On his ascent to the No. 3 position in the world's largest media company, Robert W. Pittman earned the nickname "Bob Pitchman," the best marketer of his time.
But as Pittman resigned his post at on Thursday under pressure from the company's board, it appeared that he had fallen victim to his own sales pitch. Once seen as a master manager who could serve as the bridge between the old media and the new, Pittman came to personify the failures of the AOL-Time Warner merger.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
In part, that was because he was the executive charged with selling the notion of synergy as profit, both inside and outside the company. With his trademark blend of self-confidence and statistics, Pittman insisted to Wall Street, investors and employees that the company could meet revenue projections viewed as unrealistic by many analysts. Their skepticism turned out to be justified.
Some executives of the old Time Warner saw Pittman as brash and hubristic. His credibility as the manager most responsible for building America Online into a mainstream consumer brand was undermined as the online service -- promoted as the growth engine of the merger -- instead faltered and dragged the company's share price down.
Although Pittman began his career at Warner Amex Satellite and rejoined Time Warner in the early 1990s, he was largely seen in New York as an outsider trying to impose the cowboy culture of the Internet industry on a venerable media company, even as the dot-com economy was beginning to be seen as hollow and corrupt.
Even at AOL headquarters in Dulles, Virginia, where Pittman was long viewed as a hero, the stock ticker perpetually open on many computer screens served as a deeply demoralizing force in the face of what some saw as his political maneuvering to gain power in the company.
But whatever Pittman's personal or diplomatic flaws, friends and colleagues said on Thursday that his downfall may have been his belief in his own message.
"Bob is a true believer," said Henry Silverman, the chief executive of Cendant, who hired Pittman to save Century 21, the real estate company, in 1995. "I think he really believed what he was saying. It just didn't turn out to be right."
In an interview on Thursday, Pittman was careful to avoid saying directly that he had been made a scapegoat. Still, he noted that his job as chief operating officer was to carry out the strategy set by Stephen Case, the company's chairman, and Richard Parsons, its chief executive.
"The promises were not my job," Pittman said. "I was the operations guy. My job was once someone made the promise to make it happen."
Pittman's inability to make it happen came from a combination of the difficult economic climate, a weak strategy and his own weaknesses as a manager, analysts said on Thursday.
The son of a Methodist minister from Mississippi, Pittman built his career in startups and turnarounds, where a certain religious zeal came in handy. After helping start MTV in the 1980s, he went on to boost the flagging business of the Six Flags theme parks, and then to revive Century 21.
In 1996, Pittman joined America Online, where he oversaw its transition from an obscure technology firm to an enormous online service that everyone's mom could understand.
The dense bureaucracy and scale of AOL Time Warner was a sharp contrast to the previous organizations he served, and some analysts said it simply may not have been the kind of environment where Pittman could thrive.
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