About a month and a half ago, I started work at Digitas Health after a 3 year stint at an agency called SFGT.My main reason for deciding to work at DH was because it was a big company, a subgroup of Digitas, which is a sub-brand of Publicis, an international, public holding company. So DH is probably a company where there’s something in some sort of manual that suggests that I mention that the thoughts on this blog are my own and not associated with Publicis, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Probably. Whatever. I’m cool with that, it’s that sort of idiosyncrasy that played a big part in my choice. Especially coming from a smaller agency background. Now I get to take part in those wacky HR training meetings that Dilbert and The Office have made so notorious. I had my first one last week. Emotions management training. It was awesome.Of course, there were other factors in my decision. For example, I didn’t have a particular love for Pharma. But I didn’t have any problems with it. Especially coming from SFGT where walls and boundaries on creative expression were nonexistent, I figured shackling on the figurative handcuffs associated with Pharma would be a nice challenge. Otherwise, the people, the atmosphere, etc., everything was cool, but this was pretty much the case just about everywhere i interviewed. So I always came back to the bigness. And DH had that in a way that none of the other Philly agencies really had. I just wanted to see what the difference was in a larger agency, and see if I could cut it. No reason to believe I couldn’t. Or for that matter, that anything would be really different in a larger agency. But nevertheless it seemed like a different kind of challenge.So a month and a half in, what have I found?
- Bureaucracy is in. There’s a layer for every job, and a job for every layer. Theoretically, in a well oiled machine, it leads to efficiency. For the most part, I’ve seen this to be a case. And generally, this has been a good thing. But sometimes it can feel limiting, especially coming from a smaller agency where you wear many hats. There are cases where I’d like to be more nimble. In those cases, I wouldn’t mind taking the damn ball and running with it (credit to Keyshawn).
- Consequently, everything is expensive. Obviously more hands on deck means more mouths to feed. But it goes both ways on the agency side as well as the client side.
- On the flip side, many layers means plenty of specific subject matter experts. You don’t come across many of these in a smaller agency.
- The pharmaceutical handcuffs haven’t been that bad. I assumed it would be impossible to do anything cool. To some degree this is sort of true. But it hasn’t been as bad as I feared. Perhaps this is because I imagined it to be like a North Korean style lockdown.
- Everything is a little more regimented. There’s less of an opportunity to free-form. Although I keep hearing that my previous experiences weren’t necessary “normal.” So maybe free-formity isn’t ubiquitous in smaller agencies in general. But nevertheless, it’s an observation.
- Wacky company-specific acronyms. Nothing different in a larger vs. small company. They’re all insane with acronyms.
- Wacky HR training meetings. Like I mentioned, I only got to experience one so far, but that was one more than I experienced before. I, for one, dig them. In a Christmas fruitcake sort of way. A nice curiosity.
- Corporate culture. Hard to put my finger on this here. It is indeed a bit odd going from knowing everyone well, to not knowing most people. On the one hand, the constant new faces are refreshing. On the other hand, working in a smaller agency was sort of like growing up in southwest philly, a formerly tight-knit area. And I loved southwest philly back in the day.
- Meetings galore. Sometimes I wonder whether I’m getting paid to go to meetings. There are certain days where work is simply sitting in on one meeting after another. And actual “work” does get done until after hours. With that said, I’d rather take sixteen, 30-minute meetings than the one marathon meeting we used to have. The best meetings I’ve ever been in have never taken longer than 15 minutes. Cuz it’s bing, bang, boom, say your piece, get out and run. Once you get longer than that, you’re probably getting redundant. And if you’re going over 2-3 hours, that’s when I break out the solitaire.
- … originally I wasn’t shooting for 10 observations, but once I got to 9, I figured why not. So… large agency, small agency, neither have been able to provide me with an omelette chef. I guess some things never change.
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