By Marilla Akkermans

Marketing has always been a fast industry. But speed isn’t a strategy, and burnout should never be a badge of honour. 

Somewhere along the way, we started calling exhaustion “high performance” and describing minimal flexibility as progressive, even as the people doing the work quietly burned out under the pressure of shifting briefs, client expectations and internal cultures that valued output over care.

In 2018, I started my business because I genuinely believed we could do better. I was a media professional with ambition, a baby, and no intention of compromising either. I’d worked under brilliant leaders and some not-so-brilliant ones, in environments that respected life beyond work and others that quietly punished it. I had seen how easily women, especially mothers, are pushed to the edges of the industry the moment their needs don’t fit a traditional mould. 

That’s not just anecdotal. Women make up more than 60 percent of the marketing and advertising workforce in Australia and still shoulder most of the care responsibilities at home. These are not niche challenges. They are systemic.

I didn’t set out to build something radical. I wanted to create something sustainable. A business that didn’t treat culture like a perk or a value on a slide deck, but understood it as the infrastructure that holds everything else up. 

In this industry, where our product is ideas and relationships, our work is only ever as strong as the people delivering it.

We introduced a four-day work week not to create headlines or win awards, but to genuinely protect energy, space and focus. For working parents in particular, it’s been transformative. With clearer boundaries and more recovery time, people show up more focused, more collaborative and more energised. Productivity didn’t suffer. Creativity deepened. When people feel like their lives are supported, they tend to do their best work without needing to be asked twice.

We also made the choice early on to practise open-book management. We share how the business is performing, what we’re aiming for, and what’s getting in our way. In an industry where confidence is everything, this level of transparency can feel uncomfortable. But when people understand how their work connects to the health of the business, they care more deeply about the outcomes. It builds trust in both directions, and that’s worth far more than a curated all-hands presentation once a quarter.

We’ve also introduced policies that reflect the shape of real lives, including grandparents’ leave, because care responsibilities don’t stop when your children grow up. Our team spans five generations, and a culture that truly puts people first has to respond to that diversity, not flatten it. Listening, adapting and being open to feedback are part of how culture evolves. It’s never finished.

People-first leadership is not always easy. It takes effort. It takes regular, honest conversations. It takes letting go of control and leaning into trust. But that work is far less costly than burnout, high turnover or the quiet disengagement that can creep in when people feel like they’re constantly giving more than they’re getting.

Marketing runs on creativity, but creativity doesn’t happen in fear. It needs safety. It needs space to explore and space to be wrong. It needs people to feel respected, not just retained. That kind of environment doesn’t happen by accident. It’s designed through the everyday choices leaders make, especially when deadlines loom and stress is high.

Things are shifting. More people in our industry are asking better questions. More leaders are challenging the way things have always been done. But we’re not there yet. Until we stop treating care and flexibility as progressive extras and start recognising them as the baseline, we will keep losing brilliant people and burning out future leaders before they get the chance to lead.

A people-first culture isn’t soft. It’s structure. And when it works, everything else gets easier.

Marilla Akkermans is the founder and managing director at Equality Media + Marketing. 

Read more: Fixing the ad industry’s approach to culture with Carl Moggridge