Uproar PR Reviews

3.1

49% would recommend to a friend

(74 total reviews)

Ermis Sfakiyanudis

76% approve of CEO

44% positive business outlook

Uproar PR has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 74 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Uproar PR employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

74 reviews
1.0
16 Nov 2016

The owners are destroying this agency from the top down

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

coworkers are nice and friendly. You all band together purely for your sanity – and thus make lifelong friendships.

Cons

One would be hard-pressed to find a more poorly run PR agency, if you can call it that. It's a great place to work if you don't mind being blamed for management's abundant misgivings. The company sells itself as an everything agency to land business, which puts a great deal of stress on the already stretched-thin employees that are left to do the work. It's tough to properly service clients as a full-service PR, marketing, SEO, events and social agency when your account staff have little to no experience outside of media relations. Manipulative, misguided, clueless, abusive leadership - The owners plays the employees like pawns, just to let everyone know they’re in charge. - The “COO,” who has no real experience in the field, has no idea about how to run an effective communications campaign. - They force employees and former employees to publish positive reviews here on Glassdoor. - Over-promising on the part of the people who sell for the company was an ongoing issue. There simply was no way for the overworked and EXTREMELY junior team to deliver everything that was promised. - The owners promise things to clients that simply cannot be accomplished by the people who work at the company. Not because employees don't want to do it, but because they don't possess the skills needed to do the job properly. No one person is an expert at PR, marketing, social media, SEO and events, yet that wide array of assignments are not uncommon for one person. The response to "I don't know how to do that" would either be "you'll never learn it if you don't do it" or a blank, silent, passive-aggressive stare. On-the-job training website is fine, but not while charging clients thousands of dollars per month in retainer fees and passing off your team as experts in that particular skill. The Condescending nature of upper management really discouraged the culture they are trying to grow. There are multiple instances of bad business decisions that affected the team as a whole. Expectations are never fully communicated to the team, and client / employee turnover is higher than I've ever seen at any agency. The CEO and her partner way over promised deliverables to clients, yet never provided the resources to fulfill those promises. As a result, clients dropped like flies and the owners always blamed the employees and never took any responsibility for their actions. Internal communication suffered tremendously. Expectations in any aspect of the business are never communicated. Employees are continually set up to fail. Paranoia The management spies on the employees in every manner of the sense. Whether it’s getting middle management to lure staff in with a false sense of security and report back every little thing that was said in minute detail. Or installing Pentagon level key-stroke software on people’s computers to track what was being typed or just outright read people’s skypes, emails, etc. It’s insane. Don’t you have better things to do all day than spy on the very employees that allow you to keep the doors open in the first place? Passive-aggression The owner often would send passive-aggressive emails to team members. These "nastygrams" admonished hard-working team members for not doing more, or flat-out blamed employees for clients' satisfaction, or lack thereof. This would happen electronically, while the owner would smile to your face or not speak to you at all, which is the “CEO’s” specialty.

1.0
22 Nov 2016

A cautionary tale.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The cliques are strong, so it keeps you young -- reminding you of how it was in high school...

Cons

Do yourself a favor and keep looking or at the very least speak with ANY past employee before accepting a position with this agency. There’s forced company culture and sorority-like office politics. You will be paid well below industry standard and be expected to dedicate your entire soul, body and life to #UproarJobLove. The partners are unprofessional, rude, conniving and unethical in their business practices. You will be belittled, ridiculed and hung out to dry in front of colleagues time and time again. I didn't believe the negative comments, I figured they were just disgruntled ex-workers, no place could be as bad as they described. Take the comments seriously, there isn't a more toxic place on Earth than this company. The management expects you to have ESP and know what they want without telling you, and take turns berating everyone, even when they are responsible for the mess up. They have no respect for their employees or clients. They over promise what they can do for the clients, and when they under deliver, they blame you. The agency is blind to changes in the industry and doesn't have leadership that understands how to make the shop relevant. Senior leadership is largely comprised of those individuals that learn buzzwords and regurgitate them to clients in an attempt to appear competent. Communication is a huge issue with this company. Kind of ironic since it IS a "communications agency". When new clients are on-boarded there is no communication as to next steps. Sometimes you're just thrown into the launch meeting with the new client. When a client leaves, there is no communication and employees find out through the grapevine - even if they are on that account. The same happens when an employee leaves. Transparency is non-existent and management does not immediately communicate with the client, but waits until the last minute. Naturally the client feels left in the dark and is not happy. The compensation/benefits hardly ever equal the value of the people and the work they do. Guidance and mentorship is lacking, most support will come from those in the trenches with you and not from your superiors. Expectations are high but metrics for success are nebulous at best. There is a lot of unnecessary negativity, belittling and passive aggressive comments that come from the partners, you never know what mood you will get. It doesn't help that the two owners are married, so there is no separation when trying to address certain issues that they are individually responsible for. There’s also a cult-like culture. No one can have a differing opinion at all, no one can complain to “HR” or it gets reported, the Harris’s have a 'holier than thou' attitude. They are bullies who yell & scream on a daily basis and fire people at the drop of a hat in an effort to protect their miserable little empire. All while making you smile for the cameras to portray a creative & fun atmosphere. It isn't, don't do it. Oh and the pay is abysmal. You could probably make more working an hourly retail job than at Uproar.

1.0
25 Sept 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

None - I took this job to go remote so I could move with my fiancé for his job.

Cons

I waited to share this until my last pay check came in, if this shares anything about the company. Glassdoor Review 1 star My first week I knew that I made a mistake. For being a remote PR agency, that prides itself as being a leader in the industry - they know absolutely NOTHING about influencer marketing. None of our clients had a budget to pay our creators. In fact, most didn’t even have a trade. A performing arts center wouldn’t give us show tickets to creators to make content but expected high KPIs on social posts. At one point we even were in talks with a free app. A FREE APP with no budget to contract influencers. Where is the incentive in that? Every client at Uproar was set up to fail, not just for influencers but across the board. Company culture is HORRIBLE. There’s no leadership whatsoever. At one point I handled 10 clients as a team of 1. I constantly had panic attacks, didn’t leave my computer and when I approached my director about bandwidth she said I wasn’t doing enough. In fact, in my quarterly, my CEO said that I should be grateful. About every two weeks I would also get a new client proposal thrown into the mix, where I would have 1 day to put together strategy and discovery. I received no help from my director. She would constantly ignore my questions and shut down any ideas or trends identified in influencer marketing. She was also incredibly narcissistic. Some of the teams also took this approach to work. One of the automotive teams I worked with had absolutely nasty co-workers. Who would constantly belittle and micromanage my work, even though they were in no shape, or form above me in the hierarchy. This has been one of the worst experiences. This agency has no money, makes decisions on a whim, and constantly burns and churns out its employees.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 74 Reviews

Glassdoor has 81 Uproar PR reviews submitted anonymously by Uproar PR employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Uproar PR is right for you.