A funny story from Singapore has surfaced on Club Lexus — Lionel Lim won the opportunity to compete for the Mercedes Benz golf trophy only to be disqualified because he was a Lexus salesman:
He works for Lexus, but this golfer won the Singapore Country Final of the Mercedes trophy. This has led to a court case as well as an awkward situation. The golfer is suing the Mercedes-Benz distributor – his firm’s rival – for refusing to send him to represent Singapore at its Asian Final to be held in Australia next week.
Daimler’s defence is that the Mercedes Trophy is a marketing effort aimed at its high net worth customers and potential customers, and having a senior sales executive of its rival there will ‘cause a great amount of awkwardness’.
“It is unfortunate that the defendant should introduce the concept of accusations of spying and awkwardness. All keen golfers participate because of the thrill of competition, not industrial espionage,” he said.
Mr Lim also noted that notwithstanding his job, he is also a potential Mercedes-Benz customer. As for getting a first-hand insight into Daimler’s marketing style and management methods, Lexus has its own highly successful methods and does not need to imitate anybody else’s, he said. In addition, he has never been involved in marketing.
This was eventually resolved with some sort of compensation, but I still had to laugh at Mr. Lim’s jab about Lexus not having to crib notes from Mercedes’ sales events.
No discussion thread for this article yet.