I got a call in early October from Piet Levy, a talented staff writer at Marketing News, the flagship magazine of the American Marketing Association, with an interesting proposition.

He and his editor, John Frank, were working on a cover story for their Halloween-themed October 30  issue featuring five “marketing horror stories” and wanted to interview me, along with three other marketers, for our advice on how to survive these nightmarish scenarios.

Meyer

Welch

Hoesman

I agreed, and the result is the above cover story featuring comments from yours truly; Deborah Wahl Meyer, the former CMO of Chrysler Group and newly hired CMO for Pulte Homes; Greg Welch, senior director and global practice leader for Spencer Stuart; and Scott Hoesman, principal of the diversity and inclusion practice at Capital H Group.

A week later, Piet invited me and Deborah to record a lively 20-minute accompanying podcast, which you can hear here.

The five spooky scenarios Piet and John dreamed up?

1. Top customer skedaddles. Needing to reduce spending, your marketing team and budget are suddenly in the crosshairs. What do you do to prove your worth and help save the day?

2. Superior pulls marketing rug from under your ready-to-rock ad campaign. With your boss/client wanting to do something different, how do you salvage the campaign you’ve created and tested?

3. Twitter fiend gets promoted, you get demoted. Because you haven’t kept up, the marketing baton goes to a 23-year-old marketing wunderkind. What do you do? Stick it out? Quit? Or be insolent?

4.  You get promoted but your jealous #2 paints a target on your back. It takes a while, but you realize your former peer, and now your subordinate, is sabotaging you left and right. What should you do?

5. The story of the poor hapless Web manager. Your CEO goes over your head and the Web manager’s and hires an outside Web firm. He tells you, but not the Web guy. Do you tell him?

If you aren’t an AMA member, it can be hard to get your hands on an issue, and the AMA is slow to move offline content to its content Web site. So, if you’d like to see what, at least, Deborah and I had to say, listen to the podcast, as it is available now!