Last weekend’s marches against gun violence elevated the conversation past the deflection and vitriol of the NRA. Ex-politician Rick Santorum revealed the emptiness of that “side” of the debate when he quipped that the protestors should learn CPR, implicitly saying that guns, and gun violence, were unchangeable facts of American life. So was Read more…
Recent crises at Uber and Facebook are reminders that we’re all test subjects for new tech, whether or not we know it. An Uber self-driving car going 40 mph ran over a pedestrian walking her bike on the side of the road in Tempe last Saturday night. In 2016, 270,000 Facebook users were duped into sharing Read more…
Toys “R” Us is closing its stores, and most analyses blame Amazon and online retailing generally. The explanations are misdirected and, at best, incomplete. Three trends combined in a complex, somewhat perfect storm to whack Toys “R” Us: First, people buy different toys nowadays, and buy them differently. Kids increasingly prefer playing digital Read more…
P&G’s announcement that it will cut more than $1 billion in ad spending with agencies, and do its marketing in-house, has the fingerprints of management consultants all over it. As reported in the Financial Times, the news was confusing: On one hand, P&G’s chief brand officer blamed agencies for putting too Read more…
In the UK, Coca-Cola has brought more than 100,000 school kids to visit its manufacturing and recycling plants, and it funds an annual business competition that has touched 390,000 secondary school children. Only not anymore. All of Coca-Cola’s programs have ended, or will shortly, in part due to mounting pressure Read more…