• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, Tom Siebert , December 6, 2006

Less than two months after leading one of the most high-profile agency reviews of 2006, Wal-Mart's senior vice president of marketing communications Julie Roehm has suddenly parted with the company.

Also exiting the retailer is Sean Womack, vice president of communications architecture, who served Roehm closely during the course of the review.

Mona Williams, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart, confirmed Roehm and Womack's exit from Wal-Mart, but otherwise would not comment on the event or any potential repercussions of it.

Roehm joined Wal-Mart last February from Chrysler, and spearheaded the search for new set of agencies to run the company's $570 million advertising account. It was awarded last month to Interpublic Group's DraftFCB and Aegis's Carat, replacing Omnicom's GSD&M and an independent agency, Bernstein-Rein.

"It's very unusual for someone at that level [to depart] in that amount of time, especially since she just directed a formal agency review," said Steven Gundersen, CEO of executive search firm Gundersen Partners.

In situations like this, he said, rejection by the culture is usually the case. "Wal-Mart is unique in its heritage and DNA. They do have a very distinctive culture--it's strong and deliberate," he said, speculating that the fit might just not have been there.

Sources close to the review process, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that almost immediately following the awarding of the account to DraftFCB, the agency ran* a full-page advertisement in Creativity magazine touting the Cannes Lions Awards that depicted two lions mating, with the smug caption, "It's good to be on top."

This did not create a roar of approval in Bentonville. The copulating couple caused quite a buzz inside the company, as executives questioned Roehm's judgment, says a source.

There were also grumbles in the executive suite that Roehm did not keep senior management as closely informed about the review process as it would have liked, which a source defined as "political missteps."

Combined with Wal-Mart's lackluster performance over the Thanksgiving sales weekend, this series of events proved to be too much for Roehm's tenure to continue.

Could this mean the recently awarded business might soon be back in play? Spokesmen for both DraftFCB and GSD&M refused to comment and referred calls to Wal-Mart. No advertising from the new agencies has been made public.

* This sentence was changed after the article was first posted.