{"id":2696,"date":"2006-12-09T22:18:07","date_gmt":"2006-12-09T22:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2696"},"modified":"2006-12-09T22:18:07","modified_gmt":"2006-12-09T22:18:07","slug":"wal-mart_cultur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2696","title":{"rendered":"Wal-Mart Culture\/Marketing Clash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two interesting articles on the identity conflict underway (perhaps being resolved?) at Wal-Mart:<Ul><\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/12\/08\/business\/media\/08adco.html?ex=1323234000&amp;en=de118fe5a2c4f287&amp;ei=5090&amp;partner=rssuserland&amp;emc=rss\">Michael Barbaro &#038; Stuart Elliott<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><i>Yesterday, in a surprising rebuke, Wal-Mart overturned Ms. Roehm&rsquo;s choice to replace the company&rsquo;s longtime advertising agencies &mdash; a decision that puts $580 million worth of marketing up for grabs again, two months after the original search process ended.<\/p>\n<p>Her departure has roiled Madison Avenue and sent several major agencies scrambling to dust off their marketing plans for the nation&rsquo;s largest retailer.<\/p>\n<p>At the heart of the controversy, everyone agreed, is a culture clash. Ms. Roehm, a 35-year-old rising star who won acclaim in advertising circles for her work in the automobile industry, was never at home within the painstakingly modest by-the-books culture of Wal-Mart.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/12\/09\/business\/media\/09walmart.html?ex=1323320400&amp;en=35fba1233ca25fc7&amp;ei=5090&amp;partner=rssuserland&amp;emc=rss\">Michael Barbaro &#038; Stuart Elliott<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p><i>t was the kind of bold advertising campaign that Wal-Mart executives agreed was needed to attract style-hungry consumers: a series of commercials featuring two sisters &mdash; one a regular Wal-Mart shopper, the other not &mdash; trying to redecorate their homes.<\/p>\n<p>In commercials set to run throughout this holiday season, the sisters were to discover that Wal-Mart offers a lot more than low prices.<\/p>\n<p>But in July, as gasoline prices spiked, senior executives abruptly scrapped plans for the so-called sisters campaign, sending a marketing team led by Julie Roehm scrambling to create a replacement, according to people involved in the process. The reason was that the ads did not focus enough on low prices.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two interesting articles on the identity conflict underway (perhaps being resolved?) at Wal-Mart: Michael Barbaro &#038; Stuart Elliott: Yesterday, in a surprising rebuke, Wal-Mart overturned Ms. Roehm&rsquo;s choice to replace the company&rsquo;s longtime advertising agencies &mdash; a decision that puts $580 million worth of marketing up for grabs again, two months after the original search [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,6,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}