After 90% of the MLT was let go in December. Whether you liked them or not everything has gone to sh-t. But today embarks on the official end. The last person standing in Marketing ALedgister was let go. For all of us left in Marketing and are Marketing people, today marks a sad day. She was an amazing leader, she stood up for the right things and defended her people. The global campaign team did not exist before her. She was a fearless leader. Now we’ve been dismantled even more and are stuck with the two worst human beings ever. Marcus and Lindsay are snakes, truly horrible people. From the moment Rita left they planted the seeds and tried to take over. If OpenText stood by what they said when they got rid of the MLT and moved out toxic people and culture why are M&L still here? It’s a sad day when new leaders one, don’t know anything about marketing and two rids those who do just to look smarter. For us who are left, good luck to us, because we are certainly in for a ride.
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Titanium X is now Terminator X as of March 23rd.
@nk GEICO ads show some marketing skill. OTEX marketing shows none.
All the former marketing executives are now working on GEICO ads.
Why are there any Sr. Talent Aquisition OR ANY talent aquisition jobs still at OpenText. They don't allow new yires. Get rid of the stupid aquisition jobs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As someone who used to work at OpenText I can confirm that the comments above are 100% accurate. Marcus is demonstrably bad as a marketing leader, as evidenced by his years before OpenText where he was frequently getting fired from other jobs. He's not well-spoken, not a good writer, not creative, and not a people-person...which are pretty much all the attributes you would expect a successful marketing leader to have.
And as far as giving functional names to products that had built of decades of positive brand equity, I agree 100% that this was the worst decision Sandy Ono ever made. I can't believe she lasted as long as she did as the CMO. Terrible at marketing and branding, and it's both shocking and concerning that someone that inept could land a job that high-paying and influential. When I worked there, I had actual customers telling me in our sales conversations that the rebrand was a d-mb idea. 100% agree with the Chevrolet example of "Carco Car." I used to say something similar, I would say that it's as if Yum! Brands decided to rename Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut as "Yum Tacos, Yum Chicken, and Yum Pizza" and strip them all of their unique brand positioning.
I'm glad to be out of that company, but I'm sad that my warnings and comments went unheeded. Because I was one of the few people who vehemently spoke out against the rebrand to the leaders in both sales and marketing. But my voice went unheard, and it probably cost me my job there in the end, to be quite honest. But fortunately I'm in a much better environment now.
It's a step in the right direction that Mark B and Sandy are gone now. Unfortunately so are many others who were actually quite valuable and important to the growth of the company. But with OpenText's stock price at half of what it was 3 years ago, there is still more work to be done to right the ship.
@a6 Exactly! The whole product renaming project was ill-conceived! They gave functional names to products that previously had identifiable brand names. Consider the issues this causes with search results on the service management website if a customer wants information on a product named Content Management when the functionality of the majority of the products includes content management. Sorry but the search tool doesn't differentiate between lower case and capital letters. It was like watching a train wreck when that effort was under way and there was next to no consultation during the planning stages with the groups that would bring such issues to the forefront.
No marketing is better than what OTEX had.
The most id--tic example of which I am aware is the insanely stupid decision to rename Fortify Application Security products to drop Fortify and rename the two core products SAST and DAST.
This is about as smart as GM selling the Corvette division to an unknown company called Carco and the buyer renaming Chevrolet Corvette as Carco Car.
They lost the industry recognition of a pioneering product whose industry recognition had survived previous ownership changes because the previous owners were smart enough to save the recognized name.
The stupidity of OTEX, it burns.
So they promoted her 4 months ago and fired her now ???