TBWA Worldwide Reviews

Current Employee – been working at TBWA Worldwide full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Hight profile clients. Great creative reputation.

Cons – Account driven and sometimes difficult to produce great work.

Advice to Senior Management – Be more creative focused.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at TBWA Worldwide full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – great atmosphere to start your carrer

Cons – tons of things to do

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at TBWA Worldwide full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great location, Following the Distruption Methodology

Cons – Been too long since I left and most people I worked with are no longer there

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at TBWA Worldwide

Pros – This agency has a great reputation from the outside. Leaving the LA office aside, iconic creative work has been done here in the past (Skittles, Absolut, Nextel, Combos), but all that is gone now. Junior and mid-level people are genuinely nice and hard-working. There are flashes of brilliances.

Cons – Openly, toxically, corrupting political. It's clear that senior management doesn't get along and that trickles down quickly. Entire departments disintegrating at the moment because of a mass exodus of people. Many are attracted by its creative reputation but soon feel disillusioned and/or duped. To be fair, Clients are very resistant to good work. There is also no vibe in the cubicle-farm office-- often as quiet as a library (or morgue).

Advice to Senior Management – Apply TBWA's philosophy of Disruption. Inward.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at TBWA Worldwide

Pros – There is a great global network, amazing clients, creative atmosphere, dog in the workplace, young social staff, supportive senior management (not in all cases), great opportunities for growth and advancement, encouraging of continuing education.

Cons – Big agency means LOTS of red tape and politics. Promotions and raises (ha!) take about twice as long as they should, the pay is notoriously low, creative directors treat junior account managers like dirt.

Advice to Senior Management – Creative dept. is too top heavy. Need more junior and associate creatives.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at TBWA Worldwide

Pros – Great name and looks great in your resume. You will work with some of the biggest accounts and biggest names in the industry.

Cons – Difficult to be recognized. Promotion within the company is slow and very structured based on time spent at the company as opposed to merit.

Advice to Senior Management – Performance reviews should be conducted more regularly and promotion should be based on a meritocracy as opposed to the current structure implemented.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at TBWA Worldwide

Pros – Great client roster; relaxed, fun environment; cool, smart people; dog friendly policies; employee oriented; decent medical benefits; liberal vacation and holiday package.

Cons – Rapid growth resulting in the loss of a "personal" environment; easy to get lost in the constant shuffle of changing clients and ever-changing management.

Advice to Senior Management – Be open and transparent to your employees. They are smart, hard-working souls and deserve to be treated as the professionals that they are.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at TBWA Worldwide

Pros – It looks great on a resume, there are some amazingly smart and talented people in every office in every department, and some of the work that comes out of there is actually decent.

Cons – Not much opportunity to grow and advance. Very dog-eat-dog. There is no sense of mentoring. No one wants to help you grow and learn when you are at a low-level position. It's just "show up, work 13 hours a day, kiss everyone's ass who is above you and be grateful we're even paying you." Where is the motivation to even get up and go through that everyday? What skills am I learning? How can I

Advice to Senior Management – Sure, everyone is expendable, but you don't have to be do obvious about it. If you want to have a great company, encourage a little bit of leadership within your own walls, do not just give seminars on 10x10 and Room 13 in order to feel better about yourself. Promote from within. There is so much untapped talent crammed into that place but so much of it is wasted and burns out and goes to another industry. Manage your clients better.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at TBWA Worldwide

Pros – I have met some of the most creative people here. Depending on what account you work on, you do have the opportunity to do great work.

Cons – The only problem is because of politics great work hasn't been produced in a long time. Don't expect to have much a life either.

Advice to Senior Management – learn how to manager your clients please. dont sacrifice the creative process and start respecting digital.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at TBWA Worldwide

Pros – Chiat Day is a legendary agency and that's the best reason to work there- to have it on your resume'. It is also an amazing office space and though that may not sound like much, it makes a difference to your worklife and state of mind. It does have some incredibly bright people working there whom you can learn a lot from - I did.
And finally, there's the Disruption philosophy which is a radical way to look at brands and really transform them. Lots of other agencies would kill to have such a clear and powerful philosophy at work for them.

Cons – It is a creative shop , which is not a bad thing if the creative is always coming up with great work. They don't do it so much anymore- at least not of the level of the heydays of Chiat Day, although that heritage is frequently evoked - so very often we are trying to sell mediocre work as brilliant.
Career progression is haphazard and dependent on the opinions of a select few top management people - almost no importance is given to what managers think of their direct reports. This creates an atmosphere of unnecessary politicking and uncertainty.

Advice to Senior Management – Respect reporting structures and formal evaluation procedures. That doesn't mean being bureaucratic, but giving employees a chance to hear and respond to feedback.
Use Disruption the way it was meant to be used - as a tool for discovering fresh insights and ideas and visions, rather than what it has become which is a way to sell ideas the agency wants to sell.