Anomaly Reviews

- Pronounced lack of diversity in terms of both socio-economic and ethnicity backgrounds; vast majority of staff in the account management and strategy departments are privately-educated, many from elite "public" boarding schools - The result is a cold, polished, culturally-homogenous group of low emotional intelligence - Astonishing lack of processes go beyond glib descriptions of "organised chaos" - Production department largely made-up of itinerant freelancers which ,coupled with a lack of process and structure, means that the department lurches from one "crisis" to another - Lack of process extends throughout the business: from finance through to an under-qualified and un-empowered HR department - An air of nervous energy permeates throughout the office; this is largely precipitated by a CEO who, rather sadly, visibly shakes with a wild-eyed anxiety - Upon receipt of a staff happiness survey that indicated that a large majority of staff were unhappy, the CEO chastised the entire agency during a "Monday morning meeting". - Rather than employing a degree of empathy and looking at what could be done to make things better, the CEO's facile response was "this is a tough place to work, and not for everyone" - This was followed by a perfunctory announcement that two senior department leaders had left the business; drawing parallels between their departures and the "this is a tough place to work" mantra - Hierarchical nature of the account management team and profoundly poor line management skills means that opportunities for growth beyond Account Director level are limited - The latter position is regrettably little more than a glorified Account Manager in comparison to the level of responsibility and scope offered at other small to medium size agencies - An insidious, patriarchal relationship exists between the NYC and London offices when it comes to working together on global accounts; the London office prefers to be deferential to NYC in person, but complain helplessly in private - Whilst the founding New York office may live up to the notion that the business is more than a traditional advertising agency, the London off-shoot is as traditional as they come - from the output of the work to staff culture - The strategy team are overworked; under-resourced and as a result, invariably negative, rude and unhelpful

Terrible work-life balance -worse than the 9 other agencies I've been at. If you leave before 6pm, people in the office look at you strangely. Most weeks, creatives will stay two or three nights till 8pm. One or two nights till 10 or later (sometimes till 3am or something). In general, the communication and workflow is all over the place. Guidance by the account folks and CDs aren't very focused, resulting in a lot of time wasting. Also, there isn't too much chemistry amongst the staff. Everyone is so overworked. Work quality doesn't match ambition.