Pros
I feel very lucky that my first full-time role after college was at Brunswick. Coming from a liberal arts education with a handful of internships at small non-profits, Brunswick gave me the opportunity to learn how the corporate world works across a breadth of sectors (media, retail, technology, financial services and art); the confidence to operate in that arena; and a host of important skills needed to succeed later in life as a professional. As an Account Researcher or intern your day-to-day work mainly consists of background research, writing, analysis and monitoring; it’s interesting and you are constantly learning. You’ll have a meeting or maybe five. Brunswick’s client list includes leading Fortune 500 corporations and the brightest start-ups. The company has a great culture, and I’ve made many lifelong friends at the firm. There are lots of happy hours, Wednesday lunches, outings to sports games and a yearly company-wide retreat. Brunswick College, which leverages the vast alumni and client network, brings interesting speakers on various topics to the office and offers tutorials on niche skills like improving your Power Point capabilities or ability to read a bulge bracket analyst report to support your professional development. In this fast-paced environment (can’t emphasize this enough) you learn how to pitch and handle the media; be organized; balance speed and attention to detail; speak with senior management at high-profile companies; and multitask. Most importantly, you learn how to problem solve in crisis mode while juggling your daily responsibilities and other clients. Conclusion: If you want to pursue a career in PR, Brunswick is arguably the best firm to start your career. With its exclusive client list, brilliant people and highly regarded reputation within the communication and advisory worlds Brunswick is really a top-notch communications firm.
Cons
Work/life balance for the compensation is joke. Especially at the junior levels (AR, Exec and AD), and this fosters a toxic culture. 24/7 commitment is expected on all teams although it’s inefficient to service clients in such a way because firstly, they don’t pay the firm enough to make this profitable and secondly, it causes burnout and attrition at the firm’s lowest levels, which are burdened with the 24/7 monitoring and odd hour requests. Weekend duty is part of the AR program, and also a requirement on some client teams. It is therefore hard to ever feel “offline”. If you are away from your desk longer than hour, you are expected to notify teams of your whereabouts. It can be an extremely high-stress environment. Work can be “capacity” driven instead of thoughtfully assigned in consideration of business needs and professional development. Management is opaque– for example, rotations in the AR rotational program are completely skipped with no comment, promotion timelines and overall company strategy are unclear. Further, the company structure feels too disorganized given its size (~600 employees) and age (~30). It’s very easy for those with big personalities or an “in” with senior management to affect professional development positively or negatively. On the other hand, if a mentor or supervisor is not outspoken nor connected with senior management development professional development in the form of team assignment or promotion may be hindered. ARs can end up handling an excess amount of admin work (scheduling meetings, taking notes, editing notes, distributing notes). ARs development can also be hampered depending on the personality of the executive they are assigned to. Brunswick can have a Napoleonic complex when it comes to its place within the hierarchy of the advisory world (order of importance: bankers, lawyers, consultants, then comms), thus some leaders at the firm encourage employees to pull all-nighters when they aren’t necessary to complete work just to have a seat at table. At the end of the day some companies see communications as a box to tick, so Brunswick gets sidelined and feels the need to overcompensate. Overall some company policies and attitudes can feel corporate and old-fashioned. And if you don’t want to pursue a career in communications then be prepared to get annoyed at the self-important attitude of some colleagues– “its PR not ER” is a common refrain.