New Work Order: NAB partnerships chief, Mindshare and Foxtel Media CEOs break down post-Covid client, agency and publisher supply chain challenges, flexible working, bad industry practices, and where media goes next

No-one in the advertising supply chain is immune to the challenge of how to work in the post-Covid world. NAB’s Thomas Dobson, Mindshare’s outgoing CEO Katie Rigg Smith and Foxtel Media CEO Mark Frain have had to manage this New Work Order. Is it “in the room, not Zoom”? Full flexibility? A mixture of both? Rigg Smith says the pandemic created an expectation that everyone was at their computer, working, morning till night. “You don’t build trust over email,” she says. Frain says half the workforce came back from the summer holidays exhausted from Covid isolation or illness. Likewise, remote working isn’t easy on culture. “The old adage was, ‘get in your chair and start learning the job’,” he says. “Pretty hard if you’re sitting in your living room”. NAB’s Thomas Dobson says future workplaces will come down to trust. “You underestimate how much trust is there, especially when you’re talking about millions of dollars’ worth of media investment that has to pay off.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.