Sleepless nights, cold sweats, mental health, transparency and giving back – why running your own agency is all worthwhile
Awaken's founder and CEO, Chris Parker, reflects on a decade in the Australian marketing industry, and what he hopes to see the industry focus on in the future.
When asked exactly how we’ve made it through 10 years in the national marketing landscape, my honest response is always short and sharp: It ain’t all rainbows and sunshine!
From freelancing at my kitchen table, just days after my twins were born, hustling to get any small project and furiously contacting my LinkedIn clients, to being named on the Australian Financial Review’s Top 100 fastest growing companies list for the past four years, it’s been one hell of a ride for Awaken.
The realities of running a large-scale media agency are tough. There are sleepless nights, and moments where you’re pacing the halls and sweating the details. There are stretches where all you can think about is problems – and it sucks.
The past year has been particularly challenging. We’ve watched clients drastically cut budgets, consumer confidence dip to unprecedented lows, and spending in key categories significantly slow. And while we’ve continued to win new clients and managed to retain staff, it’s felt like a race to just stay on pace. We’ve had to work harder than ever to preserve our momentum and maintain our position in-market, in light of the broader economic conditions.
The Awaken team
My guiding mantra has long been “failure drives innovation” – a commitment to embracing the difficulties and learning from the flops.
It’s a concept I wish the national marketing industry was more open to entertaining – the idea that we don’t always get it right and that open, honest communication is key.
I would love to see more transparency between brands and agencies, particularly a shift away from the transactional ‘service provider’ dynamic.
If you took agency team members and brand managers out of their usual environments – put them in a bar or standing in a school pickup queue – they would talk to each other differently. They would treat each other as humans. But in the context of an agency-client relationship, it often devolves into a transactional service-provider dynamic. We forget that the person on the other end of the phone or email is just trying to do their best, to make an impact, and feel proud of their work.
Ultimately, we all go to work to achieve something meaningful. Whether you’re at an agency or on the brand side, if you turn up each day with the mindset that what you’re doing matters – that you want to go home and tell your family that you made a difference today – it changes the way you work. It brings purpose and pride, and it creates a culture where everyone treats each other with respect, knowing that we’re all striving for the same thing: to do something that has value.
For me, one of the greatest joys as a leader isn’t just bringing talented people into the agency – it’s watching them thrive. Seeing them bring their skills, experience, and unique perspectives into the room and watching the agency grow as a result is what makes this work so rewarding.
Additionally, I’d love to see mental health put on the agenda as a priority in 2025. Mental health has been a significant challenge across agencies, brands and the broader marketing industry, particularly in light of this year’s economic conditions. Our industry faces an enormous amount of pressure – from our clients, from budgets, from trying to find balance – and it’s vital that we support the people around us.
Finding a way to navigate these challenges is essential, and I’d encourage all business owners to find something that helps bring them a sense of peace and balance – and share it with their people. For me, it’s yoga. I’ve channelled my love of yoga into Awaken Yoga – my new YouTube channel, offering free classes that guide people on their own yoga journey. And with nearly 44,000 subscribers in just three weeks, it’s clearly resonating with like-minded people.
As we head into the new year and the 11th year for the Awaken business, I’m cautiously optimistic about what’s to come. Despite 2024 feeling like a sprint to stand still, we’re positioned for a better year ahead. Indicators are pointing towards easing interest rates and a potential return in spending, which are likely to bring growth – but not as we’ve seen it before. Agencies like ours have had to get creative, with different marketing and advertising approaches to reach audiences – and these are really set to shake up the landscape in the years to come.
Embracing change will continue to be one of our guiding lights at Awaken.
After a decade in business, we’ve learnt to lean into challenges, using them as opportunities to push boundaries and create something new. One of my core values for Awaken is to forget the outcome, and focus on the work. Because the best work happens when we take the final result off the table and just immerse ourselves in the creative process. Whether we’re on a shoot, storyboarding or responding to a brief, the focus should be on unlocking creativity and marveling at what we’ve built – it’s in this mind-set that we deliver our best, most impactful work.
Chris Parker is the founder and CEO of Awaken.
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