Julie Roehm Files Suit Against Wal-Mart

“Julie Roehm, the former Wal-Mart marketing executive whose December ouster caused a media firestorm, has filed a lawsuit against the retailer, claiming Wal-Mart breached her contract and smeared her in the press.” Via AdAge

“At the center of the lawsuit is Ms. Roehm’s allegation that Wal-Mart hasn’t lived up to its end of the compensation deal she agreed to when she joined the company a year ago. That agreement, according to the documents, included base pay of $325,000, a signing bonus of $250,000, annual incentive-based payments and restricted stock worth up to $300,000. The lawsuit was filed without fanfare last month in state court in Michigan, where the former Chrysler executive keeps a residence, but it was transferred to federal court.”

I covered Julie Roehm before on this blog. What I didn’t mention was that when I spent a week in Wal-Mart’s Bentonville Home Office in “Action Alley”, Edelman and Wal-Mart’s Bentonville side of the tin can phone to the Washington “Wal Room.” I spent that week in Bentonville, Arkansas, living in Edelman’s corporate apartments as an employee of Edelman and a guest of Wal-Mart.

To be honest, in a world of cheap putty-colored cubes and battleship gray halls, Julie Roehm was the only heat in the entire marketing, creative and communications office. She was blond, brassy, hot, and always on the phone. She smiled and gesticulated. She closed the door to her green office whenever she pleased. I wonder if she took out her own trash.

Everything else at the Wal-Mart home office in Bentonville, Arkansas, was cheap, frugal, putty-colored, and practical.

Julie Roehm turned heads when she painted her windows-free office chartreuse in an attempt to breathe any energy of excitement at all into a company that is so frugal that it demands its executive employee to collect and put out its own trash every night.

Did I mention that she is striking, slender, fit, and charismatic? Antithetical to Wal-Mart, antithetical to Bentonville.

I don’t know what it is like outside the Home Office as I have never been a Wal-Mart Associate, but Wal-Mart HQ is so frugal that the coffee service has a mandatory payment required. Yes, the cafeteria is inexpensive, but I wonder if that was because Wal-Mart subsidizes it or because Arkansas is a cheap place to live and I am too used to Washington.

I don’t blame Julie Roehm for any of this. Looking at her track record, Julie has been a consistent interrupter and agent of discomfort and change. I really wouldn’t have believed how earnest Wal-Mart could have been until I experienced it for myself.

Wal-Mart executives passionately believe in who they are and what they do; they are a company of Spartans in a world of self-indulgent and depraved Romans and I guess they bit off more than they could chew when it came to dealing with the livid and sometime Dionysian world of advertising.

“In addition to financial damages, Ms. Roehm is looking to retrieve items left in her office at the Bentonville, Ark., headquarters. She’s demanding the return of her media exchange files, material from presentations and work she did prior to joining Wal-Mart, and copies of her Microsoft Outlook folders, including her personal contacts”

I hope Julie Roehm wins a billion dollars. Wal-Mart can afford it and Julie Roehm deserves it. Wal-Mart should have been better at knowing to turn a better blind eye at the way things really work on Madison Avenue and in Gucci Gulch. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Yes, Wal-Mart, you are surely passionate about what you do and I still support you when it comes to Wal-Mart’s lowest prices and competition being the only thing besides the Dollar Menu that makes poor Americans actually feel middle class. I also admire you, Wal-Mart, for taking chances on inner-cities and distressed urban neighborhoods. I like to think of Wal-Mart as the company store. The Army PX for all of America, subsidized by affordable production abroad and affordable union-free wage earners at home. Thank you. I am wearing a brown leather belt today that I got at Wal-Mart #1 in Bentonville, Arkansas! From the George collection.

Thank you for that.

I admire you, Wal-Mart, for being able to drive innovation when it comes to greening trucking (hybrid diesel trucks), lighting (LEDs, OLEDs and fluorescence), heating, and solar.

You guys rock, but you did know who Julie Roehm was before you hired her and you got what you bought. It takes a woman like her to disrupt business as usual at Wal-Mart. You should have protected her, guarded her, and made sure that her personal life was her own. Instead, she was forsaken and shamed. How much money do you have put aside when you get a judgement against you. I bet she had a pretty amazing contract. I bet you it is pretty tight.

“Where to next? ‘Anyplace that doesn’t end in -ville,’ she said. But if she has her choice, it’ll be one of the big three: New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.”

Godspeed and good luck.

Via AdAge

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