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  Anthropology in Practice Supportive. Curious. Unafraid. These are some of the words that advertising agencies use to describe their company culture. But do any of these words actually connect them with what culture actually is? This article is part of the Workplace Anthropology series. Perusing the top ten of Ad Age’s 2017 agency list, there is one common theme in how advertising agencies describe their company culture: collaborative. There are plenty of supporting words that carefully surround “collaborative,” such as passion, insightful, supportive, entrepreneurial, borderless, and unafraid, but you would be correct in arguing that these descriptors are more relevant to the people these companies hope (will) work for them, rather than being indicative of a culture itself. Culture statements, which tend to reside on About Us and Career pages online, sit comfortably under the recruitment banner. In our current pursuit of work/life balance, a company’s cultur...