Working at Clearbox has many perks – an unlimited holiday policy, private health insurance and a team event pot, to name a few. However, I think my all-time favourite perk has to be the opportunity to work with our sister agency, Laika.
I thank my lucky stars on the regular that I work for a company that encourages travel and facilitates opportunities to work in different places, with different people, experiencing different cultures. One way in which Clearbox promotes this is by offering an exchange programme with Laika, where employees will have the chance to work from their office and vice versa throughout the year.
I had the pleasure of making the trip over to Berlin earlier this year, so let’s recap…
Day 1: Hallo, Laika!
Once we arrived at the Laika office (and made it up the many, MANY stairs), we were welcomed with what can only be described as a drool-worthy display of food… from pastries to pastas, breads to fruits... Laika, we’ll give it to you; nobody can put on a spread quite like you!
After we ate our bodyweight in delicious German food, we had a look around the Laika digs, met the bosses of the office – Taco and Zelda (the Laika pups) – and settled down at our new desks for the week. It’s funny how a change of scenery makes your workday feel totally different. Honestly, it’s super refreshing and I think it’s something more companies should embrace!
Michaela, the founder and CEO of Laika, very kindly welcomed us to the office with a presentation about Laika, the team, their clients and everything in between. Even though we’ve worked alongside Laika for a number of years, it was great to have the chance to chat in person with the team (sorry Zoom, you just don’t cut it).
After a busy day of working and learning more about Laika, we then headed out with the team for more food (yes, more). We spent the evening eating, drinking beer, chatting and belly-laughing… mainly at our poor attempts at German pronunciation – have a look here if you want to see just how poor we’re talking. In our defence, this was prior to our trip and we’re much better now…
Day 2: Pitching Leadership
Following a great evening with the team, we headed into the office bright and early the next day to get stuck into some work before an exciting workshop with the one and only, Danni-Lu Carr.
Having worked with both Laika and Clearbox, Danni-Lu took a trip to Berlin while we were all in the one place, to host a collaborative workshop on pitching and leadership.
During the session, each of the four Clearbox team members split off into groups with our Laika colleagues to develop ideas and a ‘pitch’ for a client, which we then pitched to the wider team for feedback and guidance.
As we all split off, the room buzzed with creativity, the murmur of different perspectives, ideas and healthy discussion. I personally found the workshop to be extremely insightful, thought-provoking and challenging (but in the best way). I feel it’s provided me with invaluable experience in understanding the PR world in Germany and pushed me to think outside the box and gain further understanding on the importance of leveraging everyone’s strengths to achieve our goal.
It was great not only to present our ideas and work with a brilliant group of people (shoutout to Andrea, Arne, Michael and Laura), but also to listen to the other groups and hear more about the ideas they came up with.
Day 3: Laika vs. Clearbox
On our final day in the Laika office, I had the pleasure of sitting in on the social media team meeting, which allowed me to gain a better understanding of Laika’s position on social media and what they want to achieve through each channel. Following this, I hosted a meeting with the Laika social team to discuss all things social media strategy, content creation and processes.
Following our meeting, where we discussed top tips for content creation (and how you have to twist people’s arms to get involved sometimes… if you know, you know), we then put this into practice! We spent some time roping team members from both Clearbox and Laika into taking part in video content, which generated some brilliant content that can be used across both Laika and Clearbox’s social channels.
After a busy day in the office, the Laika team then surprised us with some post-work axe throwing. I would like to preface to anyone out there that thinks it’s easy… it’s not. It looks so simple, but between the weight of the axe, finding the correct stance and technique, it’s actually very difficult to master. After some healthy(ish) competition, I think it’s safe to say the Laika team took the glory on the axe throwing, but don’t worry guys, we’ve been practicing for our next trip!
The purpose of the exchange programme is to strengthen relationships between Laika and Clearbox, and allow us to share knowledge, expertise and advise. One thing’s for sure; just as the exchange enables us to build on professional relationships, it also helps us to build on personal relationships with one another too – getting to meet the wonderful people of Laika was by far the highlight of my trip.
And with that…
Prost, Laika! Bis bald.
