Leo Burnett reviews

Ah yes, the meat and bones of this post. Once the glimmer and glare from Mr. Burnett's glasses has left your face, all you will see within Leo Burnett is an agency built on an era far long gone. Let's dive into my current experience within this company: 1) The challenge of being a Midwestern company in the modern world: I'll be very blunt here- Leo Burnett has a racial problem. Specifically: if you are not white, you will have problems. It is a well-known fact among all minorities within the company, and something that is whispered throughout the halls daily. If you spent a month at Leo Burnett you would hear white counterparts making jokes about ethnic features (insert racial profanity here), mocking religious holidays (specifically Muslim holidays), and complaining that they don't understand why there is a need for Black History Month (or any celebration of ethnic culture). In fact Leo Burnett is SO fully aware of this issue that they have tried to counteract it by having the people of color within their building (which totals about 100/1800 or ~ 6%) create national platforms and programs to increase diversity. Yes you heard that right, instead of addressing the majority population causing the issue and installing a no tolerance zone for racial profanity, the company is trying to have the minority create events to help educate their population on the "beauty of diversity". Frankly (as to be expected), this is not working--but again, they aren't looking to solve the issue, but instead are trying to LOOK like they are solving the issue, (LOOK being the key word). They put a few token minorities in high positions, tell the rest of the minorities to look up to them, and then hope the issue will go away. Three years after starting I can confidently say that this issue isn’t going away any time soon, and until HR starts to listen to the problem and address it head on, it will forever be an issue. 2) If you are reading this and are horrified, don't worry, I will also explain to you how Leo Burnett got to be in this predicament. See, besides having a problem with race, Leo Burnett also has a leadership problem. From HR to Corporate to Lower Level Managers, Leo Burnett has some of the worst leadership I have ever seen. The issue stems from Leo Burnett himself, who was very much into the "old boys club" mentality, which thus allowed him to do a lot of hiring of friends. This practice has continued on, and now it seems like anyone who gets hired is either a husband of __, or friend of ____ or old college roommate of ____. Now, I'm all for that if the people you are hiring are GOOD, however, to hire someone with no skill set and then put them in a position of power? All bad. And this is exactly what Leo Burnett (the company) has continued to do. There are departments across the board with management who has no clue or training into how to do their job. I have worked with Account Executives who have come in with no experience, and due to them knowing someone, been put in charge of a million dollar account. I have seen creatives placed on accounts who have just graduated from art school be hired on the spot because of a family tie they had (however on the flip side I have also seen many people of color with years of experience be forever put into the "freelance" position bc Leo Burnett "simply isn't in a hiring phase now) (complete BS). Perhaps the most unsettling thing I've see while being here is the completely inept "operations department" which somehow houses all digital campaigns? Basically this department is a joke. The "digital strategists/community managers" are the absolute worst. To be honest I don't even know why we pay them considering that most of them didn't even seem to have any prior experience in digital media-- so in reality all they could do is create a PowerPoint presentation on how often they thought a page should post and read comment posted on social pages. Yep. No writing, no content calendar, just posting frequency ad reading. Completely ridiculous. However, the ineptness of this department as well as the rest of the stems from HR, which frankly needs to be cleaned out. My list could go on and on, though I don’t think it would help in any way. When you have an HR department that is fighting for those creating the problems rather than fixing it- you have an issue. Leo Burnett is a company that refuses to change, and for that, it will always be a graveyard for any diversity or talent. It literally is the agency where dreams come to die.