We're guessing everyone who cares already knows. But just in case, here is the most thorough of the many tips we received on this news this afternoon:
Today Grant Thornton's chief marketing officer, Tricia Conahan, shared two important announcements with the marketing and sales team. First, Michelle Mazur [sic] was promoted to the new head of communications. The only noteworthy part about this announcement is that as happy as this girl must be for her promotion, she totally got trumped by Tricia's second announcement regarding her own resignation. That's like when Farrah Fawcett entered the pearly gates moments before Michael Jackson met his maker. Some things like death suffer from poor timing, but apparently this promotion was so well deserved it didn't deserve its own separate announcement.
So where is Tricia going? Well in some detail she described her new marketing role at Brookdale Senior Liviing… how she's going to be the first senior VP blah blah blah reporting to the CEO blah blah blah, let's make this sound as impressive as possible completely ignoring the fact Grant Thornton's revenues and profitability stink more than Tricia's horse poop her servants clean up in the stables every day. Yes, let's talk about Brookdale merging with their largest competitor, thus doubling the size of a $4 billion company. But now that she's fooled everyone into thinking this was her decision and the perfect move for her, her family and career… let's reminisce about all the accomplishments under her regime that she can now take credit for… oddly enough one of those things was the "dramatic increases in sales revenue and profitability." If it was so dramatic, how come all of the marketing directors "graciously volunteered" to take no pay increase this year so the rest of the marketing and sales organization could get their small 1-3% raise? Oh, and when I say graciously volunteer, that really means they were told they wouldn't get a raise but made the rest of marketing think they "took one for the team." Whether Tricia's really proud of all she's done at/to Grant Thornton, who knows, but she was right when she ended the call saying "Leaving you is just not easy." Easy it was not.
Funny, "leaving you is just not easy" is what I told the worst of my ex-boyfriends when leaving them was not only easy but necessary. But I digress…
If you will recall, we formerly referred to Tricia as "Marketing Lady" in a post last year regarding a shake-up in the GT marketing department. Observe, if you will, the hostile nature of tips we received on cuts in the department that didn't include Marketing Lady at that time, and a general theme of discontent.
According to this latest bit of news, this move has absolutely nothing to do with that and everything to do with ML seeking new opportunities. An email to Tricia for comment was not answered and a call to Michele Mazur was not returned at the time of this post.
Let's all wish her the best and should you have additional insight to add, do so in the comments. Let's try not to get too bitter like last time.
