Ex-CEO tried to turn a pumpkin into a carriage, then reality hit him
Pros
Credit where credit is due, some people actually tried to make BEN a good place to work: - We had a great DE&I team that really tried to promote and foster exactly that within our company. Unfortunately, they were let go in the recent major RIF that occurred in May. - HR seemed to try its best to listen to employees, even though a lot of the C-Suite tried its best to ignore them. Many surveys asking employees the right questions on topics that mattered to us most. - Work life balance could be good, but that entirely depended on who, where and what you worked on. A WFH policy that blossomed during the pandemic was very flexible for many teams, although it was left up to your immediate manager's discretion. Since May's major RIF, it is entirely unclear whether that policy will stand or change. - A lot of the employees were gems to work with, genuinely cared about one another
Cons
After multiple rounds of devastating layoffs in the span of less than 9 months, including a massive reduction in force that cut over 50% of our headcount on 5/24/24, the company is currently hanging on by a thread. A costly gamble led by the former CEO to turn our entertainment marketing agency into an AI SaaS tech company proved not only massively unrealistic, but outrageously expensive. Why such an idea wasn’t explored through the formation of a second company as opposed to exposing our entire workforce, reputation and finances to a monumental amount of risk is entirely unclear. The now ex-CEO decided to use the company as his personal venture capital vessel to turn a well-established entertainment marketing agency into a tech startup with nothing but buzzwords to offer, and over half of our workforce globally paid for that with the loss of their jobs. Somehow, he convinced the right few people to let him bet the house, even if most employees were highly skeptical of such a strange, wild gambit. As one may guess, I cannot recommend the company as a place to work in its current form. As someone who was with the company for over 10 years, I am not confident it will survive 1 more after this. It is currently operating on a skeleton crew after ushering in the worst layoffs in the company’s history, pivoting right back to what we started - an entertainment marketing agency specializing in product placement in TV/film and influencer marketing. Even if those who remain manage to right the ship, I would be concerned that the company’s sole owner is too apathetic and disconnected from the company to care what happens long term, as long as he gets some ROI. We seem to be numbers to him. At the employee level, many people were asked to wear many hats but rarely compensated for it. I had to fight for market rate compensation after finding out I could be making a significantly better salary anywhere else doing the same work. On the influencer side of the biz, long hours and a culture of ‘toxic positivity’ led to the marginalization of many workers’ negative work environment experiences and a willful disregard for poor working conditions as many were forced to suffer in silence. On the Product Placement side, the org was chronically underfunded and ignored under the previous CEO's tenure. Most of the employees were doing honest work in keeping clients and getting brands on board to do what we did best, backed by decades of experience in the space. Both orgs made the company money, which was subsequently thrown into the fire to keep Ricky's make-believe AI machine running at full tilt. Influencer Org had clients worth tens millions, and worked with famous creators. Product placement had a stable of big name, multinational brands that they've been servicing for decades. Our other businesses – Music and Talent Rights management, for instance – were sort of left to flounder, despite turning a profit, albeit with smaller revenue streams, but in the past few years, those numbers were definitely in the millions. Nothing fancy like selling a buzzword, but it was good, honest reliable and steady revenue with staying power. Yet reasonable, stable growth was jettisoned or harshly underinvested in for several years under the ex-CEO's tenure. In fact, the much of the Music team was ejected last year for no clear reason. One of departments most harshly dealt with was Marketing. In the span of less than 3 years, entire teams of experienced marketers were scrapped, rehired, fired or restructured. By this year, it was unclear who was running our Marketing team, although that didn't matter much since they were likely to be gone at any given moment. This knee-jerk, see-saw management from the C-Suite left the company struggling with its own identity, which, of course, also faced numerous iterations under Ricky's tenure. For several years, the company was called Branded Entertainment Network (BEN for short), then renamed to BENgroup, then changed again to BENlabs (so it sounded more 'techy'). This too was done in a relatively short amount of time. How any marketer could keep up, I do not know. But what I can say is that the department was relatively stable for a longtime prior to the ex-CEO's reign, with proven data supporting its successes and momentum. All in all, the whole company suffered for management's AI-fueled tunnel vision. It is wild to think that BEN's 40 years of dominance in the entertainment marketing space was left in tatters in such a relatively short time. The company was a big player in the fields it excelled in and had experience in, but now as a shell of its former self, competitors are rife to swing in and overtake the company.
