Ad Agency, North, thinks Radious is the Office of the Future

And just like that, their 9,000 square foot lease was gone. Actually, it took a little bit of negotiating with their landlord, but in the end, they found freedom.

In mid 2020 when Rebecca Armstrong, CEO of Portland-based ad agency, North, realized her team would be working remotely for the long term, she began to question the need for a permanent office. She looked at the economics and determined that post-pandemic, it wouldn’t make sense to pay for office space seven days per week when her team only needed to be together, in person, once in a while.

Radious’ CEO, Amina Moreau, caught up with her to learn how she’s thinking about collaboration, culture, and creativity as the future of work evolves.

North has been using Radious, an online platform for booking on-demand workspaces in residential neighborhoods, for a few months now. Rebecca took some time to share her experience, her perspective on team dynamics, and how she’s navigating hybrid work. The conversation below has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Why, ultimately, did you give up your space?

In 2020, we were still in a 9,000 square foot office that we'd had since 2006. And we were already thinking, “this is a silly amount of space for the people we have and for the kind of work we do.” We were already looking at different ways of working, and the pandemic sort of kicked us into gear.

There were some days, pre-pandemic, when the office was humming, everybody was there, we had client meetings, and a lot was going on. But there were also other days when it was largely empty, and you were like, man, the cost of heating all of this is really… the expense of fueling a large space doesn’t seem necessary. On those days it felt empty and lonely.

I hear the arguments people make about how everybody needs to come back into the office because it's collaborative and that people will be having ideas constantly because they're together… but those conditions were available to them before the pandemic and that wasn't happening. Now, technology has allowed us to work from everywhere and have meaningful collaborations anywhere.

…which doesn't mean to say that it's not a good idea every now and then to get together, which might bring you to your next question.

You read my mind. Why do you make a point to get together regularly with your team in person?

We found that the biggest disadvantage to remote work—and this wasn't only our experience, we actually researched it pretty in-depth on a national basis—is a sense of isolation and loss of community. You don't need togetherness all the time, and you can get it, to a degree, from your various other community outlets. But there is tremendous value, once in a while, in meeting up and collaborating in person.

Even breaking bread together is a really important part of building culture and community. So that's why I was really interested in the Radious model, which allows us to do that whenever we want to.

Right now we are in a cadence of once every other week and we're testing out how that goes. I could see getting to once a week. It’s a nice way of seeing each other and certainly a lot cheaper than renting an office.

The North team enjoying a social workday in this Radious space.

So I can't imagine that you are looking at any long-term office spaces now, or are you?

We're considering options. We were looking at a space right around the time when we were giving up the old space — it was 2,500 square feet in East Side Portland. But we're not committed to that idea, and quite honestly, if the Radious service proves, longer term, to be as useful for us as it has been so far, then I'm definitely rethinking that option.

And what would it take for the Radious service to prove itself so valuable that you don’t sign a traditional lease?

I think it’d be the reassurance that we can get consistent access to the type of space that we need. Right now we have a Radious workspace that we know we really like but we realize that it may not always be available to us. I don't know if there's a way to book it out for a year or something?

Actually, yes. While we specialize in by-the-day bookings for maximum flexibility, we can make longer terms work.

Great. I think that's a great idea.

And what has the experience been using Radious so far, especially the fact that we specialize in residential workspaces?

It seemed very “North” for us to meet in a work-outfitted house because there’s something kind of family-like about North. In our old office space, we had a massive kitchen right in the center, and an awful lot of North was about food. So communing around the table has actually kind of always been important to us.

So that's another reason to try Radious because as we’re browsing through your properties online, we’re looking at who's got a really great kitchen. And then our number one cook, Peter Calandra, will go in and start cooking up a storm first thing in the morning.

So when we get to the space, there's the smell of banana bread and the promise of a really excellent lunch. And so we meet as a team to talk about the state of the agency, and then we split into smaller work groups. The latest property we booked had a number of breakout rooms so we could easily split up for various purposes.

It was just nice to have human chatter around the place for the day.

Do you imagine North using Radious spaces for pitching creative and hosting client meetings, or will you do that virtually?

I think it's a combination of both. We have a creative presentation tomorrow and it's probably going to be virtual at this point because of the weather. Nobody wants to drive over the pass because a lot of snow could drop tonight. But there's always going to be times when it's such a critical presentation that we want to be able to see each other in real life, see the whites of people's eyes — with good A/V, which Radious has.

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To learn more about North, please visit www.northagency.com.

To browse Radious listings and book one in your neighborhood, visit here.