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Updated: The four-days-a-week ad agency

An Aussie ad agency has moved to a four day week to prepare for what it expects to be a slow year.

After revenues slowed fell the end of the 2008, the North Coast Ad Agency, based in Lismore, New South Wales, took the decision to close the office on Fridays. Chief executive and owner  David Kavanagh said the decision was taken in consultation with staff, and he intended it to be a permanent change for the agency.  

He told Mumbrella: “This isn’t just about revenues. I’m keen to entrench this. I think it’s a healthy thing.”

The 22-year-old agency’s client base tends to be mostly educational institutes, natural health and government work. Kavanagh said that one of its account managers had been working four days a week for some time, and had proved that it could work.

He said: “Clients will have emergency contact numbers but we are trying to create a culture where our clients treat Thursday as Friday. We can create more dynamism and energy on Thursdays.”

Because of the way that tax ramps up disproportionately with earnings, in many cases people working four days a week only lose about 10% of their take home income. Mumbrella knows of at least one big publisher that considered a similar move, although it dropped it for practical reasons.

The agency’s decision comes as new indicators suggest that Australia’s media and advertising industries can expect a tough year. New numbers yesterday showed that newspaper job ads were down 52% on the same time as last year – bad news for classified revenue but also a worrying economic indicator.

Update: However, new figures from the Australian Centre for Retail Studies suggests that confidence may be returning, with two thirds of those surveyed expecting their situation to stay the same or improve.

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