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Common Thread Collective

Is this your company?

No clear vision, middling technology, inability to scale, unintelligent leadership - Anonymous employee Common Thread Collective Employee Review

1.0
Feb 28, 2024
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Get to work with some interesting accounts in advertising.

Cons

To start, the state of D2C is absyml at best which already makes it tough for this company to survive. When the CEO got washed out from pro baseball, he was able to ride a strong wave of initial success due to the booming of the space and personal connections of big name brands. Now, in today's state, there's a ton of market saturation with 1000s of companies doing the same exact thing. There is nothing special about CTC's services or their process. It's best practice methodology is something you can find on Google and Facebook's website. The buyers at the company are inexperienced fresh out of college or outsourced, being managed by somebody more tenured. Goodluck if your company wants somebody experienced managing your companies paid channels! The "tech" layer of CTC is a simple BI tool to track spend and financial metrics between channels. There's an abundance of different companies that already offer a similar solution, and nobody at CTC can explain the competitive differentiators between those solutions and theirs. The buyers at the company are inexperienced fresh out of college or outsourced, being managed by somebody more tenured. The company has gone through multiple years of change, layoffs, restructuring, and really can't figure out what or where they want to be. Very few of the majority shareholder partners remain at the company, and the CEO spends more time on twitter and golfing than actually executing a clear strategy. Multiple failed initiatives by this company and you'll see leaders throwing temper tantrums on linkedin when poor news articles come out, indicating the complicity of CTC in the campaign. Lack of ownership and transparency from leadership on top of very little process or foundation, also hinders the ability to scale. At the end of the day, most of the leaders aren't sharp enough to figure out a plan and stick with it. It's a shame that they were unable to capitalize on their early success and market before it was too late... but now, the only thing keeping CTC alive is cheap labor and personal connections to bigger accounts that keep them breathing on life support.

Explore other reviews about Common Thread Collective

5.0
Jan 7, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lots of learnings, working with great people and clients

Cons

Hard work, as expected in agency life

1.0
Jul 19, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You will learn quick what to avoid in future companies and employees. Every role after will be a breath of fresh air.

Cons

CTC is a chaotic, ego-driven mess, churning and burning employees and clients. CEO Taylor Holiday is a wannabe Twitter influencer playing entrepreneur, surrounded by an inner-circle of unqualified buddies. Strategy changes constantly, positive reviews are fabricated, departments are dissolved on a whim, and layoffs are routine. CTC demands unrealistic output from overworked employees, all while preaching a fake culture of “transparency” and “work-life balance.” Transparency means hyped-up financial updates paired with weird parties and alcohol, followed immediately by entire department layoffs. Work-life balance means 60 hour work weeks with a level of micromanagement I haven’t seen before or since. Not convinced yet? Welcome to leadership meetings where no one has a plan and everyone is too afraid to say the truth. Staying close to the in-crowd matters more than results or performance because it might just keep you your job. I’ll never forget CTC’s empty promises about development and achieving dreams, all while exploiting, discarding, and abusing everyone in sight. If you value your career, mental health, or basic respect, stay far away.

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