Pros
Full suite of services, resources and experts available across its global network to employees and clients alike. Opportunity to work on big brands and support fun campaigns. Culture in the Chicago office is laid back and embraces a good mix of creative types and young, driven professionals.
Cons
Just like any other agency/office, times are tough when legacy accounts are lost and lead to layoffs and promotion freezes that stifle individual growth. Agency is having an identity crisis with too much emphasis on trying to sell in creative services and campaign platforms/assets and not enough emphasis on true PR + earned media relations (the bread and butter of our industry). There's a major disconnect between the creative and PR teams. Creative dept doesn't understand earned media or know what PR is and pushes out a lot of pretty bad ideas that aren't feasible, won't drive coverage and aren't worth the ROI. PR team has been segregated into different camps (Account vs. Integrated Media), pigeonholing these folks into one area or another. Not a strategic earned media agency at all. "Strategic media team" pushes paid media buys and packages across accounts. Almost as if leadership wants to become an ad/social agency and forgets it began as PR.