 50% of ad creatives will be freelance in the next few years. The future of creative work is flexible, remote and global. We’re continuing to acclimatise to the idea that the best people for the job may not be on our doorstep.

While it’s encouraging to see more traditional agencies and consultancies starting to make the move away from being a single centralized office, four years of Mash has shown us that making hybrid working sustainable for our people, while still delivering results, is where the greatest challenges, and the greatest opportunities, lie.

People want to feel they’re part of something, and when physical infrastructures and daily routines are taken away, the human factor can’t go with it. We have to be smart in our approach to maintain the sense of community and camaraderie, which creatives and staff have become accustomed to.

Mash was built on the insight that a more engaged and effective workforce can be created via the empowerment of people within it. Combined with the gig economy tip-toeing into the creative industries sector, and an increased appetite amongst exceptional creatives to seek greater fulfilment and freedom within their own work, Mash was born to deliver a way of working that wasn’t constrained by geography and to empower the (creative) world to work for themselves.

Since 2018, we have taken a borderless (and roofless) approach to delivering creative services for brands around the world. We’ve grown YOY and the past 12 months saw us grow a further 230%, on a completely bootstrapped model. Our ‘referral-only’ community of independent creative professionals continue to work with some of the world’s biggest brands across 28 countries.

A diverse approach

At Mash, we’ve long believed that there’s a more creative way to do creative services, and at the core of this belief is our ability to democratise access to the best and brightest creative minds in the world.

Take for instance Jonathan, a French-born, South African-based Creative Director who has created successful campaigns for clients including FIFA, Toyota, Nestlé and Coca-Cola. His work was praised at D&AD, Cannes and the rest. He brings a unique global perspective and insight to Mash, where he is currently leading a global team of art directors, digital specialists and copywriters on a project for one of Asia’s fastest-growing tech startups.

Then there’s Wendy, an award-winning Melbourne-based writer and editor. She’s the author of The Sunny Nihilist: How a Meaningless Life Can Make You Truly Happy and How to Think Like an Activist. She writes for the Guardian, the Atlantic, British Vogue, ABC and i-D covering news, current events, culture, gender and sexuality, the arts, fashion, and beauty.

And Dominic, the Beijing-based, British expat who founded the label Plastered 8. With established links and unrivalled access to the Chinese creative community, Dominic has helped shape creative campaigns for the world’s largest streaming company via Mash, to deliver authentic and highly relevant storytelling for audiences across Asia.

These are just three out of over 150 Mashers globally. Diversity means having a share of people from multiple backgrounds, we have a share of people from almost every background. That means that almost any client that comes to us doesn’t get the same group of people for every brief. They get the right group of people for their brief.

Access to the best

Unlike other freelance marketplaces, we don’t compromise on quality. Mashers average between 10 – 12 years of experience, across different continents. Most of them have chosen to work for themselves after reaching a point in their career where they want to choose what they work on, rather than have it chosen for them. They understand not only what fulfils them, but also how they can best work with a brand to really deliver exceptional creative work.

Freedom, fulfilment and financial autonomy are all top of mind, but so is the appetite to work with other like-minded individuals. They want to be able to say yes to projects that light them up, alongside people who encourage and motivate them to do better.

Last year it came to light that in traditional agencies, employee churn can be 50% or higher. However, if I reflect on our own track record, our average attrition rate has been less than 3% every year. The idea that freelancers don’t stick around or aren’t reliable is a myth. You just need to understand how to bring out the best in them.

Building momentum

Our business has essentially been driven via word-of-mouth. Less than 4% of revenue has been spent on marketing since we started. With repeat business and loyal clients being a core part of our operation, it’s clear our community model is presenting a compelling alternative to traditional agencies.  it’s become clear that our offering supersedes that of a number of traditional infrastructures.

One of the great values of an in-house team is that decision-making can generally be driven more efficiently and effectively. But alongside this, clients are seeking diverse perspectives from external professionals who are as passionate about their business as they are – and this doesn’t generally come from an agency structure where people are working on what they have to, to take home their salary. It comes from experienced professionals who have a thirst to do great work on brands they have a genuine interest in.

With a global remote-working and independent workforce, building a sense of culture and belonging hasn’t been easy, but we’ve made it our priority. Being paid on time, receiving a clearly written brief and not being white-labelled should be the baseline when working for yourself. That’s why it’s the baseline for us.

Our relationship with Mashers isn’t just transactional. We want them to feel truly engaged by the projects they work on. They’re encouraged to share their ideas, connect with other creatives around the world, and bring new clients on board. And we reward them for it.

Global relevance

We’re an Australian-founded business with a solid footprint across Asia Pacific. Over 50% of our revenue last financial year was generated from what is one of the world’s most dynamic advertising industry markets – Asia.

We call it “culturally translating brands”. We recognised that multinational companies with a presence in a number of SEA countries are looking for creative alternatives that not only provide local cultural insight and understanding, but can work at the pace that these emerging Asian markets demand.

Building multi-country creative teams out of highly experienced Mashers means we’re tapping into a global workforce, and solving problems for clients who would otherwise be working with a number of agencies in different countries, and managing the cumbersome multiple moving parts that entails

The freelance evolution

Freelancing today is like eCommerce was a few decades ago. Clunky and misunderstood. The next evolution in flexible freelancing is to provide strong freelancer foundations, platforms where creatives and clients can collaborate, connect and contribute, and get everything they want out of work life.

Making business more inclusive, flexible and ultimately creative, sits closely correlated with our purpose, yet it’s a process without a rule book, and we’re learning all the time. These lessons are part of a global movement to give people the freedom to work for themselves, on their own terms, while living the life of their choosing.

Momentum is building across the industry all over the world. To me, that’s pretty exciting. A future of work that empowers us all? I’d take that over an office ping-pong table.