By DPA
Prague : When Jack Stack, a popular CEO of the number one Czech bank Ceska Sporitelna, was bidding farewell to his colleagues in June after seven years in their midst, he gave them a little present.
To show his affection for some 11,000 subordinates, he hired a marketing firm to help him shoot a black-and-white remake of “Every Breath You Take” – a 1983 classic hit by Sting’s band Police.
“Every breath you take, every change of rates, every fee that spikes … I’ll be watching you,” the 61-year-old manager sings in the style of Johnny Cash, as one Czech paper put it.
He will be watching them indeed. Stack traded the top executive job for a seat on the advisory board of Erste Bank, the Austrian owner of Ceska Sporitelna.
When the Czech press first reported on the unusual farewell present in early August, the charismatic CEO, back in the US at the time, was praised for his originality and Ceska Sporitelna has repeatedly said that its former top executive penned the lyrics himself.
But while Stack may have been the first CEO to take on the Police song, his creation was clearly inspired by a 2006 Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business student version that has become a YouTube video-sharing site hit.
“Actually it is a rip-off,” said one comment under Stack’s song, which had been also posted on the popular site.
An embarrassing aftertaste now replaces enthusiastic praise.
“I think he saw the video made by the students of Columbia Business School,” Ceska Sporitelna spokeswoman Klara Gajduskova said when asked about her former boss’s inspiration.
Michael Bauer, the head of the marketing firm hired to work on Stack’s video, said the CEO had approached the firm with the idea “to say good-bye with this type of a video”.
But he claimed not to remember if Stack saw the older YouTube hit or wished to base his song on it. “I can’t guarantee you what Jack said in our first meeting,” he said in irritation, and added firmly: “We made our video based on Sting.”
Counter to bank’s spin, Bauer said that his people drafted the lyrics and the banker chipped in with some editing. Still he claimed to have seen the incredibly similar student version only last week
“It is possible that there are 10 such videos in the world,” he scoffed.
The CEO’s version, likely to have been posted on YouTube by one of the bank’s employees who had been given the goodbye gift on a DVD, is no longer available on the site. It has been taken down for copyright reasons, Bauer explained.
“Internet broadcast of the music used was illegal,” said Martin Hulovec, the head of the production house involved in its making. The bank only bought the rights to the song for internal use, he added.
In any case, Cabe Franklin, the singer and co-author of the much famed student version, was anything but offended that the New York-born banker, who had earned his MBA at Harvard 36 years earlier, has followed in his footsteps.
“This is wonderful, a parody of a parody,” he said in an e- mail after he watched the clip.
Franklin, who graduated in 2006 and now works “in consulting” in London, praised Stack for showing affection for his former employees.
“I am impressed he took the risk and put the time into it,” he went on, adding later. “I hope more CEOs follow his lead.”