Round 1: Easy

Teams could choose a maximum of 12 items from the following:

• 2 balloons
• a handful of cotton wool
• a handful of polystyrene thingamagigs
• 1 cardboard cup
• 30cm of masking tape
• 1 straw
• 1 kebab stick
• 1 sheet of newspaper
• 1 rubber band
• 3 squares of toilet paper
• 1 plastic bag
• 1m of cling film

Two of the teams opted to bundle up their egg in as many layers as possible before placing it between two semi-inflated balloons, providing protection from absolutely every angle. The third team went for a contraption that will maximise bounce on impact while preventing the egg cup from hitting the ground. Check out the super anxious moments of tension, captured only minutes before the great egg drop:

Team 1: Tom, Melissa, Mike and Bre

Team 2: Kristie, Roderick and Craig

Team 3: Andrea, Rik, Matt and Tina

The time had come. There was no going back. It was out the balcony, one contraption at a time, waiting to be inspected by the anxious team members waiting in the street below. You could cut the tension with a knife. Whose egg would survive the fall? Whose dreams would be smashed into a mess of yellow slime?

As it turns out: nobody’s. All 3 eggs returned safe and sound, with not so much as a crack to prove that they’d just fallen 3 storeys. Ah well – on to round 2!

Round 2: Not-so-easy

This time, the teams could only choose 10 items from the following:

• 1 rubber band
• 1 straw
• 1 kebab stick
• 10cm of masking tape
• 2 squares of toilet paper
• 1 sheet of newspaper

Things just got real serious. Ideas included:

None of which were any good, I’m afraid. All three packages hit the ground with an almighty splat that was heard all the way up in the boardroom.
So yeah – no clear winners, no clear losers, but a pretty fun session nonetheless.
Omelette, anyone?

The post Last Friday Night: The Egg Drop Project appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Her job title says it all: Martina is a busy person. She forms part of the demi-god administration team that keeps the agency running smoothly.
She spends her working hours handling paperwork on her 3 (yes, three) monitors, only popping up for air for sustenance around tea time to unveil her latest baking invention.
So she keeps us in check, and she bakes. As you can imagine, we love her dearly 🙂
Last Friday, it was Tina’s turn to bring something to the boardroom table. Looking for a much-needed break from numbers and figures, she decided it was time to unwind and get to know each other a little better, starting from our early years and leading straight up to the random stories one would tell around a campfire.

Part 1: Oh Baby

Everyone received an envelope with their name on it, which included the pieces to two puzzles: One is a baby photo of an unidentified colleague, the other is a hint to help you figure out who they are. For some, it was obvious (Debbie’s hint was a dancing couple and Roderick’s was a broadsword – no-brainer!)

The others took a little figuring out, but the stories behind each of the photos got the team-bonding going steady. The beer helped too.
Can you guess who’s who? Quite a few of us couldn’t make it that afternoon, so that’ll make things a little harder if you’re expecting a few familiar faces 😉

Part 2: Lucky Dip

Just when we thought things were getting intimate (I mean, three of the photos were bath-time treasures after all) Tina took it to the next level.
1 bowl, full of more folded strips of paper than you could count. Everyone grabs a handful of strips and has a few minutes to read through the questions he or she has picked up. Some were super personal, others has us laughing out loud.
We heard about fears and phobias (note to self: never plan a Switch event at a theme park). The guys shared fond memories of cartoon crushes (remember Fujiko?) We heard about mean taunts from teen years, life in other countries, someone’s history as a child model, first kisses and the superpower that Keith would go for if he had the choice.

There were sweet moments, sad moments and literal LOLs, all within the last hour of the week.
Nice one, Tina – that was definitely a team-bonding session.

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Ever since we saw Google employees getting to their canteen by jumping into a big red tube or getting to the floor below by sliding down a fireman’s pole we’ve thought that office 2.0 is the bee’s knees. I challenge any of you to see the early office scene in the Matrix and not be depressed by the never ending grey cubicles and stark, white lighting. Ok, so I’ve tackled two extremes, but still, many offices still look and feel like that dreaded pre-Matrix cubicle Neo’s struggling to escape from.

But are dress-up days and office holidays conducive towards a more productive office with better, more valuable outcome?

Office space personalisation is also spread across a vast spectrum. At the one end you have an office with barely more than a framed photo of one’s spouse. At the other you have completely unique and different workspaces designed by the individual employees to make them feel more at home. You do, after all, spend more time in your office than you do in your home (awake). If the office architecture and policy allows it, employees should be able to indulge in this personalisation. It even helps to improve client relationships when you meet at your desk, by bonding over items that both parties are interested in – ‘I love your mini cactus garden…didn’t know you had green fingers!’
When Steve Jobs designed Pixar HQ, there was only one place you could go use the bathroom – the central atrium. This meant that people from all departments, departments like accounts and design who would never normally mingle, met and interacted with each other on a regular basis. We bridge this gap in other ways, since our office is a far cry in size from the acres that Pixar is spread across. On foodie days, everyone cooks up a specific type of dish for our pot-luck lunch. We stop work early on a Friday for an office brainstorm – all to try and push cross-department interaction as much as possible.

Being a creative agency does mean that we can afford to think and act outside the box, but every company can help improve their employees’ office experience. I once read a quote along the lines of ‘What happens if I train my staff and they leave? Well, what happens if you train your staff and they don’t leave?’ Borrowing a bit from this, making your staff happier and helping get their creative juices flowing by improving their surroundings is also imperative for greater staff retention.
I can’t say whether the way we work improves our outcome or not, all I know is that it feels great to work here. As to the results of our work, why not see for yourself?

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1. Friends and family think you ‘do Facebook’

2. You only watch the Super Bowl for the adverts

3. You expect there to be an infographic for everything – and get annoyed if you don’t find one

4. Friends and family turn to you when they need a social media savvy person to stalk someone

5. You show off your Tweet Deck, E-mail Scheduler, HootSuite account, and Google Analytics overview to your non Digital Marketing friends – just to look cool

6. You get unnaturally excited about lists like this

7. Your personal e-mails start to look like content marketing – the catchy subject line, bullet points, use of hyperlinks, a clear call to action…

8. You turn off your Ad blocker just so that you can study other adverts

9. You can’t just dismiss a bad website, it physically hurts you and you’ve got to give the person you’re with a complete breakdown on why it’s so horrible

10. Everything becomes an opportunity for a blog post

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