AdNew's ListenIn series looks at industry issues emerging via social media.
Although your colleagues' Slack status is showing up green signalling they're active and working hard, this thread on Reddit has revealed that marketers honestly work three to four hours most days and perhaps nine on occasional busy days.
When asked how hard do you work honestly in your day to day marketing job? It's clear no one can be laser focused for a straight eight hours and instead five to six hours seems to be the sweet spot.
In response one comment said: "It peaks and troughs. This week I did, pretty much nothing at all - about two hours of actual work all week. However, I beasted my way through the last week before Christmas - got about a month's worth of work done."
Another said: "I work 3 hours a day on average. Can't stand the "grind" culture that's especially present in the marketing world."
Another: "One to five hours per day. I have ADHD, so there’s some days where nothing happens and other days where I’m a superhuman machine and get days' worth of work done in a short period of time. It evens out, never had a client or boss complain about my productivity."
At the extreme end: "There were days I didn’t even pee. Nights where I had to delegate making dinner. There were also days where I could devote time to experimentation. I existed at the intersection between tech and marketing, which I enjoyed. But it’s a sprawling set of responsibilities including writing, SEO, search and graphic design at the very very minimum."
But perhaps the most important hours are worked after clocking off.
"I would say the hard work is done when I’m off (continual education, skill development, processing)," as one Redditer said.
Workplace culture expert and founder at Learna, Lisa Lie argues that bosses should prefer to have workers who are effective (doing better stuff) not just efficient (doing more stuff with less).
Lie said: “A lot of productivity experts push the idea that we get our best work done with about four or five hours of focus a day, best achieved in 10 – 50 min blocks of time.
"But this idea of ‘productivity’ has been heavily linked to efficiency by businesses – ‘how many transactional tasks can a person do in a period of time?’.
"Effectiveness starts with setting aside time in your day to face your current challenges, thinking about where you need to get to, and then finding new and innovative solutions – not just trying to be more efficient by focusing on the short-term and doing things the way they’ve always been done.”
Therfore how hard marketers really work depends on the workplace culture.
Particularly as burn out is a hot topic for management.
One comment said: "Your level of burnout certainly plays a role. I work at a small, very disorganized agency where I often wear many hats. On days where I have to be more creative, I find myself scatterbrained, overstimulated and much less productive.
"On days where I’m doing more mundane work, I am laser focused, unbothered and highly productive—often taking on extra work and still managing to complete it. It’s interesting to me because it use to be the exact opposite."
Another said: "As a rule of thumb I try not to put more than 60-80% effort overall into a job to avoid burnout. I’m pretty efficient on most tasks and have been told to 'bill more time' in the past by previous employers (agencies) so this has only reinforced this habit of mine."
Colin Jowell, principal at Good Behaviour practice which analyses behavioural science within the marketing industry, said: "It’s depressingly clear from the discussion that we are still talking about the value of our work as a function of time. Activity over productivity.
"Trackers on employees’ computers indicate a lack of trust to deliver the outputs required, and both in the employee to deliver them and the leader to recognise them.
"'Slacking off' is hardly the problem: as James Clear, author of Atomic Habits says, 'the biggest risk to productivity is always the same: working on the wrong thing'.
"We know that when we are in 'flow' state- when the right level of challenge is met with appropriate skill, the notion of time and 'grind' disappear. Maybe if we started to think about how to better create the circumstances for flow we’d move the conversation on from the wholly uncreative measurement of time."
Overall most comments agreed that in-house marketers definitely work less than in-agency.
One comment said: "Definitely depends on what role I have and who I'm working for. Agency life as account manager with 20+ clients is a solid 8-10 hour day. Freelance web consultant is about 5 a day. Marketing manager in-house is also about 5 hours. Plus research and education in the evenings."
Another said: "When I worked at an agency it was 10-12 hours of intense work/calls everyday. Now that I'm in-house and working from home I get about 5 hours of deep work each day, broken into 2 sessions. But my brain really never shuts off, so I'm thinking of campaign ideas even when I'm walking my dog and stuff."
Another said: "8 hours a week maybe. I really only do anything when im uploading new ads and poking around to find opportunities to optimize my ads. I work in-house now but when I worked at an agency I busted my ass for 40 hours a week."
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