Pros
This is a consulting gig. If you have been to biz school, then you know what that means - hard work, long hours - but it comes with rewards: Good pay (even in this economy), pretty good benefits, opportunity to rise in the ranks based on performance. If quantitative marketing research is your area, then there aren't many environments like AP. You can rise without too much corp politics. Why little corp politics at AP? It's a relative small company, quantitative analysis is their core biz (not an add-on department to another biz), so you get as much responsibility as you can handle so long as you make it clear that you want responsibility. There aren't many places where you get to dive into analytics, then get groomed to advise Fortune 500 clients after a couple of years of quant work. The back office is the front office - there are no data jockeys in one dept with client-service PR jockeys in another dept. When they hire you, they expect you to develop into a total package - data guru, and client service hot shot all rolled up in one. Like I said, it ain't easy. It's about as pure a consulting gig as you can get nowadays. And, they aren't shipping off the quant jobs to India or other sweatshop country, which I am grateful for.
Cons
The pluses are the minuses. This is a consulting gig - hard work, long hours. This is not for everyone. If it is for you, you can't beat it.