The Ugliness Of The MarCom Business

Our business practices get uglier and uglier.

Witness the recent actions taken by Christian Meunier, the new sales and marketing chief for Nissan in the U.S. AD AGE reported he gathered his team and the brand’s agencies together in a room and told them their work for the company “was shit.”

He gave them a week to make it better. They humped, showed him their efforts, and he still declared it “shit” and demanded more work. Ándale! Ándale!!!

They humped some more and created something that finally satisfied their demanding overlord.

Look, this guy has every right to be upset with his agencies if he doesn’t like the work, but to report his macho man actions to AUTOMOTIVE NEWS (and later AD AGE) is an ugly, cruel, and dare I say, even dickish move. How is that good for anyone’s business?

Nissan’s agencies are publicly shamed. The auto brand is tarnished. And he, he comes off looking like a total jerk on a power play.

Why didn’t he go and give the CMO he replaced a quick one to the crotch and some rabbit punches to the kidney for leading Nissan’s agencies, then approving their “shit work” for the brand?

On the plus side, which Will Burns of Forbes has pointed out, Meunier did not do what most new marketing chiefs do: call for an account review. Then, the incumbent agency gets to jump through rings of fire before being cast into hell, where the poor pathetic bastards can search for the snowball’s chance they had of retaining said business.

Yeah, for not doing that, the guy’s a real prince.

Where’s the empathy, professionalism and decency for one another?

People, our business is tough enough–– can’t we, at least, be civil?