Top-level leadership is completely out of touch with what it takes to keep employees happy (and it's really not much). We'd ask for more help or support, or even inexpensive improvements to help us do our jobs, and it was always met with resistance.
Pay was always well below industry standard, even though they boasted that it was on par with market value. COLIs were viewed as raises. At one point I got a minimal raise and was told that I should appreciate it since mdg rarely gives raises like that... and it was 1% above a COLI. This was a raise for a new position that gained a direct report.
True creativity isn't fostered, so all of the concepts end up looking the same. Great ideas are squashed in favor of top leadership's ideas, which are often similar from client to client.
mdg has a motto of "under promise, over deliver" but that is not the reality. So often huge things are promised, and the account directors and creative teams are left to pick up the mess and deliver brilliance on a truncated timeline.
I've witnessed top leadership treating their direct reports with such disrespect and meanness. Everyone loses their cool once in a while, but there are many members of leadership who have reputations for being nasty when something doesn't go their way.
Turnover is insanely high... for all the above reasons, no doubt.
