VP OF MARKETING
One day, the vice president of marketing and sales for my hotel chain came in and fired me. This is what eventually sent me to looking for lawyers under Flint bankruptcy on the internet. I was fired because I had criticized the local advertising campaign for the hotel, which featured Michael Moore. Guests were telling me that they would never come back if we kept using him as a reason to stay in Flint. I really don’t care about Michael Moore one way or another, but what I did care about was my job. I was the General Manager of the hotel, and if my numbers crashed any lower I would be out of a job. We used to count on business travelers, who were in town to visit auto and auto related industries. But the steep drop off in auto sales forced us to try to attract vacation travelers. The advertising agency for the hotel chain got the idea of featuring Michael Moore. They took a cue off his one documentary about the head of GM, and called the campaign, “Roger, Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane and Me in Flint”. They didn’t use all those names, of course. That was just the title. It featured a guest walking out of our hotel with Michael Moore, and Moore saying that he and so and so were going to visit Roger, but were going to see a bit of Flint first, and that our hotel was the perfect place to stay for a few nights.