Asked by someone in the comment and wanted to start a thread.
Based on what I see on LinkedIn, it seems very disorganized still. And while JM is not AK spending money on Red Bull Racing and quoting “Who Moved My Cheese,” I imagine morale is still low and JM himself might be on the chopping block.
Will Oracle Marketing even have anything to show for by May 2023?
And the marketing was working too. The purchase of Cerner negated all that goodwill and threw all marketers under the bus.
The reality is that AK couldn’t have spent all the sports money without LK and/or SC agreement, so they basically fired him for doing something they signed off on, making him the scapegoat.
He wasn’t perfect, but was far more engaged and successful than anyone else in that role, and there have been many.
Is the AI@Work study coming back? Ex employee here and wondering if JM is so cheap that he'd sacrifice one of the biggest flagship marketing opportunities out there. I guess so...
I believe that AK probably spent too much, but he seemed to care. There were goals to hit and the work cascaded down towards the rest of us. There was a passion that he brought not found in the VP of Marketing before him too. I remember hearing about his hire from AWS and believing that this was going to make Oracle finally legitimate. And for a few years, he had something going too. You felt like you were working for someone. Maybe you could even call it "family" if you wanted.
Sadly that all ended the day he and JL were both cut. I will never forget how meaningless it felt to come to work June-July 2022. It still feels that way with the directionless rudder, and will continue until JM is done fleecing us all, or SC's spreadsheets say so.
It’s no secret that JM’s team are anti-sports marketing and are also regretting how much was spent on locking in Vegas for the next few years. Maybe AK did spend too much but the real problem is that Oracle leaders aren’t fully committed to marketing. They only care about things that directly create revenue and can be easily measured. So they only semi-commit to any strategy, and then they give up and change everything every couple of years. I fully believe in 2 years time that JM’s team will be gone and someone else will come in and reverse everything he is doing. They will start spending again, build a new team and then dismantle that one 2 years later as well. The likes of JM and AK won’t care, they’ll just move on. We will always be behind in marketing because of this mentality. It’s a shame because there are talented people here but most I have met in marketing have their hands tied behind their back.
Its becoming clear that the Red Bull Racing and "OracleTV" are sucking all the limited budget out of marketing activities. Looks like Oracle is locked into the Red Bull Racing and can't get out. In additional, AK made a few more "deals" that Oracle can't renegotiate either. Vegas? AK spent too much, and backed Oracle into a corner with limited results. SC doesn't like when this happens, and the rest of Oracle is now suffering because of the $$$ spent on limited returns. There is another post here about JM being about austerity and how Sales and Marketing are the worst places to work at Oracle - all true.
So now begins the guessing game: What does JM cut next?
He's shown no interest in doing the job. He probably thinks ChatGPT could handle content marketing, so maybe that goes first. He probably thinks field marketing could be cut, so that might be next. My guess is that product marketers — on products that make money — stay safe. Maybe something gets spun off.
JM showed up for one single call and that was one too many for me.
After more than 6 months waiting for direction or some kind of plan, you start to realise there isn’t one. There is no strategy coming, we’re just cutting costs and winging it. Roles are not clearly defined. Whatever you thought your job was before, it’s that, but with zero budget.
Since we haven't had money to spend on anything and have only been doing no cost efforts our results should look pretty darn stellar
Yet certain people bonused themselves?
If they deny it they are lieing
This is pathetic and upper mgmt will find out very soon whether they want to or not.
I have never worked for a leader like JM, who stays in his ivory tower and never comes out. Since JM became the leader, he has not had a single all-hand call (or perhaps had one, and I missed it?). He's shown up on a hands-on at the SVP level once (which he didn't allow recording). That's it. No e-mails or other communications to talk about what he and his cronies are doing in the ivory tower or how his organization is doing in general. It's so demoralizing.
This is true. We had the top 100 AK goals that were tracked and reported on. With JM we have shifted to doing the minimal effort possible. That may make SC’s spreadsheet for cost better but we are a laughing stock for marketing our services.
Remember when AK had pages upon pages of goals? JM is the exact opposite with no goals. Austerity is the point.
Since we haven't had money to spend on anything and have only been doing no cost efforts our results should look pretty darn stellar
@1tdz+1kWWjojk "It seems the goal is to make ocom look like Craigslist"
That's a vast departure from my experience there. It seems like they have abandoned all strategy for desperation. Disappointing to hear as there's much talent being wasted over there.
“ No biggie. Oracle products and services sell themselves. “
Thank you!
With all this freezing rain, I needed a good laugh!
There are two places within Oracle that you do not want to work. Marketing and Sales. Regimes in both places only last a few years (at best). Oracle hires fresh new "faces" in Sales, strings them along, feeds them cool-aid to jump start, and then when they fail, they get laid off in droves. In sales, its rinse and repeat. Over and over and over. In Marketing they hire some new "auteur", and that person brings with them their "team". They throw away everyone that was part of the old regime, and start with their "fresh" ideas. The new "wunderkind" pander to SC's purse until they fall out of favor with her. If you spend too much on marketing, your head will roll. Every new marketing regime wants to be "cool" which always backfires. Getting rid of the "old people" in Oracle to change the mentality and culture of Oracle is not how to become cool either. Many people within Oracle, don't actually "like" Oracle. How can you sell or market Oracle if you think Oracle sucks? Also, people do "Lets try this" to fix a problem without understanding what they are doing. Oracle is business to business and both sales and marketing seem to forget that reality. Oracle is not glamorous. Oracle is needed to make money for other businesses to make money. Its not rocket science. Instead of selling and marketing as value prop and how Oracle's tech is powerful and strong (albeit expensive in some ways), each new sales and marketing team runs around with their own agenda and don't coordinate effectively with the other parts of Oracle. When Oracle hires people into the Sales and Marketing orgs that 1) Understand Oracle's business 2) Actually LIKE Oracle and work with what works 3) Understand the "adult/non-cool" way to market and sell software and services as a B to B, is when things will be better or change. Sailboats and Racing Cars, unless used to make LE look more like Tony Stark and elevate his mythos, is wasted money, and SC know that.
No biggie. Oracle products and services sell themselves.
Internally it is unorganized chaos. JM was right to call this “ops” instead of marketing. There is no direction in terms of goals. There is no creative ways we are getting messaging out. In product there isn’t a way to announce features. It seems the goal is to make ocom look like Craigslist.