Pros
- Respect for people: the company encourages to treat colleagues with respect regardless of how you feel about them from the start. Shouting, losing your temper and not containing one's emotions is generally discouraged. - Work-life balance: management respects your personal commitments, no one really counts vacations and time off, can work from home at any time (as long as you get the job done) - Advertising edge: great place to master communicating emotional benefits, get experience with digital, RM and event-marketing. Not all classic FMCG companies are into all these disciplines. Great place to develop really break-through creative - as most brands share global communication platforms. - Obsessed with execution: This is THE place to learn a hands-on detailed approach to execution - mostly around BTL programs, sampling, the likes.
Cons
- Consensus: Making calls and getting decisions from top management is difficult. Projects require consensus from a ton of stakeholders. Slows everything down. Conflict is discouraged. - No ownership: Lack of bottom-up leadership, lack of total project and P&L ownership. It is not uncommon for brand managers to not know what a P&L is and how they drive it. Directors often interfere with executional detail and steal work from reports. - Strategy: Often drafted by an internal consulting division, or at director levels. Brand managers rarely lead on strategy vs. how it is done in P&G or RB. - Promotions: No consistent promotion-for-delivery culture. No stringent up-or-out culture. Some promotions seemed pretty random.