Readers of one of my other blogs, AdScam, will know that I have been following The continuing, and somewhat hilarious, Julie Roehm/Sean Womack/Wal-Mart legal hassle, when she was booting out from Wal-Mart after nine months, along with the agency she maneuvered in there, Draft/FCB, after five day. But today’s disclosures in the New York Times make the Sir Martin Sorrell trial look like small potatoes. Emails from Julie to Sean, intercepted by Sean’s wife are full of choice bits like… “I think about us together all the time. Little moments like watching your face when you kiss me.” Ouch!!!
There’s also information that Draft FCB officials had paid for more than $2,000 in meals for Ms. Roehm and Mr. Womack. On one night alone in August 2006, the company said, the ad agency spent $1,100 on dinner and drinks for the pair — $700 at LuxBar in Chicago, then $440 on drinks at the Peninsula Hotel. This was while the agency review process was going on! And Wal-Mart is notorious for not allowing employees to accept even a cup of coffee from a vendor, let alone a $1,100 dinner.
It just goes to prove two things… Never think that anything you put in an email is safe… And above all else, people in advertising think they are not only a step removed from the realities of life, which they prove daily by producing unrealistic work, but beyond that, they considered themselves… Fireproof… In other words they suffered form an increasingly common ailment… “Hubris.”
With the incredible content of their emails, and their openly aggressive pitch for employment with the agency they intended to recommend to Wal-Mart, the people paying their salaries, one has to wonder at the naivety, not to mention bone-headed stupidity of these people. Wal-Mart is now suing them for ALL their legal costs. Not only will these people never work in marketing or advertising again (unless they can find someone even more stupid than they are to employ them.) They will spend the rest of their days paying off the costs of this moronic mess they have got themselves into. Serves them right!
George Parker
Blogging for:
Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 17 Nov 2009
Total Posts: 831
