Just saw some announcements about re-org and displacements happened last week all over Marketing. All of the groups were impacted as far as I can tell. A lot of spans and layers type adjustments with small team managers turning into ind cont roles and some lost their jobs after consolidations. Also saw ind cont and svp level displacements too. So, it must be a percentage cut across all of the levels. Anybody has a headcount?
17 replies (most recent on top)
@1coo+1a7dqrpD You nailed it, and that's not just in marketing. In digital too, it's easier to make up fluffy stuff to justify a req than to give up the req for lack of need... in case you have to ask for a new one in a year or two when the team really IS under-resourced. It's like FTE hoarding. "I know this thing sitting in my house is not really useful, but it might be SOMEDAY... so I'm gonna keep it."
Plus, the new spans and layers rules make it even LESS likely that a manager on the bubble in terms of # of directs will let one go willingly.
I don't buy that people consciously invent meetings to justify headcount. I think it's the consensus driven culture run amuck. Nobody wants to take on the risk of making a decision. Better to be a "good partner" and have lots of meetings, which has the added benefit of making everyone look super busy.
It’s empire building. They fill open jobs regardless of the workload because they don’t want to lose the position. Then they create useless busywork and schedule multiple mandatory weekly meetings and look for ways to fill the time.
Yes, it’s incompetent management by definition
Why did The IHA hire so many new people two years ago? And now laying them off? Is that incompetent management?
Not enough work and then play the game where you need to justify how busy you are by scheduling unnecessary meetings and making up work processes to be inefficient just to waste time. Work has become bizarre. Managers send out group emails asking everyone what their favorite animal is. Not joking. People sending group emails with very long manifestos stating their political and life views, is that even legal? Not work related. Posers trying to convince managers that they are tech or creative gurus. LOL.
@kkj+1a7dqrpD : thanks. That's what I was suspecting. After a lot of people moved to LOB marketing organizations in recent mınths, 100-200 cut is a quite large number for what's left in former organization. So, LOB Marketing organizations must be the future then?
Why do we even still have an in house agency? Everything else is getting outsourced but we still have this group that takes twice as long as any outside agency to get a piece of work right and out the door.
Correct. Folks at that level generally don’t clean out their desks at the end of the day when displaced. Just because they don’t have ZZ after their names doesn’t mean they dodged layoff. ML and JA are displaced, as are several folks in Social.
between 100 and 200 ppl were noticed in marketing last week (the part that reports to ML). so that is quite significant in a group of 900-ish people
museums is in Public Affairs now, and they are on a separate timeline for reductions.
ML and Jen A are out. they are staying for a predetermined time to help with transitions... but make no mistake about it, they are out.
@Idontseeit: many of the impacted are announced but not zz'ed right away for some reason I don't know why but already heard from others they're done. One example is ML and another is JA.
WIM Marketing is an area where cuts are long over due. Marshall and his leaders are a joke. Nothing innovated comes out of this group.
Huh?? Marketing barely got touched. Only 1 high ranking manager was cut. Maybe a handful of individual contributors mainly in digital were cut. ML is still here and thriving no zz by his name. Museum team untouched even though they are closed, pony program untouched even though the pony program didn’t launch an event like a parade. So where is the blood bath? It’s a full house in marketing still.
New CMO from JPMC in 3...2...1...
I’m trying to remember the last time I or somebody said “hey wait we gotta get marketing on this call”
Is ML still there?
Old news. See other thread.
My group got hit, but I wouldn’t call it a bloodbath. Still plenty of people with nothing to do but pretend to be busy.