FCBCURE Reviews

I cannot say how this place will turn out as there is new senior management and they seem ambitious and dynamic. I hope they somehow save this place for the NJ talent. But as of recently, this place is a Titanic and I wish I had taken the offer of a genuine agency, that I passed on for this hack dressed as a king. For the time I spent there, it was pretty much a complete bait and switch. A black mark on your resume (this is no FCB NY or Area 23) unless you want to tread your way through similar gigs for the rest of your life or you are a senior with plenty of experience and some campaigns under your belt. Basically, at the interview, two CDs (who themselves since left after seeing this ongoing disaster), have outlined what I would be working on and it looked like a great position. Fast forward few months, I am still on random brand that just needed help (never placed on brands that I was hired for), with manager who was completely disinterested in teaching anything and soon was fired, and I was put on dead end brand with dead end collateral that was unmanageable, uncreative and ended up firing agency anyway. Fast forward few months, lot of us still didn't have team, working on odds and ends. When it did get busy, it would happen unexpectedly, often at 6PM while on the way out the door, suddenly something comes up and voila, we stay till midnight. I had an opportunity to work on a pitch once, which I gladly worked late many nights, hoping to finally make a difference. In this whole time, 70% of my time was filled working on annotation boxes (literally making and revising red boxes with annotations for weeks), or revising existing copy on brochures, 10% actually designing stuff, and 10% arguing with an abusive/bully coworker who gave me nightmares and luckily was later fired for not getting along with manager. The last 10% I felt like I am perhaps making a difference. And where am I now? 100% kind of screwed over (I really don't like the blame game, but this is one place that I genuinely regret ever accepting) as for this position I have absolutely no work that would be even fit to show to anyone, and nothing to speak of whatsoever. My only hope is that the name FCB means something and that unsuspecting employers will not figure out this is that NJ FCBCURE agency that most clients left.

This place is a sweatshop, plagued with politics, cliques, and poor management. Things are socialized extremely poorly, leaving most people with a feeling of isolation and needing to fend for themselves. CURE is very Account-centric, and most Account teams (cliques) breed a very “us vs them” mentality. A lot of the toxicity comes from the ego of the Account teams. Creatives are hit and miss. Creative Directors don’t manage or allocate resources appropriately, creatives are not onboarded at properly so there is no consistency in process across teams. Some creatives are go getters, hard working, and great teammates. Others are lazy and take advantage of the system. Project Management (IP or Integrated Production as it’s called here) is a mess. Management hits the reset button every year or so, making nothing consistent. You’ve got seniors who are awful, can’t handle the simplest tasks, and are overpaid to do nothing, while also having juniors who are rockstars but are left on their own to run multi million dollar pieces of business. They are supposed to be the keepers of process but are all on different pages. Certain managers don’t manage, and others are worth their weight in gold. Bad behavior seems to be rewarded in this department. 70+ hour weeks are common, it’s a game of slap-hands constantly. Extremely toxic, cliquey atmosphere. You’ll do what you think is right only to be scolded for not doing something you weren’t told to do in the first place. Last, people will spend hours crafting SOWs, only to have teams understaffed anyway, so what’s the point? I’ve never been more pessimistic, stressed, depressed, or mentally exhausted then I have been working here.