AKQA Reviews in London, UK Area

Pros

Clients brands, professional set up, lots to keep you busy

Cons

too process focused, very long hours, bad snacks

Pros

In short you get to work on fantastic accounts, benifits are good, fry up on a friday is cool once a month

Cons

management just push and push till you fold you work silly hours and get no thanks , coming here is like going back 10 years they think a 50 hr week should be normal and celebrate peopel who do 100hr weeks ratehr than go hay we have somethign wrong here.

Advice to Senior Management

get a grip - hrs spent does not equal good quality work produced , get people to work smarter not longer.

Pros

Good balance between being a large company and an independent agency - you get the best of both worlds.
For technical people hours are not so long (but creatives are not so lucky)
The IT dept. is very responsive and leaves staff freedom to admin their machines
They win big accounts with the brief of coming up with good ideas, so the projects can be fun.
More process oriented than any other creative agency I have worked for (for a tekkie, that is a pro :-)
Staff tend to be young and fun hipsters (in production at least)
A couple of years there look very good on your CV

Cons

Being creatively led can be frustrating for tekkies - you have to bend backwards to implement their sometimes daft ideas.
Technology stack is set in stone and a bit mainstream: Java, .NET, jQuery, svn. No other options.
Management often waste a lot of the budget, and by the time it reaches production there is little left (this is true of ALL media agencies, to be fair).
Career opportunities are nil. Most people will leave at the same level at which they enter.
They foster internal competition which doesn't suit everybody (that could be just the tek dept. though, which is run by someone from the finance industry)

Advice to Senior Management

Don't make promises about career advancement during the interview if you don't mean it, just because you are desperate to fill in the position.

Pros

There are opportunities, if you're lucky you'll be awarded access to them.
There are extremely talented people at your disposal. Most of them very busy but they're all a great bunch.
AKQA has a very good portfolio, definitely one to have on your resume.

Cons

Easy to hit the ceiling in terms of carreer progression as it doesn't go very far in the Technology dept.

Advice to Senior Management

Give people that you say 'shine' more opportunities to 'shine'. It's difficult to outperform your competition if you're consistently handed something that needs fixing, rather than being allowed to play with the toys.

Pros

Best clients, driven people.
Smartest people I've worked with.
Great creative product.
Some of the brightest techhies I've worked with.
Pretty autonomous on the whole

Cons

Can be tough for those who aren't prepared to buy into the work ethic.
Focus on product is everything - there's not much of a soft-side to the business

Advice to Senior Management

Hold on to what matters: great creative product.

Pros

- Work on great high profile creative projects
- Good clients
- Name on CV is worth it's weight in gold

Cons

- Long hours
- Lack of benefits for effort put in
- Poor pay compared to other agencies
- Limited time off
- Lack of praise for hard work

Advice to Senior Management

Nice style, no substance.

Pros

Client roster is second to none. Technical Architects are among the best in the industry. Everyone has heard of AKQA - very good to have on your CV.

Cons

Unless you work on the fashionable clients such as Nike and McLaren it is difficult to get recognition. Hours are long and in my opinion the salary doesn't reflect the lack of work/life balance.

Advice to Senior Management

In the tech department there is a definite feeling of the existence of a clique of favourites that get all the cushdy jobs. People outside of this group are doomed to work long, un-recognised days in lesser teams. Suffice to say this is very bad for morale.

Pros

* Not many agencies can match a client roster like this - Ferrari, Nike, Warner Brothers, Visa, XBOX, Fiat, Heineken, Diageo, Unilever, etc... If you're a career focused agency type who wants to play with the big boys, this is the place to be.

* Some of the most comprehensive best practices in the industry - AKQA train their staff well and you'll learn more than you ever thought.

* Great social life if you're into drinking and/or socialising with your workmates and your team.

* Good opportunities to transfer internationally - London, Amsterdam, Berlin, New York, etc... - AKQA do make efforts to give you a world-class experience (literally) if you want it.

Cons

* The days when AKQA was focused on innovative design and quality service are gone. Now, it's all about one thing - serving their shareholders. AKQA haven't dished out pay reviews or bonuses in a long time but the perks to the senior execs are very, very visible.

* Poor work/life balance and it's getting worse. High profile clients come at a price and that price is you, especially if you work on these accounts. The more high profile the account you work on, the more pressure there is for you to deliver. If you end up on one of the more bread and butter accounts, you'll be ignored or often treated as a second class citizen.

* Shoddy and often chaotic project and account management. I do feel sorry for the account services teams as they are in the front lines of serving multiple masters, but as overwhelmed as they are - they won't rock the boat and that effect is felt all throughout their teams.

* Lots of attitude and ego and not much substance on the creative side, especially the higher up the food chain you go. If you're coming to AKQA to build really innovative products or to work with people who are genuinely passionate about design, you're in the wrong place. You have been warned.

* Very young teams overall. Great if you're in your early to mid-20's but otherwise, you'll feel out of place unless you're in the management team.

* Technical teams are hit and miss. A growing reliance on freelancers and outsourcing means lots of variable quality. Good people are snapped up and not allowed to leave their teams, leaving the rest just come and go.

Advice to Senior Management

Remember what got the agency where it is now. It wasn't about greed. It was about vision and the right people on the right projects at the right time.

Focus on your staff first and the awards and clients will come faster than you might think.

Pros

Some of the most brilliant people I've worked with
Inspirational chairperson
Amazing client roster - who wouldn't want to work on the Nike and Ferrari's of this world!

Cons

Losing it's mojo, surrendering to a board that just cares about cash and not a damn for it's people. This may have been due to a tough economic year, but even as things are now improving significantly, the message remains consistent - £££. AKQA used to be all about the product and it's people, now it feels as though it's only about performance. I hope it's a blip as the potential within AKQA is tremendous.

Advice to Senior Management

Start balancing people, product and performance as the tipping point is fast approaching. Fail to do this and it will soon be the end of AKQA as some of us knew it. I am not alone in feeling this and many are waiting, watching and hoping for things to improve as we know they can.

Pros

- You get to work with some fantastic brands on interesting projects.
- You get to work with some fantastic and clever people - in all departments.
- If you have a problem on a project and discuss your issues with the right people, the company will help you work them out.
- The parties are amazing.

Cons

- The company is so obsessed with winning high profile clients and awards, that people seem to get sidelined - expect late nights and a low amount of pay when compared to the amount of effort put in.
- If you aren't working on a high profile client, getting resource or recognition can be very difficult.
- If you are working on a high profile client, having a life outside of work can be very difficult.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus more on obtaining and retaining good people. A lot of talent has left the building, and a lot more will leave if they keep being overworked, asked to follow more and more procedures and under-rewarded.