At one point, Roehm-the sole breadwinner for her husband, Mike, and sons Luke and Nick-was nearly $1 million in debt. | Photograph by Danielle Levitt
Roehm at home: She's been trying to leave Bentonville since the she lost her job. | Photograph by Danielle Levitt
Ever since, Roehm has been moving at Madison Avenue speed. While at Purdue studying civil engineering, she worked every other semester at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where she met Mike, a pharmaceutical packaging engineer, and discovered her passion for marketing. She was handpicked for Ford's prestigious Marketing Leadership Program while getting her MBA at the University of Chicago. "The deep, dark secret about Julie is that she's a brilliant engineer and a very analytical marketer," says Jim Schroer, Ford's former vice president of global marketing. "She doesn't come off that way -- she loves to be on stage -- but her talent is hidden behind that flash and dazzle."
Roehm was all of 28 when she led the U.S. launch of the Ford Focus, a European model previously shunned by the American market. Schroer recalls her presentation to Ford execs: "She said, 'I want all you gentlemen to take off your wristwatch and put it on the other arm.' She looked at Wayne Booker [Ford's then vice chairman]. 'Wayne, how does that feel?' He said, 'It feels terrible.' She said, 'You better get used to it because that's how you're going to feel by the end of this presentation.' " Her plan, she told them, was to give away Focuses to P. Diddy and 30 of his hip-hop brethren outside Roxbury Clubs in New York, Miami, and L.A. It was radical for Ford both in its media channel and for its pop-culture aspirations. And it worked. That year, says Schroer, 40% of Focuses sold were to consumers under age 30, which Ford hadn't seen "for a couple of decades." When Schroer left Ford in 2001 to become DaimlerChrysler's executive vice president for global sales and marketing, he took Roehm with him.
By the time Roehm became DaimlerChrysler's director of global marketing communications, responsible for its $1.6 billion Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge media budgets, she had tamed the Detroit boys club. "Let's face it, if you're an attractive woman, they either assume you're stupid or they want you to be," she says. "For me, to be underestimated is the best card I hold." At Chrysler, she quickly became known for trying to overhaul the media-buying process (that didn't happen) and for persuading dealers to shift from newspaper classifieds to digital ads. "We gave her two-thirds the budget of her predecessor, and she made it act like five times the amount in the marketplace," says Schroer. But her biggest transformation was creating the Dodge "Grab life by the horns" tagline. "This completely rejuvenated the perception of the brand with the customer base and invigorated our engineers and designers," says Wolfgang Bernhard, Chrysler's former chief operating officer. "Normally, from marketing people, you never get a message so powerful. She did it."
It was also at Chrysler that Roehm got her first taste of the dark side of risk. In 2003, when launching the butch Dodge Durango, she decided the brand should sponsor the Lingerie Bowl, a pay-per-view Super Bowl halftime show featuring supermodels playing football in their panties. The idea was affordable and hit her demographic dead-on, but once family advocacy groups -- who threatened to picket Chrysler dealerships -- discovered that a mother of two young sons was behind the campaign, "I became the pinup girl for the woman who has no respect for other women," she says. "It was like I was promoting sex slavery or something." Roehm's picture was suddenly in USA Today, which also criticized her for other Chrysler ads involving urinals and wife swapping. She pulled out of the sponsorship, and her bosses backed her up, but she knew her reputation had been dinged: "I thought the thing that would be nailed on my tombstone was, 'Julie Roehm, mother of two. She did the Lingerie Bowl.' "
If only. In March 2007, The New York Times ran a leaked email that Roehm had allegedly sent to her Wal-Mart subordinate, Sean Womack: "I think about us together all of the time. Little moments like watching your face when you kiss me." The Times described it as part of the countersuit Wal-Mart filed against Roehm three months after both she and Womack, a vice president, were fired. The suit also included a statement by one of Womack's "friends": "Womack had Roehm 'pinned' against the wall in an intimate pose" in a Fayetteville bar.
Two years have passed since the spicy headlines ran everywhere from BusinessWeek to New York magazine, and I'm now sitting between Julie and Mike on their overstuffed leather couch. Julie's bare foot is hanging over the side, while Mike, who has the dashing looks of an ex-football player in his mid-forties, fetches her a glass of Spanish wine. They met when she was 18 and he was 26, and after nearly 20 years together, they qualify as an old married couple (they call each other "Tchotch"). Eight years ago, before their second son, Luke, was born, Mike decided to quit his engineering career to stay home with the boys. Julie's salary was bigger, her professional prospects outshone his, and he didn't want to miss out on his kids' childhood. He takes his Mr. Mom role -- driving the boys to school, doing the laundry, food shopping -- as seriously as he takes his marriage. "I think this whole experience has strengthened mine and Julie's relationship," he tells me the next day, vague about exactly which experience he's referring to. "We don't take each other for granted anymore."
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Recent Comments | 12 Total
June 25, 2009 at 8:46pm by Debra Darby
Please do us a favor next time and talk to the other side of Julie's house....Schroer (fired from DCX and Carlson), Fandozzi ( much wreckage created at DCX) Wolfgang (please), Sergio (why didn't she hire her?). Julie is a user and a definitive narcissist who's blind ambition and zest for power meant mowing down all who got in her way, and taking credit for anything and everything that she felt would propel her. The Walmart fiasco...protecting her family? What arrogance to sue Walmart when she: had an affair with a person she hired, gave the account to FCB with promises they would hire her and Sean, wined and dined and got hammered with agency consultants in New York, f'ed Sean on the Walmart corporate jet, the list goes on. She tried to play scorched earth with Walmart and was arrogant enough to think she could force them to pay....unbelievable. Julie loves one thing above all else...herself. Fast Company has lost all credibility.
July 3, 2009 at 12:52am by Nick Pencils
Enough of the Julie Roehm bashing already.
What is it with amerikans? They get their underwear in a knot anytime a woman begins to show any level of achievement by using the methods men have used since 1774. Get real; as Mick Jagger said "Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints".
Ranting about how a talented, articulate, attractive, intelligent and clever female may not have followed the rules smacks of hypocrisy. If you are a woman and haven't used the mean available to you to be successful then shame on you, grow a pair of balls.
July 6, 2009 at 10:00am by Manjit Syven Birk
All this piece serves me to do is to go down darker alleys that serve me not one iota to descend into. What makes this piece more complicated is what accompanies this once I plug myself into the Google search engine. The upshot of reading this piece is that I found out in wider SEO context who George Parker of Adscam is, but reading within the article itself, I find that it suggests that Sergio Zyman came to the aid of the lady in question. No sooner as I am thinking why an industry thought leader would step into this fray, I read Jim Edwards article at BNET and I was firmly back at square one, wondering what possessed me to read this thing in the first place, and asking myself if what I may really suffer from here is the fate laid out for every rubbernecker who is not paying attention to their own life journey. At this point I strangely began to remind myself of Clint Eastwood's character Joe in a "Fistful of Dollars" - "The Baxters over there. The Rojos there. Me right in the middle."…" Crazy bellringer was right. There's money to be made in a place like this". And then right there is where I clued on to what my personal benefit for reading this weave of human misery, Machiavellian movement and mythological meandering was, it simply reminded me that I have go and watch that movie all over again, after all if I am going to pour mind over what seems like a spaghetti western, I might as well spend more of my personal time with the real thing . . . M.
July 6, 2009 at 7:54pm by David Gibson
And yet another reason I wouldn't spend a dime in Wal-Mart. They don't just want you as a customer, they want to own you. They want to tell you what you want to buy. They have a security force to watch the employees. How long before they watch the customers too? Hang in there Julie, the only mistake you made was thinking they wouldn't turn on you. Like every employee and supplier they have, you were expendable at the right time.
July 7, 2009 at 1:57pm by Motown Expat
@Debra Darby:
In the future, before commenting on an article, please do two things -
1) Grammar and spell check your comment; and,
2) Check your facts.
Sergio Zyman is male. If you did not know that, it's stated in the article.
Your comment would have people infer that you personally know those you disparage yet your error in Mr. Zyman's gender disproves such.
August 1, 2009 at 10:25pm by Patricia Galloway
Nice piece of fluff. I've worked with women like Julie Roehm. Narcissistic doesn't begin to cover it. I'd say the same if she were a he. Sounds like she and Wal-Mart were perfect for one another.
As for Wal-Mart, you couldn't pay me to shop there. Their labor tactics - both here and abroad, their lack of concern for the towns that they destroy, their manipulation of tax laws, their utter disregard for the environment - I could go on and on.
Yes, I pay a little more - to shop at decently run businesses.
August 1, 2009 at 10:26pm by Patricia Galloway
Nice piece of fluff. I've worked with women like Julie Roehm. Narcissistic doesn't begin to cover it. I'd say the same if she were a he. Sounds like she and Wal-Mart were perfect for one another.
As for Wal-Mart, you couldn't pay me to shop there. Their labor tactics - both here and abroad, their lack of concern for the towns that they destroy, their manipulation of tax laws, their utter disregard for the environment - I could go on and on.
Yes, I pay a little more - to shop at decently run businesses.
August 5, 2009 at 4:27pm by Mimi Meredith
There is a dangerous and dark tendency in our society to judge people we know only through the media. Even as a long-standing critic of WalMart's business practices, I have to remind myself that I don't know the facts leading to the rise and fall of Ms. Roehm within WM's corporate culture.
What I do know is that marketing is a field that is driven by egos. It is difficult to separate one's self from a successful campaign or to see beyond the glory to the long-term impact of our actions. While it's difficult to be a woman in a male-dominated empire and selling new ideas (I have done that all my career--though certainly not in the corporate circles Roehm has frequented), it is also great fun. There are few of us, so when women shine, we're dazzling. It's important not to let one's dazzling self blind her to the purpose for which she was hired. It's important not to let one's creative success and strategic savvy usurp one's need to tune into the corporate culture she's serving. Cultivate humility, conceding that no great idea can truly be traced to a single individual (input leading to that great idea came from contact with the world--we aren't creative in a vacuum). When one succeeds, remember that no accolades or professional recognition; no job title or acquisition of power; not even an incredible salary package will outlast loving relationships. Most important, I wish more dazzling young professionals would realize that choosing to do the right thing isn't always chic, or fun, or popular...and I wish they'd do it anyway.
Then I wish Fast Company would write an article about them. I'm not as interested in people who come back from a great fall, as I am in celebrating those who choose the more difficult and selfless path to stay on higher ground.
August 8, 2009 at 11:22am by Tom Ryan
I read this article more than once and asked my wife to read it as well. We did not understand if we were supposed to feel empathy for Julie or we were being given another reason to dislike the organization from which she was let go.
If Julie did violate a company policy by accepting a dinner from a vendor and engaging in relations with a subordinate she did give the organization cause to terminate her contract. I cannot believe that a company of this size would not have a fairly comprehensive ethics policy with verbiage easily understood by all parties.
Based on the personality traits of Ms. Roehm conveyed in the article, I feel for her family not her. In my opinion, if your career is the path you choose in life that is fine, but think twice about a family and the balance that must exist. The actions and comments, as written in the article, of Ms. Roehm clearly indicate that she is in the game for herself first and family is a distant second.
Regardless, the article does illustrate a further erosion of the corporate moral compass on both sides in a somewhat obtuse manner. In all candor, perhaps if our society exercised higher ethical standards we would not be in the economic situation we are in today.
Best wishes to Ms. Roehm as she finds her path in life.
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Boxed In
November 9, 2009 at 4:13pm by Mike Stafford
Thanks for the informative article. Walmart recently launched a store in my neighborhood so the more I know the better. In the mean time, building solar panels can help us preserve our earth and environment.
November 11, 2009 at 1:42am by edhardy world
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