I’ve seen it too many times.  The Marketing Director pulls everyone together for the big input meeting. The senior team from the company is there, along with the agency. The discussion begins, and ideas and thoughts are kicked around. Then, the CEO decides to step in and override the MD, relegating them to the sidelines while the CEO takes over the conversation.

The agency is now forced to turn their attention to the lead dog, and watches helplessly while the MD does a slow burn and secretly plots the murder of their boss later that day.

It’s so uncomfortable to watch. I’ve tried in vain to turn the focus back to the MD in that situation, but the truth is that they have been there before. Know-it-all Senior Management all too often simply has no respect for their head of marketing. The CEO, CFO, CIO, and even Senior VPs – who many times know only enough about marketing to be dangerous and like to hear the sound of their own voices – are everywhere.

Rare is the MD that commands the respect of their superiors.  Looking around here, we are lucky to have a number of them as clients. Perhaps it’s because we gravitate toward strong marketing professionals. They value our thinking and appreciate that we will help make them look good by accomplishing their objectives. We form a partnership that raises the profile of both the MD and the agency. And we defend each other.

We seem to drift away from the weak and the abused. We don’t mean to – it just happens. No agency can work for long for a client that they don’t respect. And who can respect bullying bosses?

For the MDs stuck in a situation like the one I just descibed, there are three remedies:

1. Find another job and walk.
2. Find an agency that will be your “army” and fight with you and for you.
3. Go see the new movie Horrible Bosses, which opened in theatres on Friday.  In the New Line Cinema production notes, actor Colin Farrell says the role allowed him to “act as pathologically screwed up as possible.” “This guy thinks he’s God’s gift to women, God’s gift to intellect, to humor, to the club scene, to everything. It’s all part of his grandiose sense of self-esteem, which is probably masking a deeper sense of being a disappointment to his father,” he says.

You might just gain enough insight to get you through another day.