True Media Reviews

The company is obsessed with policy, and use's a top-down communication structure that is traditionally been removed from the agency world. There is an obsession with making your 45 hours. Senior leadership must approve anything that goes against their opinion. In the St. Louis market, pay is extremely low and many leave to do the abundance of competitors. The company has recently hit a turnover rate of nearly 40%. The lack of remote access mixed with high work loads (Some have had up to 15 accounts assigned to them that require daily work) creates an ominous environment. Both company ownership and HR are extremely religious, and while this is not written in any policy, comments and attitudes that are delivered deeply harm the office culture. When I said employee's were nice and it helped with company culture, that culture is practically held 'underground' and out of sight. You could hear a pin drop in most of the office locations. Lastly, the company owns our main programmatic vendor. This means DPM's are strongly encouraged to use them, while digital teams must tell the client they are the best option. In reality, their performance is below par and is only used to feed revenue between corporations. There is a lack of investment within the digital scope of what's next. CTR's and time on site are the most granular any reporting gets- many of the clients are not digital savvy and therefore don't necessarily ask for more. We also have constant IT problems that hinders work output.

While 'you have the opportunity to step up and learn and get a lot of experience', the approach for all employees seems to be 'baptism by fire'. There is no set plan for on-boarding, no standard approach to training and employees are expected to step up and execute client work without even a thorough understanding of clients, their needs, employee roles, company processes, resources or support. True Media is currently in the process of developing a standard training approach for new employees and have forced this "privilege" onto their employees, many of whom have never held a job before. In several of these teams even when a well-thought, better approach is suggested, the teams are met with nothing but resistance and the usual response "that isn't how we do it here". Multiple members of leadership, while several can be helpful, have either never worked anywhere else or have never worked in media prior to obtaining their "impressive" titles. Many members of leadership have little to no understanding of how to plan or execute media and therefore are unable to provide any sort of training, sounding board or support system for their teams. Team members within the same client team also often work completely independent of each other, even within the same campaign, with several members exemplifying the "it's not my job" or "I'm not going to go beyond what is the minimum required of me" mentality. Despite the influx of multiple programmatic partners in the industry, there is constant back and forth from leadership regarding requirements to use or not to use one specific partner that is co-owned by True Media's President. One day it is company mandate to use unless you can "prove why another partner is better", the next day you are told that you should "do what's best for the client, whatever that means". Most often Coegi is forced on teams by pressure from senior leadership to "keep them happy" and is covered up by sharing with clients that this is a "Preferred Partner". This lack of transparency and flip flopping on policies from day to day may eventually leave you deciding to "ask for forgiveness, rather than permission" for whatever programmatic partner you choose. Contrary to claims by other reviews, HR, Management and the President are vastly out of touch with current trends, requirements, the cost to pay talent that can provide anything beyond entry level work and knowledge. True Media views themselves, in the words of senior leadership, as "Generalists, not Specialists" who often churn out mediocre work after over-promising and under-delivering on almost all clients.