Arc Worldwide Reviews

Pros

Good pay, training and benefits.

Cons

Top heavy with management, not a lot of room for opportunities internally, steep learning curve,

Advice to Senior Management

Only have one manager for employees to report to

Pros

- Great benefits
- Exposure to amazing training (More soft skills based than actual job skills)
- Very talented workforce
- Great location (Chicago office)

Cons

- Expectations for client deliverables are unrealistic
- Lack of actual job training, very hard to get approval for classes
- Challenging work life balance, expect to put in at least 60 + hours a week
- Very little direction regarding goal completion
- Clients aren't always educated regarding team roles and responsibilities
- High staff turnover in certain departments

Advice to Senior Management

Work on getting client expectations under control. Focus on employee development and work life balance.

Pros

Friendly people.

Good location.

Might open doors for other opportunities.

Cons

Crappy environment for creativity to flourish. New cubes are more like shoulders on the side of the road than offices. Shows how little employees are valued. Factory environment.

Work is getting dumber and dumber.

Relentless demands and no push back from account staff. Burn out all over but nobody cares.

Advice to Senior Management

Emperor's New Clothes syndrome. Self impressed upper management. Poorly managed and out of touch with employees, not remotely willing to take a stand for creative ideas or staff. Sometimes have a threatening tone when asking creatives to come up with better work ( always a motivator). Don't seem to understand they need to be clearing a path for good creative and making account staff more accountable and developing a backbone relative to clients. Advertising used to be fun. Now is completely mind numbing.

Pros

Happy hour on Friday in 2005. Don't know how or if that ever changed.

Cons

I was hired with a packaging portfolio and never permitted to work on packaging. Frustrating for all.

Advice to Senior Management

Do a better job in the interview process and hire for the job.

Pros

There are some very compelling reasons to work for Arc. They have great benefits, prestigious clients & they are in a great location. The majority of people who work there are talented, friendly & ambitious.

Cons

In my experience it was impossible to get any "actionable" feedback from my yearly reviews & unless you are in the management "clique" it is extremely hard to get a promotion. Wages were low. We constantly had the carrot of "Above the line work" dangled infront of us & would pitch for it constantly but it would go nowhere. Arc is a good "Below the line" agency & the sooner it realizes it the better. It shares the same building & holiday party with Leo Burnett but that is where the common ground ends. I get the impression that most Leo Burnett employees couldn't care less about collaborating on anything even though the Idea of the building being one big happy family is rammed down your throat.

Advice to Senior Management

Concentrate on what you are good at & own it. Stop trying to be an above the line agency. Try an integrate with Leo Burnett more successfully or not at all. Management needs to actively move people around to keep them fresh. Pay people what they are worth & recognize seniority.

Pros

The people within the Arc world get digital. They're a strong agency with a solid group of people that makes it worth it to work there. An excellent benefits package doesn't hurt.

Cons

You have to understand you'll always be the little sibling to the Leo Burnett folks. As long as Susan Creadle is the CCO, you'll struggle to win any sort of logical battle with the LB folks. Salaries are average, and it usually takes a threat to leave to get a significant increase in wages.

Pros

Downtown location
Parent company is a good company
Global organization

Cons

High stress environment
Long work hours
Lack of work/life balance
Unprofessional co-workers
Demanding clients
Very high employee turnover leads to more work for those left behind

Advice to Senior Management

Manage the high stress levels the employees encounter due to outlandish client expectations. Push back on the client when they are trying to take advantage of employees good will and intentions.

Pros

Good people. Great benefits. Challenging work.

Cons

Long hours. Clients cannot make decisions.

Pros

I have the freedom to do my job and access to help when I need it.

Cons

Limited career advancement and job variety

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate more person to person

Pros

Wow, the benefits, can they get any better? Between many holidays, a gazillion vacation days, unlimited (within reason) sick days, employee perks, etc., Arc's offerings are hard to beat. Not to mention the professional advancement opportunities (training, conferences, etc.) and the ability to work on extremely high-profile clients and ground-breaking creative work.

Cons

Politics, politics, politics. If you're not on the correct side of the aisle, and it's not your turn to talk, God help you, even if the project is ass-backwards and costing 10x as much as it should. Management is often oblivious and incompetent and employees have little recourse. Personnel concerns are not always addressed effectively or sincerely. Information sharing across clients is non-existent and duplicative work is commonplace. To sum it up, it's a cool agency that's becoming too corporatized.

Advice to Senior Management

SHARE, SHARE, SHARE! You're wasting a crap-ton of resources on parallel efforts so much of the time. Too many managers may be sufficiently degreed or pedigreed, but lack critical, innate people and leadership abilities that would get them nary a janitorial job elsewhere. Defer to employees as often as managers on what's going on beyond the surface. Encourage even the lowest on the totem pole to chime in with feedback -- yes, even if they have a concern about how a concept looks -- yes, even if they're not the Associate Creative Director on the project.