Hasta La Creative!

Disheartening news from our Sportunner spies today. Apparently at least 54 people were laid off, although we’ve heard numbers as high as 100 from two sources. Comments on the last SR story we ran indicate both numbers are correct.

The once bright and ballsy start-up seems to be plagued by both competition from Google (which touts a similarly effective media buying system &#151 but one that is more feasible for the giant), as well as ruminating remarks about greed from above:

“Its not about financial trouble that you guys are suspecting. Its the greed that the owners of this company are getting into that will ruin this ‘once upon a time nice startup’,” said SoCaly.

Whatever the situation, we hear an estimated 30 percent of salaries were cut between creative (6 people), sales (apparently there were way too many sales folks to begin with) and others.

“Spot Runner will fail. I guarantee it. They have no idea what they’re doing from one day to the next. They’re trying to ‘reinvent’ advertising but it really doesn’t need reinventing. Spot Runner makes all of its money off of media sales. They have a hyper-focused way of purchasing media, which is great, but it’s very expensive. Google is starting to do what they do and all of the SR folks are scrambling to compete… or pray that Google buys them,” said one of our spies.

A call to Spotrunner representatives was not immediately returned.

Check out the spirited conversation that’s going on between a few insiders (from the previous SR story), one of whom is Groupfly creator Max Metral. Find that after the jump, or here.

Update: We just spoke with an SR rep who verified that 50 people have been laid off as part of a reorganization plan that we mentioned in the previous SR article, “On the subject of the hiring-holding-pattern, AgencySpy has learned that the company is undergoing a reorganization of sorts; the company will be split into three divisions, each led by one person. Mark Rosenthal takes the reigns of media platforms, Joanne Bradford will oversee national marketing services and Kurt Weinsheimer will manage local marketing services.”

We’re also told that there are 60 positions available within the company, which SR’s team has been working to fill since before the layoffs. However, SR’s careers page only lists 22 open spots. Just sayin’, reorganization or not, this does not bode well for the agency.

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