I think back to 2008 and I Spy Marketing. Quite a while back, yet necessary to understand where I am now.
The CEO surrounded by his Sycophants
I have been reminiscing as of late and mulled over the time of 2008 to 2010 with this search advertising agency start up. Prior to I Spy Search Marketing I was with Yahoo! UK & Ireland. In 2007 I had been off with clinical depression and it was then that my OCD was diagnosed.
I was not in a great place career wise. I had opened up a Manchester office for Overture (Goto.com) the business that invented to Pay Per Click model that was to subsequently power Google and others ad revenue models. Overture was bought by Yahoo! and I moved over. Having set all up from scratch, then being ill, I returned to the London office to discover my having to start afresh four years of hard graft. Why?
I came back after illness in 2007 having worked so hard to set up, what was to become an established presence for Yahoo! UK and Ireland in Manchester. On heading to the London office I discovered things had changed. I had a very unfortunate meeting with Warren Burke, then a Director at Yahoo! on the Display side. It became apparent that I was to shift from the Search side to Display - I was in a commercial/sales role. The same was to apply to ex-Overture staff who like me had rebranded to Yahoo! Search Marketing. The Display staff wanted ownership of all. So, Warren Burke threw all I had achieved outside of London out of the window making no recognition of work done, and in a one to one revealed himself to be one of the most vacuous, self-fulfilling, morally bankrupt individuals I ever met in Yahoo! I have heard nothing but badness as to this fellow and his treatment of co-workers. He has sadly survived at Yahoo!.
So what exactly happened? Steve Beckwith on the Display side and one of Warren’s lower Lieutenants had used the setting up of the Manchester office to get back up North where he hails from. In a previous life Steve had worked for me at Carlton TV.
Steve Beckwith was positioned to take on the Yahoo! Manchester office with my having to work for him. Very simply Warren Burke and a chap called Phil Macaulley (Steve’s direct boss) engineered a Manchester fait accompli.
Steve Beckwith at the time proved to be one of the most petulant, un-professional individuals I had to work with, managing to annoy a wide variety of people in the Manchester business which I suspect led to the eventual demise of the office.
As mentioned and very much involved was the appalling Phil Macauley who as Steve’s line manager sanctioned all, possessing absolutely no people skills or empathy; well he certainly did not then.
Basically it was the Yahoo! lot looking after themselves and fucking over the Overture lot. In hindsight I laugh at the Yahoo! staff who for the most part were cerebrally challenged, made mistakes galore and ruined a lot of business, Overture and Flickr included.
Anyway by 2008 I’d had enough of Yahoo! and by this point was contacted by Nick Jones to join a search start up advertising business - I Spy Search Marketing. I’d worked with Nick in Yahoo! who left to join this start up created by Chris Whitelaw.
It was an up and coming agency in the search field. Eventually to be bought by Dentsu. At the start all was good, albeit bumpy to say the least with any digital start up.
In such businesses there are personalities and I was one. Heady, proactive, reactive and the rest. So a lot can be forgiven and not-forgiven.
Suffice to say I opened the Manchester office successfully, hired staff and brought clients in. With the title of General Manager I did all I was asked of and tasked with.
Roll forward to when Jim Brigden joins. He became CEO, effectively taking charge over and above Nick Jones and Chris Whitelaw. And that is when things started to go wrong. For me certainly and now after a few years have passed I now realise for a lot of people.
In a Nutshell
The Manchester office in my opinion was successful. Where it went wrong I now realise were unrealistic targets set by Jim Bridgen, bad decision making, and poor delivery. There was a ridiculous revenue target set for new business for the Manchester office that only resulted in friction between Daryl Warner (who headed up sales) and myself, whilst Manchester had to manage sizeable clients like the Co-operative, and received dire service across SEO and other from London.
During my tenure Scotland gained a footprint in the form of John Brodie. See footnote.
Jim’s sole aim was to drive the business hard; which was detrimental to staff and package it up for sale. A sale that benefited approximately 6 people. Repeating previous business activity from following Nick Hynes career.
There were poor decisions and shoddy treatment. For example, Manchester made connection with Fragrance Direct, a leading online fragrance seller. Numbers crunched out of London and managed by Jim as to predicted results had to be submitted at least three times. We did not obtain the business with it going to McCann Manchester. This to the consternation of myself, James Smith, and my client contact Jenny Sullivan (McKenna). We then lost due to poor and re-submitted forecasting Talk Talk Business much to Manchester’s embarrassment and the client contact, Ade Allenby.
In the God awful period of professionally tidying up and handing over and still working I’d got us into pitch for Daisy Telecommunications with an old contact called Jo Green. I watched as Jim presented, me no longer needed, sat there a persona non grata wanting to say something. Jo late summed up Jim’s presentation and pitch: lacklustre and poor. Where she asked was the digital heavy hitter? As I write years later I think of the children’s story of the Emperor’s New Clothes.
James Smith was the first employee, rough around the edges but technically brilliant, and after training excelled, and now after a few years leads SEO at Dentsu. His girlfriend at the time was in Manchester with him but hailed from London and returned for studying. James followed. It was irrelevant his moving from the Manchester to London office as he was providing the same technical service. At the time of a yearly bonus Jim Brigden decided to withhold bonus from James he was clearly entitled to, arguing that he had only moved down to exploit the London office where he could then move on to a new role. I to my utter shame as his previous line manager and who hired him said nothing in cowardly fashion. This summed up Jim’s paranoia and morally questionable decisions.
Dentsu ultimately bought a poor business in the heady height of purchasing with key people benefiting and the staff not, but I had seen this before with Overture. Monetary promises on sale not delivered upon. Dentsu wanted the clients that I Spy had. The business as such?
People were afraid of Jim as he would oft quote what he had achieved and done. And demonstrate temper. Now with some years under my belt I am shocked as what went on in I Spy Search Marketing. For example people were defended on grounds of friendship. Nick Jone’s erratic and substance fuelled behaviour was not dealt with immediately by Jim or Chris Whitelaw, and I have found anecdotally this caused much distress to people.
By now Manchester struggled under crazy sales targets (myself) whilst expected to run the office and maintain clients. Any cross-selling I did (lots with the co-operative) was discounted. My clients, such as Kara Lucas et al. were horrified. I crumbled and unfairly received the blame for a poorly run London centric offering that kept dropping the ball at service provision; for example due to poor SEO/SMO servicing from London Manchester lost Envirofone and led me to have a very painful conversation with Julie Snape, the client, who I keep in touch with.
It all came to a head with Jim screaming at me down the phone during a regular conference call that we had, with other people listening in. Un-professional and not so much as an apology to date. All over a suggestion I made. I was now being blamed for all and sundry and as far as Jim was concerned my cards were marked.
A meeting was arranged in Leeds at the Queens Hotel at the train station with Jim coming up from London. At the time, I asked Chris Speed, director heading up performance marketing and minor shareholder, what this was about? He lied through his teeth and I later learnt Jim had convened a meeting to get rid of me. Chris Speed I realised was spineless doing as told.
So, Jim comes up to convene the most unprofessional, disorganised HR meeting. Was I fired, was I not, what were the grounds? No warning, no nothing from the company. He mentioned Compromise Agreement and clearly did not have a clue. By now I was worn out and stressed and had certainly had enough. I was happy to go. Jim came back to me saying I’d leave at the end of 2010 and be paid October, November, December of that year and did not need to work. In hindsight part of me wishes I’d gone to a Tribunal for Constructive Dismissal and shown him for what he is. I did not and that’s history.
But it was not over for staff. For example David Tutin had wages withdrawn on leaving on the spurious basis he was holding onto a company laptop. Absolutely awful behaviour to staff who worked so hard.
Learnings?
I learnt from Jim how not to manage people, and to instead treat them as human beings, be humble not arrogant, see the best in people, and not to throw people under a bus when things go wrong. Look after people with love and care, after all people make what is the advertising industry. And constantly dining out on past glories is no more (in Northern parlance) than polishing a turd.
I am so so so glad I am none of those shareholder/Directors - Chris Whitelaw, Chris Speed, Nick Jones, Jim Bridgen. I can sleep at night knowing I’m a good person and tried my best. I’ve never really really screwed anyone over despite being in the advertising trade and having worked in London. I did bad stuff. I admit that. But I never ruined people all in the cause of personal arrogance and financial gain.
Could I have done better?
Yes and yes and yes. I was still young, head up my bottom, full of personal defects and certainly should have stood my ground toward Jim, and others. I kept quiet, turned a blind eye, and was cowardly. I have to live with that. I still do. I could have done a better job as General Manager Manchester and made many mistakes.
The ultimate sale of I Spy Search Marketing
People taking risk and working hard deserve reward. People all over the show, bullying, paranoid, off their tits on substances, being cruel, taking the money from a business sale and not properly rewarding hard working naive staff should not.
Footnote
John Brodie: I tried to hold my head high at the end and maintained a professional approach. I organised a speaking event in Manchester, when anyone else would have stuck two fingers up. After the successful event we had dinner in the Malmaison Manchester. John was incredibly rude in a traumatic time for me. My path crossed with John on LinkedIn last year and I raised this with him. He apologised and then blocked me on LinkedIn. I am fine about it all. Looking back I see someone so, so desperate to not have anything so much as affect his personal brand.
Alastair Candale: At the speaking event as we packed up, I aired how management had behaved. Alastair, and Kate the office manager was there, kindly passed this back to Nick Jones in a disjoined fashion leading to more poor behaviour and threats coming my way.