Clear Strategy Director reviews

My tenure at Clear M&C Saatchi didn't align with my professional strengths and the role's expectations. Initially attracted to a Strategy Director position, I found the organization's focus to be heavily skewed towards research, diverging significantly from my expertise in crafting strategies and creating collateral. Despite my extensive background in the London advertising scene, the job demanded skills more aligned with market research, which did not match my experience in CX, communications, channel planning, content marketing, brand planning, or crafting creative output. I voiced concerns about this misalignment, but there seemed to be either a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of strategy versus research within the company. (Literally switch 'strategy' for 'research' in all the job titles and you'll have a much better grasp on what folks do here). This experience, while a departure from my typical skillset, was still a valuable one so no hard feelings or regrets - albeit lesson learned on ensuring role relevance.

-Very lean structure which lacks traditional admin support (office managers, executive assistants) meaning a lot of time is spent on non-productive tasks -The team is very Director heavy, so lack of junior support means you spend a lot of time on lower value tasks (i.e. editing charts, drafting discussion guides etc.) -Lack of strategic focus; the flip side of autonomy is that the firm seems to be moving in many directions at once -Sometimes the feeling of an identity crisis between being a strategic insight agency and strategy consultancy (based on who's doing the work and how the client understands Clear's sweet spot)