Vantaggi
It's a good place to grind your teeth when you start out in brand management. Great resources, talented people, lots of education and networking opportunities, ability to gain experience in various categories and brands, all while learning 'classical marketing' which sets you up well to move onto most companies.....as long as they respect classical marketing, and many do not.
Svantaggi
The company goes through changes quite often. The culture changes, strategies change, everything. The intent is clearly change for the better, but this isn't always the case. Each new leader brings their own agenda, and often their own buddies, displacing people who are well respected long-timers, and tossing them out. There's been a tendency to flatten the pyramid....more and more at the lower levels, and fewer positions as you try to move up. From assistant to associate to manager isn't too difficult. It's trying to move up to sr. mgr. or worse yet, director where things seem to grind to a halt. Too few positions, too much politics. Politics exist in any organization, some worse than others. Overall its collaborative here depending on which group / category you work with, but it often doesnt feel like a meritocracy. The goal posts seem to move. Despite your best efforts and accolades/kudos, you can get a horrible rating or bonus based on factors that were out of your control. The attrition rate in marketing the past couple years is quite telling. Also, more Europeans and South Americans seem to be brought in especially at director level. The common sentiment is that this is because the pay rate for expats is much lower. The downside is a feeling of frustration among the Americans waiting to move up, and also given that these folks know there rotation is limited in time, there tends to be much less focus on building strategies and long term viability for a brand, and more on doing whatever it takes to deliver this years numbers, since they wont be living with the long-term repercussions of a lack of strategy/vision.