Dell’s (DELL) Slow Decision On Marketing.

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

It may appear good that Dell (DELL) has finally cut a deal with WPP, the UK-based ad company to set up a JV which will handle as much as $4.5 billion in marketing over the next three years.

But, the agency search started just after Michael Dell returned to the company and will not be in place for another three months or so.

The length of the decsion-making progress is a sign that the Dell management may not be operating the company at a pace of urgency that would probably be best to get the company turned around.

Last month, Dell announced that future earnings could be hurt by slow sales and more restructuring costs. Wall St. would think that quckly resolving major issues to move the company along as fast as possible would be best. That does not seem to be the case with a year lost in marketing.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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