Pros
4 day work week and lots of other perks (fitness and culture allowance paid for by company, annual away day to somewhere fun in Europe, fully remote working style, monthly team bonding days at a gallery etc) Flat structure where your ideas are listened to if you propose a new initiative it can be rolled out. You can get out of it what you make of the agency if you take the initiative and push
Cons
The agency's internal practices around employees categorically do not live up to their 'Be Less S***' ethos. In a year, five members of staff just disappeared without a notice period or a leaving do & little to no information shared as to why they were let go (making you fearful that you could be next). When reasons were shared, the truth was often heavily massaged as I reached out to the employee they let go of to confirm what leadership told us was the reason. The agency takes a very public stand against the toxicity of the advertising agency at large but, in fact, they adopt this wholesale just with a new age-y, life coach style toxic positivity. It's like being hugged and punched in the face simultaneously. Senior members of staff often worked a 5 or 6 day week despite the agency making a big deal about their 4 day working week on Linkedin. The agency plays fast and loose with the word 'strategy' in the worst way possible. I have watched a more senior strategist than myself write a slide of audience insights and when I asked them what sources they engaged with to create it they said they didn't - they just pulled these insights from their head and knew them to be true without needing to verify with any data or reference points. This isn't how you do strategy. The SLT definitely have favourites who are useful 'buffers' who buy into the company's ideology and share agency propaganda to others. Often these favoured workmates had multiple problematic run ins with other members of staff who would (rightly) flag the issues they had when working with these agency favourites but whose valid complaints were ignored. Meanwhile, non-favourites who didn't fit within the narrow categorisation of being a 'Morning type' were let go for nonexistent or spurious claims of underperformance at tasks that were not on their job specs or incredibly vague claims that they were 'no proactive enough' when people barely had enough time to do the tasks issued to them let along proactive work on top. This was a really really upsetting place to work for despite the nice perks that are heaped on you (arguably as a cynical staff retention policy as you put up with so much other rubbish there). I would never recommend this agency to anyone.