This is the first piece in our three-part series on agencies that participated in the largest trial of the four-day workweek to date.

Eat your heart out, Henry Ford.

Last month, results from the world’s largest trial of the four-day workweek—conducted in the UK between June 2022 and December 2022—indicated that the five-day, 40-hour workweek may be as culturally relevant as the working conditions in which it originated.

Of the 61 companies that participated in the six-month trial, 56 intended to carry on with the shortened workweek immediately afterward.

Zoom in: Marketing and advertising was the most-represented industry in the trial, despite questions about whether ad agencies could adapt to such a schedule. We sat down with three participating agency execs to hear how things went and what kind of results they saw, starting with Jo Burns-Russell, CEO of creative agency Amplitude.

Getting involved: Burns-Russell told us she saw it as an opportunity to “be part of a team of people that were leading change, not just waiting for it to happen,” with potential benefits both from an employee welfare perspective and an environmental one (e.g., not heating the office or using computers).

• Still, there were some concerns over getting involved. “Because we’re a creative agency…the output of our work is the caliber by which we’re judged. Our portfolio is how we get clients.”
• Rather than view a 32-hour workweek as having less time to get work done and creating a potentially panicked environment, Burns-Russell said her team took it as an opportunity to streamline their processes to become more efficient in that time.
• According to Burns-Russell, that involved using project trackers and Gantt charts, as well as managing file structures, to ensure everything was ironed out internally.

“It wasn’t about saying, ‘You’ve only got half the time to do a piece of graphic design,’” she said. “It was about saying, ‘How can we brief that graphic design better? How can we manage feedback better with the clients?’”

Continue reading here.—KH

“Quitting” videos are currently en vogue on TikTok. Soon, TikTok itself could be the one packing up and saying goodbye.

Last week, the Biden administration demanded that TikTok’s Chinese parent company sell its stake in the app or face a potential ban over national security concerns. What exactly a ban might look like in the US isn’t exactly clear. What is clear is that a lot of marketers and influencers would feel the impact.

• According to The Information, some brands have reacted to talk of a potential ban by “refraining from boosting spending” on the app. “While marketers are mostly taking a wait-and-see attitude about spending on TikTok, ad executives say, they are telling ad agencies they want to have a strategy ready in case a ban occurs.”
• Meanwhile, some creators are thinking about what a world without TikTok might look like. Shay Regis, an influencer who does the majority of her brand deals on the app, “sat down with her husband over the past week to discuss their finances in various scenarios without TikTok,” per the Wall Street Journal.
• For its part, TikTok has been meeting with leaders in the ad industry as of late to “essentially convince them the platform is not going to be banned,” an agency exec told Ad Age.

Big picture: TikTok has quickly become a key platform for marketers; earlier this year, Mekanism’s chief innovation officer told Digiday that it “makes up about 25% of the social ad budgets.” Insider Intelligence estimated that the app would bring in nearly $10 billion in ad revenue last year, more than double the year prior. And that’s not to mention organic marketing on TikTok, where small businesses in particular have found success.

Still, some agencies and brands have expressed concerns over the use of TikTok’s pixel, which advertisers can install on their sites to track some of their users’ online behavior.

Coming up: On Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before Congress, where he plans to share that the app has 150 million active users in the US, per NBC News.—MS

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Make it official: Here’s a rundown of Meta’s new verification program.

Go big or go home: Find out what types of trends are expected to be popular in B2B digital advertising this year.

Hi, AI: Prompts that can help you get started with Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing.

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Have you heard? The Brief is coming back to NYC! If you haven’t already decided to purchase your tickets, we have a speaker to spotlight who cannot be missed.

Hear from beauty industry legend and founder of Jones Road Beauty (::drumroll::) Bobbi Brown. Jones Road Beauty is dedicated to creating clean products for every skin type and tone. Join us to hear Bobbi discuss “Redefining the Beauty Industry—AGAIN.”

Get ready to network and hear from top marketing leaders as they share their frameworks and learnings on May 11.

Find tickets here.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Why Roku brought its cityscape screensaver to life at SXSW
• Brands are ditching their usual influencer marketing strategies for NIL deals
• Ad fraud has come to audio, according to report