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
Julie Roehm is cornered. The lanky blonde, who's partial to skinny white jeans and ivory Ray-Bans, is stuck inside a brick McCastle in one of Bentonville's gated communities, wedged into the northwest corner of Arkansas between a cattle ranch and a snaking country road. Roehm bought her manse three-and-a-half years ago, 2 miles away from her new boss at the time, Wal-Mart's then-CEO Lee Scott. Hired as the retail monster's senior vice president of marketing communications, arguably the top job in her field, she was charged with fighting off Target's aggressive rise by transforming Wal-Mart's image from low-end merch peddler to temple of discount chic. But a career that took 15 years to build unraveled in a flash. After scarcely 10 months on the job, Roehm (pronounced raim) was loudly, publicly fired. The following day, she put her house up for sale. "I was thinking maybe it would take six months to sell," recalls Roehm, 38. "We'd go somewhere else, start again, pick a new job. Yeah. That was the thinking."
It's been two-and-a-half years, and no matter how many plastic fuchsia flowers Roehm and her husband, Mike, jam into the grass by the pool, they still can't offload their $850,000 ball and chain. In 2006, after Wal-Mart fired Roehm at least in part for accepting a Nobu 57 sushi dinner from Draftfcb, the ad agency she'd recently awarded the retailer's $580 million account, she filed a $1.5 million breach of contract lawsuit against the House of Sam, prompting a litigious spiral of soap-operatic proportions: Wal-Mart countersued Roehm for having an affair with a subordinate. Roehm countersued CEO Scott for buying discounted yachts and a diamond ring from a Wal-Mart partner. And the partner sued Roehm for defamation. An image of Roehm's face slapped on a Wal-Mart ad went viral online ("If you come to Wal-Mart," the spoof read, "please don't fuck your coworkers... . Because our legal team will fuck you back for every penny you've got... . Guaranteed") and bloggers ordained her a "ho" and "slut." All of the parties involved eventually dropped their suits, but Roehm, once the face of innovative advertising for Ford and Chrysler, emerged as the Hester Prynne of Bentonville.
On a Windex-blue day in April, Roehm, shuffling around her office off the master-bedroom suite, reveals her latest attempt to exorcise her minimansion of its scandalous juju. "I wouldn't want to scare away any potential buyers," she says, at once blasé and sarcastic -- a woman inured to humiliation. She's referring to the dozen-plus framed accolades ("Automotive Marketer of the Year" from Brandweek; "Interactive Marketer of the Year" from Ad Age; "The Advertising Hall of Achievement") that once hung on the walls. Some 14,000 people work at Wal-Mart headquarters -- Bentonville itself has 32,000 residents -- so she's well aware that splashing her name around the house could keep her shackled here for another three years. The awards now sit buried under newspaper in the hallway closet.
But Roehm -- who has another closet filled with 4-inch Donald J. Pliner pumps -- isn't exactly the type to go into hiding. "A weaker person would have said, 'I'm going to buy a franchise or go be a college professor,'" says Andrew Judelson, chief marketing officer of Sports Illustrated, who worked with Roehm during her Chrysler days. Instead, Roehm has chosen a more treacherous path, taking on the most challenging rebranding campaign of her career: herself. "If I'm going to be stuck with this scarlet letter," she says, "I'm going to dress it up and make it the prettiest damn scarlet letter I can possibly make it."
Julie Roehm's minivan is stuffed like a clown car. Well, technically, she clarifies, it's Mike's car -- Julie drives a Hummer-size red convertible Wrangler Sahara -- and stacked inside are her husband, her two sons, a neighbor's kid, and her giant black schnauzer, Isabella. She's on her way home from her 10-year-old Nick's school recital in nearby Fayetteville, where one of his classmates once told him, "Your mom stole $50,000 from Wal-Mart!" (Roehm: "Sure, why not, just add that to the list.") At the school, it was clear that Mike, a stay-at-home dad, was the regular, while most teachers were meeting Julie for the first time. After piling the kids back in the van and rationing out cookies, Roehm lays her head on the steering wheel looking like Carrie Bradshaw in a suburban straightjacket. "This is why I could never do this," she yawns. "I'd go nuts."
Roehm has always been a centaur of sorts -- half swan, half pit bull. Or, as she puts it, "the princess and the tomboy." "I'm an extremely competitive person, so I liked playing on the all-boys teams," she says, "because I was better than a lot of them." By the time Roehm was in an all-girls Catholic high school in Cincinnati, her salesman father had moved the family around to eight cities, and she had become as fluent at fitting in as she was at partying. "I really pushed the limits and never got caught," she says. "I always believed knowledge is power, and I can work hard and play hard." Watching her parents argue about finances, she decided early on that she never wanted to rely on anyone else's salary. "I remember thinking, I want to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it."
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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.
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