Waggener Edstrom Worldwide Employee Review

I worked at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide

Pros – Waggener Edstrom is an excellent place to start a career in corporate communications. It has some excellent media relations in business media and a number of experienced hands to learn from. The business is part of an international agency and has some good resources and processes.

Cons – The business has faced some challenges in recent times, you often dont get to do ground breaking work and many of the client programmes aren't going to change the world. Process can take too much of a role in things and it can suffer from the 'when you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail' syndrome.

Advice to Senior Management – Hard decisions need to be made on the businesses future vision and strategy which needs to move on from the Microsoft heritage. This requires a complete change of mindset: the business is suffering from the innovators dilemma as others such as Edelman and Weber Shandwick have leap-frogged the business.

A fresh approach ironically would also make the business more attractive to Microsoft who has been transforming its own marketing for a good while.

Take the business one side and then ask yourselves if this was an enterprise software company and you were McKinsey what would you advise WE to do? Many of the longstanding people who are in the business won't be able to go on the resulting journey with you, and that's OK because being an innovator can be a lonely but ultimately rewarding existence. Loyalty is a valuable thing to have, but taken to excess can be anchor that drags on the business.