Do ethics really matter?

FORMER GREY GLOBAL EXEC SENTENCED TO 70 MONTHS Mitchell Mosallem Must Also Pay $247,000 Fine November 13, 2003 By Lisa Sanders NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — A federal court judge today sentenced former Grey Global Group executive Mitchell Mosallem to 70 months in prison...

So, back in the early to mid 90’s I had a few year stint at Grey Advertising.

Round about the middle of ’96, I was downsized out during a shakeup of the department I worked in. The months leading up to my departure were hectic to say the least. Grey was pitching for quite a bit of business as the industry was undergoing dramatic change.

The agency was still structured along the lines of old modes of doing business. The days of Darren Stevens and Larry Tate were long gone and with them the incredible markup that large agencies enjoyed were disappearing with the advent of the desktop publishing revolution. It wasn’t easy to bury costs and pass the markup along to the client anymore.

The few years I was at Grey we had had a particularly good run going something like 14 out of 16 on major pitches (things like Sprint, House of Seagram, Brown and Williamson just to name a few). Every one of those pitches came through my department. While we weren’t the only reason the agency was successful in their endeavors, there’s no question if the people in the studio hadn’t been good at their jobs, Grey wouldn’t have had such a high success rate, particularly when the studio was called upon more often than not to diffuse a disaster in the making.

One of the reasons I was brought in and one of the “unwritten” responsibilities of my job was speccing out equipment for our department, instituting standards and practices for workflow, maintaining the equipment and training the staff (previously board, read that as paste-up people) in the use of the computer.

My direct boss was a guy named Peter Abbey. Peter was a likable guy, he was fair with people and while he wouldn’t take a bullet for any of his underlings, he wouldn’t throw someone under the wheels of the train either.

Peter had been with the agency for a little over 25 years (at that point) having worked his way up in the department from being the guy who mounted ads for people to the manager of the department. His longevity was due in large part to being a company guy and knowing better than to make waves. He had his own corner of the agency and did his best to keep it isolated from a lot of the intrigue going on in other departments.

Try as he might though, the guy who he answered to was a very political beast and was determined to stick his nose into every cranny he could exploit. Consequently, there were lots of “office politics” and even if you wanted to, you couldn’t easily escape them.

Now, I don’t like that crap... never have.

I’m not a political animal and don’t see much good in glad-handing some incompetent in the cause of furthering my own ends. It doesn’t seem right and it’s an affront to my sensibilities. I don’t think it’s something that’s good for a business either. So, it’s no surprise when I one day found myself in the office of my bosses’ boss having a meeting about equipment requisitions and was pointedly told I should bypass Peter and come directly to the convicted felon above it didn’t rub me the right way. It struck me as something that was both smarmy and unethical so, two months later when I got downsized I can’t say I was totally surprised.

Other people I liked working with were forced out too, some people more willing to “play ball” were moved in (the better to keep an eye on Peter) and that was that.

I still had a few friends at Grey and would always marvel at the continued intrigue and be thankful and relieved I was no longer party to it. I can’t say I’ve ever done worse since my days at Grey and I’m thankful for that. Considering what wound up happening in the ensuing years (this investigation has been going on for some time now), I can safely say I’m happy with the decisions I made.

As the friend and former co-worker who emailed the news to me noted, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.