Weber Shandwick reviews

The agency has a very difficult time developing its junior staff into mid-level managers. Junior staff are overworked and underpaid, and it takes a very long time to be promoted to a level where you’re making a salary that matches the level of work you’re putting in. Weber claims to be focused on improving its diversity at the associate level, but it’s very difficult to make ends meet if you don’t come from a well-off family that you can fall back on for finances. Many junior staff members have to work second jobs to afford basic living costs, resulting in burnout and high turnover.

Just like any other agency/office, times are tough when legacy accounts are lost and lead to layoffs and promotion freezes that stifle individual growth. Agency is having an identity crisis with too much emphasis on trying to sell in creative services and campaign platforms/assets and not enough emphasis on true PR + earned media relations (the bread and butter of our industry). There's a major disconnect between the creative and PR teams. Creative dept doesn't understand earned media or know what PR is and pushes out a lot of pretty bad ideas that aren't feasible, won't drive coverage and aren't worth the ROI. PR team has been segregated into different camps (Account vs. Integrated Media), pigeonholing these folks into one area or another. Not a strategic earned media agency at all. "Strategic media team" pushes paid media buys and packages across accounts. Almost as if leadership wants to become an ad/social agency and forgets it began as PR.