Good Company / Low pay - Account Manager EP+Co. Employee Review

A lot of experienced people to learn from Great opportunities to do impactful work from big clients

Harder to work your way up the ladder and receive raises Sometimes get thrown in the deep end without the resources you need to succeed

Some of the nicest people I've ever worked with. Their office is pretty nice and their production studio is legitimately really cool.

Work: Unless you’re on John Deere, Frigidaire, or Farm Rich, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to make work that feels truly book-worthy. I worked at EP+Co for almost four years, and despite consistently raising my hand for projects beyond monthly social batches, I rarely got the chance to contribute to more ambitious work. EP has a wide range of accounts, but many of the clients seem deeply risk-averse. That often leaves creatives producing work that feels safe, forgettable, and uninspired. I also never got the sense that EP itself was truly interested in taking risks. Leadership often talks about wanting bigger, more attention-grabbing work, but the “risks” they champion rarely feel risky by today’s standards. Leadership: With the exception of a few people, I did not find EP’s executive leadership to be especially trustworthy, either creatively or professionally. They love to bust each other's chops, but a lot of the time the jokes feel very personal. Almost like they aren't really joking. It's always awkward to be a fly on the wall in these instances. Leadership frequently says they care about their people, but their actions often suggest otherwise. One moment that stood out was during a department meeting after layoffs, a member of ELT implied that earlier rounds of layoffs were easier because the more people they cut, the harder it was becoming to lay off the “real talented people." So I guess if you're not one of the "real talented ones" in their eyes, sorry, it was kind of an easy decision. There also doesn’t seem to be a clear vision for what EP wants to be. The agency frequently makes big declarations like, “This is going to be our year,” or “We want to make bigger work that earns attention and awards.” Which is great and exciting at first. I even ate it up my first year or two there. But every time they'd do this, months would pass, and the ambition would never seem to materialize in a meaningful way. Leadership has also leaned heavily into AI, pushing us to use it more and more to generate ideas, copy, art direction, design, and even full social videos. I can’t say whether that has any connection to layoffs, but the quality of the work itself has suffered for it when it’s clearly being overused and shoved down our throats (i.e. Country Cow). Culture: EP often feels like an agency of false promises. I didn’t receive a raise or promotion until after my third year, despite winning internal awards, receiving strong peer reviews, and consistently bringing forward ideas that my teams, ELT, and clients liked. Each year, there was a different reason why it couldn’t happen. First, it was that the agency wasn’t in a financial position to give raises. Then, in year three, I was told I was capped in my role and couldn’t receive a raise unless I was promoted, which also wasn’t possible yet. That had never been brought up in previous reviews, so it felt really fishy that it was a problem all of a sudden. In my second year, I was passed over for a mid-level role on my team, I felt I had earned based on my work, feedback, and contributions. From my perspective, the main reason was that I didn’t live in Greenville, despite proving I was capable of doing the work remotely and happy to travel to Greenville whenever they needed me. Instead, the role went to someone much more junior. It doesn't seem like I'm the only one who kept getting the run around with raises or promotions. There is also a clear pattern of certain people getting the “juicy” projects again and again, while others are left without real opportunities to show what they can do. I didn’t get placed on a new business pitch for almost three years, even though I repeatedly asked to be involved when ones came up. Meanwhile, people hired after me, including people more junior than me, were given those opportunities before I ever got one. Morale: Between the Omnicom merger, layoffs, constant restructuring, vague leadership, lack of transparency, and unexciting work, morale has been very low for a while. Many people I’ve spoken with over the years have felt overlooked for raises, promotions, and opportunities, despite trying to do the best work they can. There is also a fear of layoffs because EP does not seem to be winning enough new business to support itself. The agency typically goes through 2-3 layoffs a year. Leadership likes to point to strong client retention, but retention means very little if their scopes are shrinking and layoffs continue to hang over everyone. They specifically hired someone on ELT to help bring us more clients, but it's seemingly been a bust from the outside looking in.