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What does R/GA Austin work on? Anything notable?
Is bakery still hiring strat director?
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Except for RGA, which has some issues of its own, the big shops in town aren’t all that great. Look at the creative boutiques working on national business instead—Callen, Preacher, Bakery, Greatest Common Factory. Nomades and Rest of the World for Hispanic; Funsize for design. Those seem to be more interesting than most, from what I understand.
What I’ve heard from friends and ex-employees about the rest:
-Publicis is not doing well, it’s templatized creative, etc, but they pay well for contract workers.
-Proof is boring, not great leadership.
-Vitro is boring.
-T3 is a good tweener; not great, not bad, good pay, palatable work experience.
-Archer Malmo is apparently very boring; quoting a friend they produce the “lowest common denominator of digital advertising.”
-GSD&M is ok; big clients, big agency culture; don’t expect to be allowed to take risks, though.
-McGarrah Jessee is the big local agency, has some cool accounts; seems like there’s a strong style there, though. My understanding is if you don’t fit their style, you won’t hang around. Recent client losses would make me think twice about joining.
-Drumroll is mostly digital, apparently a good vibe, ok pay. If you don’t mind churning out a lot of emails and banners in between ideas, you’d like it.
Avoid:
-Handsome (design)- culture issues, bad leadership
-Tilted Chair - run by kids, lack of direction
-Latinworks - culture issues
*Excluding very small or regional agencies like Ampersand, Door Number 3 and Storycraft; I don’t know much about them.
**I haven’t worked at all of these. My notes are almost all based on plenty of word of mouth reviews. Check Glassdoor also since some of these shops may have already fixed some issues or gotten worse. Good luck!
Publicis is crumbling. T3 is great for idling. Avoid those two
Love my job at R/GA Austin. Get lots of the perks of big name/agency but much less of the politics you’d find in New York. Great coworkers, effective leadership, growing profitable office. Get to work on Austin clients and if things are slow you can work with larger network clients so it stays interesting. Good mix of campaign and product work. Not perfect of course but any complaints I have are typical of any agency
Avoid Proof by any means necessary
No love for McJ?? Lol jk
I'll answer in terms of the experience my friends have had:
RGA: liked it, good people, good name
Proof: disliked it, worked on Subway and said it was just awful.
T3: likes it a medium amount, I know plenty of people that have worked there and have heard mixed reviews, I don't think it would be bad
I don't know much about Publicis.
@McgarrahJessee1 Thanks for the heads up! Do you know if they’re hiring per chance 🤔
What’s the story with Bakery? I see their name pop up but can’t tell what they do or what kind of reputation they have.