It goes without saying that the people (and doggies for that matter) at location:live are the heart and soul of the business. I know it sounds cliché but it really is like a little family and we all have individual strengths that we bring to the business.
I was brought on board as location:live was nearly ready to launch lo:live and I wanted to shout about it to the agency world! I love meeting new people, I am a real people person, love understanding what other agencies do, what amazing creativity agencies have, and that there is such a variety. It’s great to be a part of that by finding amazing locations for them, whether it’s obscure unicorn locations or helping plan roadshows, it is nice to work with all the different agencies and do another arm of the experiential activity.
Then lockdown hit, and all of a sudden it went from zero to one hundred at home, working from home, schooling at home, and on top of this the experiential world started pivoting to online or planning briefs got put on hold.
The only way for me to manage it was through structure – or so I initially thought. Putting the kids in front of Joe Wicks at 9 am whilst I plan the day ahead, an episode of alpha blocks during the morning team meeting, quick English lesson whilst doing some emails followed by the ‘mummy how do I spell’! and ‘I’m hungry’! It was impossible to focus on work, it was making me stressed, so we changed tactics! My kids are only three and five, the weather was amazing, I filled up the paddling pool (always accompanied by an adult), ordered a ton of outdoor games from Amazon and let them play and have fun!
That’s when it stabilised for us, it made me a lot calmer and in turn made them a lot calmer even to the point where my five-year-old would come to me and say, ‘Mummy shall we do phonics now’. The schools were also amazing, reassuring us by saying as long as they read to you every night it is fine.
Regarding work we would have a morning meeting every day (which would last two hours as everyone was loving catching up) Friday afternoon quizzes accompanied by a large cocktail of some sort (mine was a G&T), I felt like I was still seeing a lot of people.
In the first lockdown, people were keen to be on zoom and be visible whereas the second time round the novelty had worn off a bit and most cameras would be set to ‘off’ (except Neils).