Poor communication and management, projecting their weaknesses onto you, toxic and mentally draining work environment.
Schlecht am Arbeitgeber finde ich
This company pretends to be a brand from Copenhagen, Denmark, but it is actually a German company with its headquarter in Germany and not a single danish-speaking employee.
The work ethic is quite “German”: kind of stubborn, narrow-minded, stuck in their way of doing things like they always have, and not being open for improvement or constructive discussions to make the brand better.
I was hired to make Lala Berlin (acquired by Copenhagen Studios) more attractive for a younger audience on Instagram and to improve the TikTok account of COPENHAGEN STUDIOS (so I was told by the owners during my second interview of the application process).
During my time working for both brands and several tries to communicate ideas and strategies for improvement, they got rejected most of the time by the marketing team or art directors.
Unfortunately, it seems like this company only wants to stay on their known path and the team doesn’t accept suggestions to customize its social media strategies to the changes of this versatile environment and trends. You should usually try to keep up to stay relevant, as a brand, for your target audience on social media.
Mostly, this brand uses one way to reach their target audience: doing fancy/expensive campaign shootings, that show their (actually fake and non existing) danish roots and values, plus doing multiple collaborations with famous influencers. It is quite impressive that this brand keeps existing, by pretending to be a danish brand from Copenhagen, and yet having no actually connection to this city or country at all. They just keep deceiving to their customers.
If you’re not a “yes-man”, looking for a job to fulfill you and bring your own ideas and creativity to your team and the brand, don’t choose this company to work for. Several people quit during my short time working there because of difficulties with poor leadership, lack of communication and bad management. The salary came mostly on the last day of the month and the payroll mid of the next month. You only get 20 vacation days/year which is pretty low for Germany standards and compared to other company’s, especially when you work with permanent availability.
The communication in general is very poor, they project their own weaknesses onto you because they are not able to self-reflect. Instead of constructive talks, there is passive aggressive behavior. No appreciation for your work at all, not even after ending the employment. My manager, the senior marketing manager of this brand, didn’t even had the guts to have a personal talk about my work and the brands goals. She doesn’t seem to have the skills needed to manage with good leadership by avoiding to talk to me and letting a colleague handle the call of ending my employment, instead of doing it herself. When I told her that it would have been nice to talk about things first, she replied in a text that ‘sometimes things just don’t work out’. No `thank you` for your work or best wishes for the future. That was it and I never heard from her again. When I think about it now, it’s kind of sad, but maybe it will make a good post about bad leadership on LinkedIn someday.
Another thing about this brand is, that if you’re not related or a good friend to someone working there or in a relationship with one of the managers, don’t waste your time and energy to succeed, you’ll not going to progress. Better choose another company to work, where you’ll get appreciation for your work and the people aren’t in relationships with each other, are best friends, or related.
In conclusion, the job, the team and the entire atmosphere was toxic and mentally draining. I’m glad that I do not work there anymore and would advise everyone not to start working at this company if your mental health, human dignity and respect for hard work means something to you.