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overall thoughts:
bro-y-ish, but not like you have to be, to be part of it. leadership and everyone is working to equalize the make/female ratio, though it’s obviously lopsided at the time.
client is toyota, so it’s huge and fun to make a big impact, but the downside is it’s conservative and sometimes hard to be risky because they don’t want to lose their market position.
culture is fun and organic. not a lot of forced fun and not a lot of foosball and pool tables. just generally happy people that have an open relationship with most managers.
we do fun stuff like the general parties, ya (our halloween chili cook off event is weirdly cool), but then we have oddball traditions that every group kinda defines on their own, which shows people stick around and do what they can to make the place great.
one of those places you go to do advertising not because you wanna win awards or “blow up the industry” but because you like advertising and wanna get paid for it in a place that doesn’t suck.
Friends who are poc didn’t find it a very fruitful place to be, fwiw. Likely an offshoot of ss1’s first comment about bro-y culture.
It depends on where you are in your career.
If you already have great work in your book, already checked all the career boxes you set for yourself in ad school, and are ready for actual work/life balance and solid pay, Saatchi is a good choice. A reliable place to settle down.
If you’re still young, hungry and itching to make great work, there’s better fits for you in LA.
If you're a bro you'll do okay
@OP then you are well prepared. Use that to move through the layers. Talk about your mountain bike A LOT!
@OP - very good balance.
line drawn is this:
traditional team determines the campaign platform, does TV and forced view preroll (:30 and :15), print, ooh, spectacular ooh, and the occasional experiential thing (1 a year usually). and traditional partnerships.
digital team does paid digital: skippable preroll (:15 and :06), digital imagery, facebook/instagram canvas, snapchat lenses, etc that kinda stuff, and then banners. and digital partnerships and one-off shiny shit.
a whole other team does organic social stuff. barry anything.
I genuinely like it at Saatchi. The traditional creative department is pretty chill. Long timelines and big budgets mean you can enjoy what you’re doing and not work nights and weekends. The digital/social team tends to be a lot more hard-core though. In terms of volume of work and hours. But they have big budgets for what they do also so you’re working on high-level projects even on the digital team.
Love when people say they are "trying" to balance male/female ratio. As if it's sooo hard to find talented women creatives. Check Susie's inbox. (Who replaced her btw?) you, too ECD/GCD.
@CW1 - recruiting sucks. but “trying” means when there’s an open position, we make sure there’s a good mix of female and male candidates. what, do you think we’re supposed to thanos it and fire half the agency?
@AD1 - i’m a POC, but i can see that. it’s pretty white here.
@OP - pay is good. not the most, but above average.
also, you either do traditional or digital. there is no “i’m open to it.” we’re one of the few agencies with the head count to have two separate departments, and they stay in their lanes. don’t let anyone tell you you’ll work on digital stuff if you’re on TV. you’ll do tv and print. that’s it. however, the digital team does preroll , so they tend to do “both”, but it just doesn’t go on TV.
tv or digital/social side?
@SD1 what are the hungry places? I’m turning 30 soon and still have boxes to check...
I currently work at a very bro agency right now. I’m used to it that’s for sure.
S&S1 &2 awesome. Thanks for the insight. I’ve done work for S&S more specifically for activation material for Toyota in the past. So I’m familiar with the less risk/ more safe decisions.
Most likely it would be for a traditional creative role but I’m open for Digital also. My current agency has me directing/creating all forms of creative, digital/traditional/UX/video.
But what y’all are saying is more align with what I enjoy.
Would you say pay/time is competitive or comparable to other agencies within the area/field.
Interesting. I currently work within both worlds. So choosing one is a foreign idea to me. I would want to see what is deemed as lanes within the walls are.
Would you say there is a good balance between life and work?