Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

In a move that shocked a lot of people, Wal-Mart chose to take away the $580 million advertising account that was awarded to Interpublic's Draft FCB unit by Julie Roehm; who along with Sean Womack, engineered the questionable deal. They offered Carat a chance to bid for the account again.

The story is getting interesting, but strange ... the more you hear about it. The New York Times confronted the issue directly with Roehm and Womack, with both denying the continuing rumors and gossip surrounding the details of the deal.

Both have been thought to be in a personal relationship that violated Wal-Mart's policies, and for accepting gifts from some of the vendors and sub-contractors. Specifically with Roehm, one anonymous source said that Wal-Mart is "They're burning everything she touched."

Like we talked about recently, "Roehm also operated more as a lone wolf than a team player, and did not keep enough executive-level management abreast of her progress or ultimate decision, further rankling top brass."

In another strange, related event, Draft FCB promoting the Cannes Lion Awards, showed "two lions copulating with the caption 'It's Good To Be On Top,' which spurred much negative talk inside the company."

With the type of business culture and values that Wal-Mart represents, it's just plain stupid what these people did. The company winning the account promoting another product like they did - basically in the face of Wal-Mart - was ignorant at the least.

This is almost sounding like a bunch of Hollywood executives making movies provoking a huge portion of the population, and wondering why movies are eroding in viewership.

The actions Wal-Mart has taken shows that there is something going on here that still hasn't come to the surface. For example, I've been wondering for months why they were marketing themselves in the way they were, estranging themselves from their core customer that had been loyal for years.

This may be the beginning of understanding where it was all coming from. My question is how can supposed professionals be so far removed from what a company stands for, that they will go against it and attempt to turn it into something else? Can they seriously have thought that they would get away with it? The situation just seems to show that they were far removed from the everyday customer they served.