Advertising Pain: Agency Outlook For 2009

As goes mainstream media, ad agencies might follow.For a little over a year, mainstream media and marketing has continued to tumble. In fact, according to AdAge, Wal-Mart Stores and McDonald's Corp. were the only two of Advertising Age/Bloomberg AdMarket 50 stocks to see gains.The rest of the 48 marketer, media and agency stocks were all down in 2008, with most dropping double digits in value. Not surprisingly, McClatchy...

Ending Fairytales: Judge Denise Langford Morris

According to the Associated Press, Judge Denise Langford Morris has temporarily ended the reverse Cinderella story that took misguided advertising star and self-proclaimed change agent Julie Roehm to the brink of mayhem marketing celebrity. Right, the pumpkin coach she was riding in could not find the right home at midnight and the court unceremoniously dismissed it because Roehm's case against Wal-Mart should have been...

Ordering Up Ethics: Flogs, Blogs, And Posers

After reading that 279 U.S. chief marketing officers, directors of marketing and marketing managers polled in the PRWeek/Manning Selvage & Lee (MS&L) Marketing Management Survey revealed some confusion over ethics, I posted a poll to see if a self-selected group of participants could determine which of eight case scenarios might demonstrate the greatest ethical breach, noting that some were not ethical breaches...

Revealing Ethical Realities: PRWeek/MS&L

Some public relations professionals and communicators scratched their heads because I didn't call for the resignation of John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, Inc. despite the obvious: what he did was wrong. Perhaps part of the answer can be found in the PRWeek/Manning Selvage & Lee (MS&L) Marketing Management Survey.The survey polled 279 U.S. chief marketing officers, directors of marketing and marketing managers...

Covering Hot Topics: Second Quarter 2007

Every quarter, we publish a recap of our five most popular communication-related posts, based on the frequency and the immediacy of hits after they were posted. While we base this on individual posts, some are related to larger case studies.Jericho Fans Make Television HistoryWhen CBS executives cancelled Jericho over Nielsen ratings, fans of this post- nuclear terrorist attack/small town survival drama went nuts, literally....

Whacking Wal-Mart: BusinessWeek

If there ever was a case study that I would like to see concluded, it is the continued controversy and media spectacle between Julie Roehm and Wal-Mart. In the end, of the two parties still playing (the rest had the sense to exit gracefully), no one is going to win.Some members of the media are working hard to make sure of it, looking under every stone for evidence to prove that Wal-Mart is not only unethical but also...

Firing Punchlines: Wal-Mart

If Julie Roehm thinks she has a wrongful termination suit after, er, allegedly breaching ethics policies, then David Noordewier, a former Wal-Mart cashier in Michigan, might get in line. He was fired for joking on his MySpace page that "the average IQ would increase if a bomb were dropped on the company's stores."According to The Flint Journal, his bosses at the Shelby Township Wal-Mart store in Michigan weren't laughing....

Spinning 2.x: Julie Roehm

If the art of spin is part of Julie Roehm's marketing 2.x concept, she's certainly trying to employ it in court. Roehm's defense tactic against Wal-Mart is to exonerate herself by accusing executives at the #1 retailer of ignoring company ethics policy.She says they accepted trips and gifts from clients and benefited from preferential prices on jewelry and yachts, implying that maybe that makes it okay that she broke...

Counting Casualties: DraftFCB

Of all the casualties related to the Julie Roehm vs. Wal-Mart legal battle, the quietest past participant seems to be nursing the largest wounds. According to Noreen O'Leary's Apr. 2 story in ADWEEK, DraftFCB is still in the shadow of scandal.Although there is no public evidence that the agency's recent account woes are linked to Wal-Mart, O'Leary writes that some claim reviews of the $1.5 million John Deere and $3.5...

Using The Force: Social Media

"It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together." — Obi-Wan KenobiI'm fully prepared to take a little flack for drawing an analogy between social media and the Force from Star Wars, but the comparison can be as startling as it is humorous. Like the Force, social media has various manifestations with the light side focused on elegance and beauty and the dark side aligned with fear, hatred, aggression, and...

Selling Change: Roehm & Womack

Emotional Intelligence enthusiasts might see a "change agent" as the perfect person to help a struggling company or industry out of a rut, but CEOs need to be careful with them because change agents can put big holes in the wall as easily as they can pound nails in the right spot.In other words, a change agent might fearlessly introduce new ideas to enhance a company. Or, a change agent might might become addicted to...

Taking The Bottom Position

Two days ago, we alluded to the idea that Julie Roehm was only the first casualty of a Wal-Mart insider marketing war. Yesterday, the fine folks at Draft FCB found out they were the next to go, just weeks after they crowed about being in the 'top position,' partly because they won the account. I guess it's back to the bottom position for them, making their ill-advised ad the ultimate case study for irony in advertising. The not-so-surprising news yesterday was that Wal-Mart quickly overturned Roehm's Draft FCB choice, putting...

Advertising The Lack Of …

Every day, the sudden departure of Wal-Mart marketing boss Julie Roehm is attracting more attention and is increasingly linked to her connection with Draft FCB, which she pushed to become Wal-Mart's agency of record in October. Speculation suggests Roehm flouted Wal-Mart's strict corporate gratuities policy, which states no one who works for the company can accept any sort of gratuities from suppliers (even a cup of...