8825: C’MON WHITE MAN! Episode 9.

(MultiCultClassics credits ESPN’s C’MON MAN! for sparking this semi-regular blog series.)

Two stories emerged in the past week with similarities worth spotlighting:

Advertising Age published the details of Ogilvy New York CCO Lars Bastholm reaching a “mutual decision” with his bosses to leave the agency after a two-year run.

Adweek published the details of former StrawberryFrog New York CSO Ilana Bryant launching a legal battle with her ex-employer.

In both cases, the agencies originally pursued and wooed the executives, hired them with great fanfare and quickly promoted them—only to decide Bastholm and Bryant were not a good fit and a divisive, negative force, respectively.

There’s an old management rule that reads, “Hire slow, fire fast.” Looks like the aforementioned agencies did the exact opposite, and ultimately wrote a new tenet that rambles, “Hire fast, promote faster, realize the errors slowly, let the situation deteriorate more slowly, seek an exit strategy via ‘mutual decision’ or ‘voluntary resignation’ at a turtle’s pace, make a clumsy announcement with the speed of a crippled snail and draw out the painful affair interminably.” Hell, David Ogilvy probably wants to rise from the grave and bash his disciples’ skulls with a Magic Lantern, while someone should force-feed StrawberryFrog CEO Scott Goodson a strawberry poison-dart frog.

Of course, Ogilvy North American Chairman John Seifert, Ogilvy North American CCO Steve Simpson and Goodson will walk away from the ugly scenarios they created scot-free—as agency staffers ride out the impending political storms and/or lose their jobs.

Seifert once admitted the industry is “not exactly leading the way” in regards to diversity and inclusion. Yet the douchebag clearly demonstrates he can’t even handle hiring White men. On the flipside, Goodson’s antics may succeed in persuading humans of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, religions, disabilities and other cultural categories to avoid the field altogether.

C’MON WHITE MEN!