Pros
Langland is a company that, like many companies, used to be small but then got bought out by a large corporation. This is a necessity for many companies to survive, but the fallout is the shift from a small, independent, family-like environment (that feels more focussed on producing beautiful work and keeping people relaxed and happy), to an environment that has much bigger and more stressful financial targets to hit and therefore has less room for error, means the work becomes duller, simpler, more 'churned out' because there are bills and salaries that need to be paid. Langland is striving to find a balance between the two worlds, within the confines of Publicis, which don't allow for much freedom in that regard. That said, I worked for Langland (specifically in the Clinical Trial Experience (CTE) discipline) for 6 years and can say confidently that I loved my job, because of the environment that I worked within (specifically in a smaller office in Windsor, rather than the giant London office) and the people that I worked with. That family-feel survived, and because of it, I felt like I was part of a strong team, where we all wanted to succeed - which made the day-to-day grind feel a little bit more bearable. The work ebbed and flowed, was extremely busy at times and lacklustre at others. That's the nature of advertising, so I'm not going to complain there. The accounts team worked really hard to win new business and that usually meant alot of work would come in at once and then plateau. While the project management team was never that fleshed out and where it should be, we managed, and we had the freedom and autonomy to develop our own ways of working and best practices that suited us for the projects that we worked on. There was alot of opportunity to put your own stamp on how to do things, which I really appreciated. Overall, Langland was a lovely place to work - but Publicis was not so great, mainly because it felt a bit like a silent 'Big Brother' overseeing everything but from a distance, always looming nearby.
Cons
The cons were mainly around the lack of equality between the offices - we had an office in Windsor and one in London - the London office was bigger and offered more 'extras' to those who could commute into the City. For those commuting to Windsor, or who had moved specifically to Windsor to work within CTE, you tended to feel a bit disregarded (like we didn't have a lunch service or massage/spa services, which London did). Working for Publicis was also not something I enjoyed. Working for such a big conglomerate meant that we became just another cog in a giant wheel, like hamsters grinding out work to hit a financial quota we were forced to adhere to, or we would suffer as a company. The goals there made it feel more like a factory at times than a creative space where we had the freedom to put in good, solid work or complete a project to the best of our abilities. Oftentimes we just had to do the bare minimum because we just didn't have time to put anymore work on a project that might have deserved it. We were also forced to be associated with a company that participated in some dealings in the past that I would not want to be associated with, personally. Namely Publicis Health being the primary advertising agency working for Purdue Pharma to create deceptive marketing campaigns to increase Opioid prescriptions during the Opioid epidemic in the US in the 2000s. As someone from the midwest in America, the oxycontin epidemic is something I grew up with and have been privy to on a personal level, and when I found out they were involved but we (Langland), as a company, could say or do nothing about it, I was shook. Obviously this behaviour doesn't have anything to do with Langland or the work that they do to further Clinical Trials across the globe. I will forever be grateful for the time I spent with Langland and am very proud of the work I helped to produce.
