imc2 Reviews

Pros

If you like working with arrogant people that think they know how to lead a team but really have no clue what their doing, then this is the place for you. If you like working with people that are friendly to your face but talk negatively about you behind your back, then this is the place for you. If you like working on a team that is unhappy to be working together and constantly complains about everything then this is definitely the place for you. If you like working for a company that lacks company culture and lacks respect for work life balance then this is the place for you.

Cons

EVERY downside of a company can be found working here! Don't let the smoke and mirrors fool you during your interview. Yea, it looks like an agency, smells like an agency, but that just part of the effect to appeal to new clients. Read the reviews online with respect to mgt issues and layoffs when considering working here. Having a poor senior management team, high turnover rates, loss of accounts/business, and lack of new business, its only a matter of time...

Advice to Senior Management

You need to communicate and share your knowledge with the team . If you have expectations of your employees you need to do your part and communicate it. If they need training, provide it to them. Instead of all the useless company meetings, which take place almost 3-5 times a month, maybe have a "Milk and Cookies" session on proper management training.

Pros

Cool environment. Good hardworking people.

Cons

It's a battle to get the resources needed.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the indians more.

Pros

They have great offices and a relaxed atmosphere. The people are nice on a personal level. They are strongest in strategy.

Cons

Management has never worked at an agency so they lack the practical experience and are unwilling to learn. There is an arrogance to them. Poor leadership is the major issue along with regular lay-offs.

Advice to Senior Management

Take to heart many of the things you have been told in meetings, this could be a great place if you would let people help. You have been told what is wrong with the agency and you still don't understand that your product is creative, not strategy.

Pros

Has all of the bells and whistles of an agency or in this case, an office full of people trying to walk, talk, and act like and agency. You get to ride scooters to meetings, bring your dog to work, flexible out of office policy, pool table, Xbox 360. There is (well was) a nice roster of big brands that had the potential for really ground breaking work in the digital space.If you happen to know the right people and can get into the IMC2 version of "The Skulls" you are almost guaranteed a really inflated salary and bonuses to boot. Again, all of the trimmings you would find at most other agencies... but that's where the similarities stop.

Cons

95% of the leadership has ever set foot inside a real agency and that's at the core crux of the other issues.

Their "Business Dev" department/team while full of energy and enthusiasm are good at winning projects and accounts where no real creative thinking is required of them. Rather than sell potential clients on big ideas and big thinking that spans across all channels, they come back with pieces of business that only reinforce that they are more of a web dev chop shop that spits out the occasional mobile application with no real innovative features, or a new website redesign with a new database they integrated. They win business by promising the world then loose it 6 months to a year later by severely under-delivering.

The account service/client service/project management dept has way too much power and control. Granted in some instances this wouldn't be such a bad thing at times IF these people truly had a grasp of the industry. At the upper levels, the client and account service people are paid high salaries to keep the smoke and mirrors going that the business dev department started to win the business in the first place. This is done by making sure this part of the company is very "anglo" and looks like people that clients would want to play a round of golf with (or date if it's a female). On the lower level, project managers are merely people hired off the street that are good at taking client orders and delegating them out to web dev and crackpot creatives to fill. Picture a Taco Bell drive-thru but with an IMC2 sign out front.

Creatively if you just want to design websites and banner ads then this is the place for you. If you want to sit in a meeting that half the participants are account people and they give you creative direction then this is the place for you. If you want to sometimes take creative direction from other creatives over you that are only in that position because they have been there long enough to warrant a promotion by default then this is the place for you. A good number of creatives here are overpaid given the overall level of talent in the office. What I mean is the pay matches the title, but the title doesn't really match the person with the title. The walls are lined up with local Addy awards and other insignificant trinkets that would be irrelevant to any digital creative wanting to push the boundaries. If you think a local Addy award means you did some awesome work, then this is the place for you.

Advice to Senior Management

It's hard to offer advice to leadership when the leadership itself is at the core of the problem. The big dog running the entire "agency" should take a step back and truly bring in people that are experts in their fields. When I say this I don't mean person X with a Harvard degree with a background in some obscure techno analytical field that sounds really important on paper when talking to a client. At one time the place had some 15 VP's... some fortune 500 companies dont even have 15 VP's...Get back to basics. For the money they are paying some of these people in management you could get people that are twice as good that could steer the company down the right path in the areas of Client Service, Creative, and Technology but doing so would mean Doug would have to hire people who actually know more than him in certain areas and I don't think he's ready for that.

Bring in a top notch industry recognized Client Service and Creative person. Let them take a long hard look at all of the account people and creatives and let them remove whoever they feel needs to be let go. For those cases where the extreme isn't warranted, demote them down from the inflated position they have been allowed to do sub-par work in. Pretty much just sit back and let the real experts fix your company and understand it's ok to be humbled.

Pros

Fun environment, smart, talented people, opportunities to innovate

Cons

SLT not interested in doing things differently

Advice to Senior Management

Take time to understand the challenges of the people you manage, rather than just kissing up to the people you report to

Pros

You can make of it what you want. Management gives plenty of responsibility to you to make your own decisions and approach your clients the way you feel is best. If you work hard and do a good job, you will be rewarded. The clients tend to be pretty prestigious and the work can be a lot of fun. Most of the people there are pretty amazing and a lot of fun to work with. The industry (online marketing) is still pretty new, so you can bring creativity and innovation to your team. Within the smaller teams, bonds are easily formed with co-workers. The culture is second to none (the casual dress code, cool amenities, and dogs running around). However, if you're in account management, you'll find yourself working much harder and for much longer hours than many of your co-workers - so just expect it.

Cons

You will not receive much support. I was short on resources and therefore worked especially hard to compensate and keep the clients happy. Since the clients were happy, upper management assumed there was no problem - though I informed them as such many times, and made it clear I could not keep up doing the work of 4+ people for more than several months. They still never got it - until after I left, the next person refused to do all that I had, and the clients fired the agency.

Advice to Senior Management

I know management has sincerely tried to get a better handle on how it's employees are feeling and what they need to do to better support them, but at least when I left, none of it was working. Employees still feel a disconnect. The biggest problem when I was there was that the really good people were overworked and promises of support or changes to alleviate the problems never really came to fruitition. I really do believe the intentions were good - but the execution was horrid.

Pros

The people are awesome - great talent, comeraderie, teamwork, and fun - also dedicated to producing great work, doing whatever needs to be done to come up with a great solution. Social, laid back, fun environment. They have a room full of games - a pool/ping pong table, a big flat screen tv with Wii and Rock Band, a kegurator, etc. They are good at publically recognizing people for good work. Awards given out by your own peers. Good at managing the assignment of resources to projects, as long as you communicate your availability verbally rather than having them go by the timesheet system.

Cons

Senior leadership makes promises they can't keep. Their mantra says their employees are a prioritiy, not just the bottom line, but this is just not true and is obvious to everyone in spite of all the pontificating to the contrary. In just a few months, they lost ALL the NY top management. You think there's a problem there??

Constant layoffs - I'm talking several times a year consistently - in spite of the promises of no layoffs.

Not great at managing their clients - their expectations, as well as not pushing back when the client insists on something that is ridiculous (creative, functionality, or timlines).

The timesheet system sucks, very clunky and time consuming - they report their time by individual TASKS instead of how the rest of the agency world does it, by project. Beware of project managers pressuring you to bill time spent on projects to ADMIN just to avoid going over budget. Makes it look like you're not that busy and they pile on more work.

The medical benefits are the worst I've ever had. BCBS covers whatever they feel like at the time. I have never incurred medical debt before, until these guys.

Getting the software or hardware you need to do your job is like pulling teeth. I have had to install software illegally to be able to finish my project.

There is no tuition reimbursement. They don't send you out to conferences or to training. You have to do it on your own time and pony up the money yourself.

The team is often split up between offices, making it very difficult to work.

Lastly, the NY culture is completely different than the other offices in Dallas and Philly. The other offices still don't get it - they are even puzzled by the fact that we don't arrive at work at 8AM like they do. Also, agencies in Dallas have no Summer Fridays, so we had to fight tooth and nail to get it like every other NY agency. We finally got it after about 3 years of pushing them, but you are required to put in extra time during the week in order to take a Summer Friday (and you only get 7). When they finally offered it, they presented it like they were doing us a big favor, meanwhile they don't GIVE you anything - it's the same hours you already put in.

Advice to Senior Management

Need strong leadership and direction. You lost all your top NY management within a few months for a reason. Your employees prefer that you be straight with them, rather than play nice. Dallas needs to be educated about New York culture. NY office needs to become more independent. Better guidance of your clients. If you're laying employees off every few months, something is wrong with the way you are staffing. And for God's sake, get a better health plan!

Pros

The people: at this point, outside of the economy, the people are the only reason anyone stays. People are smart, fun and creative and have bonded through a tremendous amount of change in the NY office. There is a strong loyalty to one another among the group.

The culture: NY's culture is very different from Philly or Dallas, unfortunately only the NY office sees that. It's laid back but intense when necessary. It's fun because a select group goes above and beyond to make it such.

There was potential. The people and culture are awesome.

Cons

Management: poor almost across the board at the Senior Leadership level. The egos get in the way of being able to evolve into a true agency. They are inconsistent in defining what they stand for or who they are, and they are not open to other's perspective.

Client Service: this is usually the last priority. The company model doesn't align with client needs and they handicap the account teams from delivering great service by having no mid level staff, only AE levels.

Work/Life Balance: they claim it's a priority but proceed with caution.

Media: they spun off the media team which continues to have long term impact, culturally and competitively.

Financial systems/tools: antiquated and unwilling to invest.

Execution and delivery: large area for improvement, both from a schedule and cost perspective.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen. Just take a moment to actually read and digest your employee feedback. When survey responses are less than rosy you can't just push them under the bed - they're telling you something. Be open minded; there isn't one way to do everything and sometimes change is good.

Find management that has true agency experience, that isn't home grown and stop protecting the inner circle of senior management. Take accountability.

Invest in or at least show some interest in the NY office. Morale has been on the decline for years and yet the ship continues to be driven on a similar, rocky course, especially when trying to co-manage NY and Philly.

Pros

imc2 had a great culture. I did some of the best work of my career with some of the best people in the industry at imc2. I loved the first 6 months incredibly. I didn't even notice that I was working 12 hour days because I enjoyed it so much.

Cons

You will burn out fast. imc2 does not understand how to balance account wins with staff resourcing. They were bring in big brands at deep discounted rates, but with huge expectations. The teams were working 12-14 hour days just to keep up. The clients weren't oversold necessarily because we could do the work if we had the right amount of resources. Eventually, we lost the whole team and the account. Layoffs every few months are now the norm.

Advice to Senior Management

I think you're making the right changes. You're cutting back and scaling back the growth of the company. Stay at this size for awhile and figure out the kinks before you attempt to grow exponentially again.

Pros

Awesome brands to work on, decent baseline for project processes and deliverables, super talented co-workers, and compensation and benefits, fantastic facilities.

Cons

POOR management from the senior level managers on up, POOR business decisions that continually cost the company and clients, not enough flexibility in process to accomodate project changes, project estimation process needs major overhauling, communication from senior level needs to be MUCH more transparent and honest.

Advice to Senior Management

Get more feedback from your employees who are in the trenches as to how to improve process, to garner a better understanding of obstacles and challenges. Follow THROUGH with efforts to change until you see results instead of jumping around from one idea to another and never seeing things through. Make proactive buisness decisions that are long term versus reactionary. Stop laying off employees - this more than anything else is killing your repuation. Bonuses to upper management should be the first things to be cut if layoffs are on the line.