C’mon man, bail me out!

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Just got a note from someone who said they spit their coffee out when they read a line in my most recent blog, Are You Employee #1? about some outfits still using Yellow Pages and Drive-Time radio. “Good line”, he said. “you should use that in one of your e-strategy talks”. I probably will, ah, but alas, if it weren’t so. It wasn’t even a bit of a stretch. If you’ve followed any of my rantings on The Enlightened Rogue, you’ll know of some of my escapades in the land of the would-be creatives. The kind of like, un-good ones.

It’s a rough and tumble world, full of politics, miscommunication, hubris, sleight of hand, back stabbing and fade offs. A fade off is when they just stop returning your calls or e-mails after they’ve started the project. Even after you’ve posted it sometimes. It happens. If you’ve ever sold capital equipment you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. You can take a drink and water your plants at the same time if you’ve done it long enough. Gratefully, I have some wonderful folks I partner with. Without them I’d need a substance. Eh, I’d probably take it anyway.

I got the usual “ya gotta help me, man” from an old associate who just took over the top marketing position in an international plasma gathering company. Competition is fierce and so is the work ethic. They eat, drink and sleep volume. Hire low, pay low and keep opening clinics, in malls, empty office space and anywhere they can fit ten people. 20 clinics a year, minimum. They get push back from some of the communities they’re trying to move into because of the element it draws looking for some easy money. They line up around corners first thing in the morning and draw the ire of local denizens. You’re not drawing Wall St. employees here. They have to screen the users out.

It gets worse, so I’m not going to get any deeper. But, suffice it to say, the pay sucks, the culture really sucks and none of the thousands of employees has any idea who resides in the home office in Florida. That’s where “ya gotta help me man,” came in. He told me, any executive from the home office can walk into any location in any part of the world and no one will recognize them. Maybe they have a reality show on the side. They ain’t gettin’ none o’ my blood.

We’re talking blood here, not urine samples. In one of my blogs, as part of my supervised therapy, 🙂 I wrote him a letter venting my disapproval of how this whole thing suddenly got derailed on a whim and how unprofessionally he handled himself after leaving me hanging and screwing me out of some considerable change that I had up-fronted. To this day he never got back to me with any type of explanation. Note: You don’t want the likes of me drawing any conclusions. Trust me.

The point of this whole rag is to let my inquirer know that I didn’t make up the Yellow Page/Radio marketing thing. People just keep putting their head down and doing the same old tired approach 20 years into the digital revolution.

Another reason I was brought in, was to do cultural videos and manage the digital signage program as they are sitting on a powder keg of unhappy, not on the same page, employees. Very dangerous, as he explained to me. I guess those 40 screens are on their way back to Samsung or Sony. My therapist is urging me to hang in there, he enjoys these stories plus, he has kids to put through college.

Used to be, when a big company gave you the shaft, you just had to chalk it up. But, it seems, I ran out of chalk.

If you have any questions or need advice, please feel free to reach out to me here.

Bob O’Hearn
508-517-6714
bob@doubleocreative.com