AOL Diva

Rebecca Lieb of Internet.com is reporting that AOL's recently axed ad sales executive vice president, the Diva-like Lisa Brown, left her job, in part, over secret audio tapes of her erratic behavior at AOL meetings (*cue 007 music*).

Lieb writes:

"(Internet.com) obtained audiotapes of two meetings conducted by recently departed ad sales EVP Lisa Brown. In them, she repeatedly launches into obscenity-laced tirades, personally insults senior executives in her group, and at one point, pounds her shoe on the table, Khrushchev-style, when a creative director from a longtime AOL vendor speaks out of turn."

Khrushchev-style, huh? Funny. Maybe she just wanted attention, like Vivika Fox. Apparently, though, the secret taping began when the increasingly erratic Bad Bad Brown (meaner than a junkyard dog) began contradicting instructions she herself laid out at staff meetings, thoroughly confusing the staff.

A letter accompanied the tapes, Lieb writes, which:

" ... complains Brown unapologetically showed up for meetings up to two and a half hours late, and complains, 'The general tenor of her behavior is filtering throughout the company. She... makes working within IM [interactive marketing] a nightmare for so many people it really needs to be dealt with.... If we lose the very very fine talents of the currently exasperated, it will be a damn shame.'"

Lieb continues:

"When the Wall Street Journal broke the story of Brown's departure, after only a handful of months with the company, last week, stating an 'aggressive management style soon rubbed some subordinates the wrong way,' the ad sales staff was jubilant. 'Ding-dong, the witch is dead,' crowed an IM sent from AOL's New York offices that morning."

Where's the love AOL? Where's-the-love?



Very erratic.