Lewis Lazare on Wal-Mart and Julie Roehm!!!

Many thanks to "Watching the waters flow" for posting this column by Lewis Lazare in today's Chicago Sun Times... As WTWF says... "this is suitable for framing... It is fucking brutal and makes my stuff look like it was written by a pussy cat... Enjoy...

Wal-Mart mess typifies ad world woes

December 7, 2006
BY LEWIS LAZARE Sun-Times Columnist
There's plenty about the Julie Roehm mess at Wal-Mart to sicken observers of the marketing and advertising world. But the most repugnant and telling aspect of it all has to be Roehm's brazen attempt Tuesday to cavalierly explain away her abrupt departure from Wal-Mart.
In a prepared statement issued to the media from her bunker hideaway, Roehm had the audacity to suggest that, of course, it was time for her to exit Wal-Mart in the middle of the night because her job as an agent of change at the retailing behemoth was completed -- an assertion, mind you, no one at Wal-Mart was in a hurry to second. And yes indeed, Roehm said she now was ready to tackle her next challenge.

If nothing else, Roehm's preposterously dumb statement made crystal clear exactly how much of a marketing charlatan this woman must be at her core. Could she honestly have expected anyone to fall for such a pompously idiotic effort to justify an inexplicable and ugly situation -- one whose full impact has yet to be revealed?

But what did Roehm accomplish in a brief 10 months on the job as Wal-Mart's senior vice president of marketing communication? Nothing less than destroying just about everything she touched in what had been a fairly well-defined and successful corporate culture, including relationships with two ad agencies -- Bernstein-Rein and GSD&M -- that worked for decades to help build Wal-Mart into the dominant brand it is today.

In the wake of Tuesday's stunning revelation that Roehm was out the door at Wal-Mart, plenty of people, including us, wondered what qualified this woman to hold one of the most powerful marketing positions in America. And no one we've talked to who worked with her at Wal-Mart or knew of her previous career could tell us with any conviction that she had the credentials to wreak havoc on Wal-Mart's marketing department.

Sadly, Roehm might be the most glaring example in recent memory of a particularly repellent type of executive that has infested the advertising and marketing world on both the client and agency sides. She is a creepy version of a particularly crafty scam artist who sails onward and upward on wave after wave of ill-deserved hype, while using some savvy political skills to sell themselves to others who are perhaps even more clueless.

There are plenty of things that are wrong with the advertising industry. Roehm was one of them. She might be gone for now, but the many more like her who are in positions of great power and influence in this business will only ensure things grow much worse before there is any hope of a brighter future.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/lazare/163338,CST-FIN-Lew07.article

Julies new office!

Comments

[TangerineToad]

Dunno George. I'll be curious how this is spun in the NON-ad press (and it will be spun.)

Good chance that Draft will come out fine-- he'll get even more publicity for an agency no one heard of until this summer and if you've been following, they've been on a serious new business roll.

Wal-Mart, which is already evil personified to the PC community (to which many, if not most. journalists belong) may well wind up looking like the rubes from Bentonville who got taken by Miss Julie and calling a second, Julie-less review will nail that home. It could also be spun as Evil Wal-Mart beating up poor Madison Avenue, making these shops spent zillions to present again, just because they can. (W-M is known for abusing vendors, so it follows.)

Time will tell. Meanwhile, get your popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show.

[Ad-On]

Like the vault, but I was picturing porn shop. Oh, you said home. My bad.

[lionmate]

from the dickhead himself. read the last paragraph and laugh:

Hi everyone,

We are disappointed to inform you that DraftFCB will not be working with Wal-Mart. A number of events have occurred at Wal-Mart in recent weeks. Today they are announcing their decision to begin the pitch process again. We will not be participating.

We should all remain incredibly proud of the fact that after a grueling five-month review, we won this business against dozens of worthy competitors. We want to thank you for the brilliance of your thinking and the work we presented. The enthusiasm during our final pitch was palpable. It’s a shame that we won’t be able to deliver on them for Wal-Mart.

The greatest thing about the Wal-Mart pitch process is it energized our entire organization, and it became a central rallying cry for all of us. We need to keep that feeling alive now more than ever. When we announced the formation of DraftFCB, we were two healthy and profitable agencies. Today we are one huge, healthy and profitable company. And we hadn’t even begun to experience any revenue benefit from Wal-Mart.

Our new business machine, separately and now together, has been on fire this year, welcoming new business from such major marketers as Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Wyeth, MoneyGram, Novartis, Dow, MetLife, Roche, Schering and NAACP, among several others. We’re also winning major new assignments from some of our current clients.

Our culture is based on the key underpinnings of integrity, accountability, creativity and client-centricity. It will remain so. Let’s not let this situation shake our confidence. Our best days are ahead. We can feel it.

Howard, Jonathan, Laurence and Bob

[Ad-On]

Look at the numbers on those NB wins, they suck. Those accounts are bits and pieces of shit. The amount of revenue they spent on the Wal-Mart account probably burned all the revenue of those victories. Howard put some revene dollars to those names, and not the spin # or name. Rally the troops to start sending out their resumes. Get out folks before the axe slams you up the ass.

[Ad-On]

I should say lion fuck you up the ass.

[Ad-On]

Or before: Howard, Jonathan, Laurence and Bob fuck you up the ass. That's right, they already did, but Julie was sitting on your face.

[Ad-On]

Howie and Johny, Larry and Bobby can feel it! Feal it really good! Ump, Oh baby baby, Ump! Give it to me, Ump, Oh baby baby, We was disted by the Wal-Thing but Howie is still our king, slammin' Julie was all the bling bling in the Austin of all things. Pickin up peices of this mess is somthing that we will invest, yous got to believe. Drink the fucking coool aid before I shove it down yo mother-fuckin throught! Bitch!

[Bob]

Ooo, confidential email! thanks, Lionmate.

BTW, George, I alerted you to the "Lazare Rips Bitch" story a full half-day before "watching The Waters Flow."

Being a copywriter, I want my credit. And not just a frigging slash, either. Now, damn it!

[George Parker]

Bob
You are right... Humble appologies. It's just that there are so many visitors and posters to AdScam these days I am losing track. Anyway, thanks again.
Cheers/George

[Bob]

You really are covering this story better than anyone else. And it only promises to get better.

Good times, good times.

[theo kie]

I'll be surprised if Draft/FCB comes out a "winner" from this. What right-minded new business consultant or CMO wants to get press for inviting the agency involved in such a widely publicized mess into their new business pitch? As unethical as this business is, the spotlight of publicity plays big, here.

One other note of interest from the Chicago Tribune online...Mayor Daley himself made a special trip to Draft/FCB to congratulate them on the win. Daley isn't going to like this very much.

Just one more embarrasing point to this story of the year.

[monkeyman]

I'm not sure if Draft will come out of this clean. WM is essentially chargin misconduct. More to the point, if more companies ran their in-house operations and ethic like WM (whatever you think of them as retailers), there'd be a lot less SEC investigations in the world. Right IPG/Roth?

[Tangerine Toad]

Again Monkey, the only "misconduct" places like CNBC and the Times are talking about is a dinner at Nobu. Which is designed to make Wal-Mart look foolish, not Draft.

I mean look at Ogilvy-- 2 top execs, including the CFO, sent to PRISON for messing with the US Government, tricking with time sheets etc., where the judge was so disgusted by the behavior that she made one of them write an advertising code of ethics as part of her punishment. And yet no one calls this into question during pitches or even seems to remember it. (Though you can bet if Wal-Mart gives Ogilvy the account, the anti-WM press will have a field day with it!)

Not sure anyone's going to be bothered by a dinner at Nobu or a ride in an Aston-Martin.

And as for "money under the table" - Monkey's explanation of the financial arrangement they'd worked out sounds far more likely.

The spin on this one will play out quickly- let's see how the newsweeklies cover it on Monday.

[JC]

they make you look like a pussy cat too

http://www.saam.tv/homepage.html
(second from the left on the bottom row)