To the CEO

Sherry Matthews

You built this company. That is not in dispute. You also made the decisions that brought us to this point.

It is widely believed among employees that this company is being repositioned. The public framing is succession to a nonprofit. The internal framing, as we read it, is the courtship of investors. We understand what each of those means for the people making the decisions. We understand what they mean for the people who are not. The PTO milestone system that rewarded tenure was stripped and replaced with a three-tier cap. Pay has stagnated for years. The math on that is simple. The cost-cutting is consistent with one of those stories. It is not consistent with the other. The people who built the value being repositioned are not sharing in it.

What makes it harder to accept is the framing. Years of family rhetoric. Loyalty promised in both directions, delivered in one. We are left to judge it by what happened: milestone PTO is gone and the pay has fallen behind and stagnated. Milestone bonuses are being re-framed to performance bonuses which, let's face it, is a shaky promise that we all know you won't adhere to. You're making promises we don't think you can or will keep. This is purely theater to get people to put their heads down and keep working while you pillage.

On the subject of documented conduct. This matters legally and to the people who experienced it:

Employees' mental and physical health conditions were discussed by you with other employees who are not in management. That is not a rumor. It was witnessed by multiple people. The ADA does not distinguish between intentional disclosure and careless disclosure. It requires confidentiality. The obligation was not met. You casually disclose and gossip about others with just regular employees and have for years.

From 2020 through 2026, emails sent to the entire staff tied company interests to specific political endorsements. In 2022, one of those emails read: "please vote unless you are a Trumpster." In 2024, one read: "Our contracts could be in jeopardy." These were sent on company systems, to employees who kept them. And the emails were only part of it. There were public meetings and smaller group conversations where politics and how people should vote were discussed openly. This was not subtle. It was years of it.

Employees were directed to delete all company emails prior to 2020. Many complied. But not everyone. Some employees read the writing on the wall and preserved certain emails from before 2020. The emails that preceded 2020 were more direct than the ones that followed. And beyond the emails, many employees have clear, specific memories of what was said in meetings and in person. Memory is testimony. The witnesses exist.

But the emails are only part of the problem. The larger issue is the gap between what they implied and what we have experienced. In our observation, the politics that get performed publicly at an agency like this one tend to reflect the client portfolio more than any deeply held conviction. That is not an accusation. It is a pattern we have been watching long enough to recognize: liberal in language, conservative in practice.

From where we sit, the people who send those emails are not suffering right now. We are. We are seeing tenure-based PTO disappear. We are watching colleagues with decades of service leave quietly or be fired outright. We hear about outside money being courted, behind closed doors, while we are asked to sign updated handbooks with new restrictions on how we spend our time outside these walls. We believe a leader who genuinely held the values those voting emails implied would find this situation uncomfortable. The world is getting harder for working people. In our opinion, this agency is contributing to that, not resisting it.

Texas Election Code Section 276.001 makes it a third-degree felony to retaliate against an employee based on how they voted. Linking voting behavior to contract security raises serious questions under that statute. It is a pattern across multiple election cycles from a company that has held government contracts. The regulatory bodies that award those contracts are run by the party those emails were campaigning against. You have left quite the paper trail over the years. The hypocrisy is messy and well-documented.

The filing rights are real. EEOC, NLRB, Texas Workforce Commission. Each has a process and each has deadlines. People are paying attention to the deadlines now. The documentation exists and has existed for a long time. What changed is that people now know what to do with it.

Litigation is a mutual process. Discovery obligations apply to both sides. Voting pressure emails, medical information disclosures, and discriminatory conduct are workplace records, not trade secrets. They are producible. Court filings are public. Texas has a strong presumption of open courts. Sealed cases are the exception, not the rule. Retaliation for protected activity is independently illegal and creates its own cause of action. This is how the legal system works. All parties should understand it before making decisions.

We are not asking for anything. We are not making threats or setting conditions. We are describing the situation as it is.

There is still a choice about how this ends. Nobody here wanted this to be the outcome. We wanted to come to work, do the job, and go home to the things that actually matter. That was always the deal. You're changing the deal. So are we. You've spent your whole career being petty and now you're getting a taste of what it's like on the receiving end. We can all find new jobs. All you have left is your legacy. It's up to you how you want that legacy to be shaped. Our voices are many and we will not endure your hypocrisy any longer.

To the CFO

Ken Dorward

You were hired to do a specific job. We understand that. Your publicly available employment history shows that you move on every year or two. We can speculate about why. We won't pretend to know your intentions. But we can see the pattern, and so can anyone else who looks.

You have never built anything. You extract value from what other people built and move on before anyone has to look at what's left. We are not abstractions on a balance sheet, though we recognize we may look that way from where you sit. We have tenure here. We built the client relationships, managed the accounts, and kept the infrastructure running. The value that makes this company worth investing in is the product of our work over years, not yours.

In our opinion, you represent everything wrong with how companies treat people in this country. You are a glorified spreadsheet operator collecting executive compensation to put the squeeze on the people who actually do the work. Your need to provide for your family and your lifestyle apparently outweighs the needs of every family affected by the cuts you make. You know how we can save a lot of money? Why are we paying for CFOs in 2026? Yours is the exact type of job AI should be replacing, not creatives.

We hold no particular expectation that this letter changes your approach. You were not hired to protect the people here. The only measurable actions you have taken are to remove things from employees and line Sherry's pockets. Sherry isn't the only one needing to worry about her legacy. This pit stop is going to follow you around for a very long time. The internet's written in ink, Kenny.

To the CCO · EVP

Charles Webre

You are a member of a community that has historically faced discrimination, marginalization, and the specific cruelty of being judged for something you cannot change. That experience is not abstract for you. You lived it. In our observation, that history did not translate into empathy for others in this building.

Comments about employees' physical appearance were made by you in meetings and in private, in front of other employees. Comments about race were made in staff meetings and in private. These were witnessed. They were not isolated incidents. The people who heard them remember them. In our opinion, you are a deeply insecure person whose insecurity manifests as bravado and bullying.

You have also treated the employee group chat as your own personal bulletin board and search engine. You once sent a Teams message to the entire company asking for help because your adult son was having difficulty renting a truck to pick up a chair. You cannot lead your son into a rental truck, much less a team of people.

On the subject of your creative reputation. You have built an identity around awards and the idea that you are a tastemaker. Your work is adequate. You have spent a career chasing awards and external validation because, in our opinion, you know that you would not survive anywhere outside of this agency. You tried. You left. You came back. This environment is the only one that sustains you, and the people here have been paying for it since.

The awards themselves deserve a word. Industry awards in advertising are largely self-congratulatory. You vote for each other. You validate each other. It feeds a need for outside approval that no amount can fill. Your work and your style do not translate outside of Sherry Matthews Group. You would not win an award of actual merit as the sole entry. Anytime you find yourself staring at your little statues for comfort, remember that Macklemore beat Kendrick Lamar for Best Rap Album and then literally texted Kendrick to say he got robbed. Awards do not mean what you think they mean.

You moved to Chicago. We are genuinely pleased about that. We hope the long winters give you time to reflect on a career that has been defined by tearing others down. You are being shown the door. Better late than never, we suppose. We've heard a lot about how you were going through a hard time. Yeah. So is everyone. We have no idea what you were going through. Similarly, YOU had no idea of what we were going through. We didn't channel our stress and pain into belittling others and being ugly. Don't blame a hard time. Your behavior is exactly who you are.

To the rest of leadership

Managers and supervisors not directly named

You did not make the decisions. You did not write the memos. We understand that. But you were there. You read the emails. You sat in the meetings. You watched colleagues get walked out the door. And in many cases, you made excuses for the people above you to the people below you. That is its own choice.

We work in the same building. We have the same bills, the same families, the same fear of being next. None of us thought we would be the ones holding the line. But the line is what we are holding now. Some of you are holding it with us. Some of you are not.

Silence is a choice. So is excuse-making. You knew. We know you knew. There is still time to be on the right side of this. We see you either way.

A statement of fact

On filing, documentation, and what comes next

This section is not directed at any one person. It is a statement of facts about the legal landscape as it currently exists.

Employees have the right to file complaints with the EEOC, the NLRB, and the Texas Workforce Commission. All of them have deadlines. People here are aware of those deadlines. The documentation exists. What changed recently is awareness of what to do with it.

Bulldog Bulletin is protected under the National Labor Relations Act Section 7, the First Amendment, and the Texas Citizens Participation Act. Retaliation for protected activity is independently illegal. It does not matter whether the underlying complaint succeeds. The act of retaliating creates its own cause of action. Forced NDAs that purport to silence employees about working conditions are unenforceable under the NLRA.

Litigation is mutual. Discovery applies to both sides. Workplace conduct, internal communications, employment records, and documented policy violations become producible. Court proceedings are public record. Texas courts operate under a strong presumption of openness. This is not a threat. It is a description of how the legal system works.