With news swirling around some of the more sensational aspects of a countersuit by former employer Wal-Mart, the marketing duo of Julie Roehm and Sean Womack took the OMMA Hollywood crowd on a
marketing journey that began with the Louisiana Purchase and ended with artificial intelligence. The presentation, dubbed Marketing 2.x, was anything but X-rated. It quite literally began with the
Lewis & Clark expedition and ended with advice on how forward-thinking marketers can build innovation into their process. Marketing may have been the message, but press coverage was clearly on the
minds of the Roehm and Womack. After taking the stage for the luncheon keynote, Roehm suggested some libations might be in order: “Bring a bottle of that wine up here right now,†she quipped,
which anyone reading today’s business pages would know had to do with the fact that Wal-Mart’s countersuit cited alleged personal emails between Roehm and Womack suggesting their relationship was
more than just business. On seemingly more mundane note, Roehm reminded the audience that today was the second anniversary of another important keynote in which she got the industry buzzing: Her
2005 rallying cry at the Association of National Advertisers TV advertising forum where she proposed the creation of an electronic trading system for media based on a Nasdaq like infrastructure. Two
years later, some big advertisers are getting ready to field a test of that system, utilizing a backbone created by eBay. “I won’t relive the golden day of the media auction talk,†Roehm
recalled, adding that the byproduct has been a rethinking of the way agencies, clients and the media work together, including new thoughts on compensation structures. “The whole model is starting to
be rethought.â€
