There’s a publicly held company I’ve been watching, and I think they’re about to go down. Now, they’ve had problems of late, what with having to restate their results for the last couple of years, revealing an lack of profits, meaning the millions of dollars in executives’ bonuses were paid, uh, in error. Followed soon thereafter by news that they were in violation of loan covenants. And they seen their stock price drop by over 80%. And the last few weeks have yielded some 15 shareholders’lawsuits.
But, hey, that stuff happens, and sometimes companies can get over a rough patch. How close we must be to the end of the trail came to me when I saw the following in a business article about them and their Canadian subsidiary:
i may be dense, but im not sure what your gettin’ at.
radio companys regularly hire “bimbos” (no offense to any real professional salespeople, now!) with larger busts than IQ’s to peddel ad time because of the nature of the business. Not a whole lot of product to look at, so they make sure the sales force grabs your attention. this kind of crap happens all the time. Is this what you mean by “how low” or are you goin’ for something else?
I recognize that provocative women in high heels have long been an accepted part of business-to-business marketing - that had a lot to do with whom I chose as a business partner when I started a seismic company many years ago. And we hired provocative women with high heels to represent us.
Massive troubles have overtaken the company in question, until then an industry leader, in the last two months. While they did have an aggressive marketing posture, so what? That’s business as usual.
What I meant is that, while public companies often get into trouble, and that gets reported, they often enough work their way back out of it. But the sharks are circling closer in this case, and everybody wants to get a lick in.
With no new securities fraud to report, the authors had to try to paint something mundane as nefarious. I’m anticipating a breathless follow up story along the lines of:
Further evidence of wily currying of goodwill amongst potential clients has surfaced. These reporters have established that each and every one of the previously reported provocative women in high heels had…an expense account! And they BOUGHT PEOPLE LUNCH!! And DRINKS!!!