Fiat Chrysler takes CEO to court alleging multi-million dollar misuse of marketing budget
Fiat Chrysler has launched Federal Court action against its former CEO Clyde Campbell alleging he misused more than $30m of company funds during his four year tenure, much of it related to marketing services.
Papers lodged with the Federal Court by the carmaker, whose brands includ Jeep and Alfa Romeo, include allegations Campbell used $550,000 set aside for a “mobile outdoor floating billboard” to buy a 40-foot boat, and another $190,000 in invoices for production costs “were used toward the purchase of a plane”.
It also claims Campbell charged the company for Chrysler cars given to former cricketer Shane Warne and then partner Liz Hurley, and ex-Soceroo Harry Kewell and his wife as “brand ambassadors” for the company in the UK, with Fiat Chrysler claiming it “did not have an interest in brand ambassadors in the United Kingdom territory”.
The company also alleges Campbell had a stake in digital marketing company Motorak, which had a contract for “website services” which went from costing the company $488,000 per year to $9.16m per year between December 2010 and May 2015.
Looks legit to me. In fact quite transparent by comparison to other efforts I’ve seen.
Wouldn’t be the first or last time that an exec has a relationship / ownership of an contracted agency. There are a few floating around that are well known especially in the QSR space. How ethical this is remains questionable.
paragraphs.
Considering he used to be MD of Motortrak…
The digital agency with which my agency shares space charges its clients $165/hr for website management tasks. $4,100 per month equates to about 25 hours’ work per month.
Now I don’t know anything about what was involved in the Motortrak contract but 25 hours per month doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount of work. Could well have included content updates, website management / hosting, on-going bug fixes, scoping new features, help desk function, etc. I could easily see those tasks adding up to 3 days’ work per month.
[Edited by Mumbrella] If these allegations are proven, he will be looking at 3-5 years in the clink ( prison farm)
So Harry Kewell didn’t buy a Jeep?
@ do the math … It’s $4100 per month x 185 … which is close to 10m per year … do you still think it’s a fair amount?
Wonder if the “web services” included a migration to The Cloud™, without a proper cost analysis being done? That can get real expensive real quick.
Oh look, their sites appear to be hosted on AWS…
I bought a Speedboat
@dothemaths – the web contract was $4100 per dealership, per month. 180-odd in Australia. that’s a lot of content updates. please don’t tell me the jeep dealership in Hornsby needs completely different content to Mosman or Parramatta.. no way known there’s 25hours of time spent, for EACH of 180 delaerships, every single month.
[Edited by Mumbrella]
a mobile floating bloody billboard ?!!!
Here’s the Jeep on a pole proof of posting:
https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/jeep-puts-a-car-on-a-pole-70504
Surely a 40 foot boat could qualify as a “mobile outdoor floating billboard”. Nothing to see people, go about your business citizens.
#8 & #11… have you looked at any of the dealer websites concerned?
e.g. first one I googled was City Jeep in Melbourne. It’s has 7 top-level menu items, 15 2nd level menu items, plus find us/request brochure/request quote/book test drive plus usual disclaimer stuff.
A total of 81 cars for sale on the site, each with individual pages (that’s cars actually on the lot, not models that you can order).
I can easily see managing that as being a 3-day per month proposition. If you don’t think so, maybe you’d like to quote on the website builds I’m briefing out?
@dothemaths – the client here obviously disagrees with you, as they are taking the CEO to court “alleging the contract “was uncommercial and detrimental to the interests of the applicant.”
If you reckon charging $9m per year is fine for something that used to cost $488k per year, then we are not in the same jurisdiction
#16… you’re assuming that the scope of the work remained the same when the cost increased.
Plus, if you actually read my comments properly, you’ll see that I’m not aware what services were covered by the contract. It *could* be that the client was being massively overcharged. But I can easily see $4k a month being a reasonable figure depending on the amount of work done on each site. I have seen clients happily pay $1,500 per month retainers purely for maintenance and bug fixes, not including managing content updates.
@Do the maths is correct.
Clients with Franchises, or multiple locations, often then need additional support. I have been in a position where a client with lots of Franchises was severely undercharged for support & account management. Not saying that the jump was legit, as that is pure conjecture – but it is not inconceivable that providing website support for 180+ locations, with individual managers & staff – would easily add up to 3 days work a month.
It is entirely possible that the support and retainer was underquoted in the initial contracts to win the client.. and then, as dependence on the sites became higher and more complex to support (we are looking at a 5 year period here — a lot has shifted), scope was reviewed. It seems high, but not necessarily out there either.
Digital by and large is something that businesses don’t value, or see the resources required… so it’s unsurprising that digital spend gets thrown into a laundry list of grievances.
I bought a………………………………………………………………………………………………………………