Essays
VW’s Political Theater
Putting a happy face on the sometimes ugly side of transformative change is more about communications and appearances than it is about strategy. Here’s a take on the leadership change at VW.
Essays
Kellogg’s Admits Defeat
News that the Kellogg Company (it operates as “Kellogg’s”) will separate into three companies is bad news. It’s also kinda sad. The press release used typical PR bombast to herald “bold steps in portfolio transformation” to describe its plan to create independent companies out of its snacking, cereal, and plant-based Read more…
Essays
The Metaverse Will Never Happen
It’s a great distraction from the realities of the online surveillance economy and how it’s scrapping our actions and from that extrapolating our intentions, all the better to manage the latter and monetize the former.
Innovation
McKinsey Spins As The World Burns
I promised myself at the start of this year that I’d forego writing about the ethics and mechanics of communications, but today’s newspaper forced me to make an exception: After getting accused of coddling the world’s worst polluters in a widely-shared news article earlier this week, McKinsey & Co. ran Read more…
Innovation
A “Very Nice!” PR Stunt
Sasha Baron Cohen’s fictional character Borat is a lout from Kazakhstan who says “very nice!” after saying and doing not-so-nice things. The real Kazakhstan has embraced it, and I think it’s a brilliant stunt. I must admit that I wasn’t even sure Kazakhstan was a real country when the first Borat movie came out in 2006, and Read more…
Innovation
Airbnb To Disrupt Gig Economy Branded App Engagement
Former Apple design guru Jony Ive is working with Airbnb to “design new products” prior to its upcoming IPO. Last week’s story was covered extensively across mainstream and tech media. What’s the big news? Airbnb plans to redesign its app and website. There’s a lesson to be learned here: All that matters is the Read more…
Innovation
A Photo Op In Outer Space?
A few weeks ago, Estee Lauder sent 10 bottles of Advanced Night Repair lotion to a photo shoot on the International Space Station (“ISS”), if all went accordingly to plan, and the images will find their way into social media marketing. The New York Post reported comments the company’s president made about it Read more…
Innovation
Wait, The Cloud Is A Thing?
IBM has announced its carving off its tech services business because it sees the future in cloud computing and AI. In this New York Times article, Ginni Rometty, IBM’s executive chair and former chief executive, said cloud computing, enhanced by artificial intelligence, “is now IBM’s enduring platform.” I can just imagine the management Read more…
Essays
Trust Isn’t Free Anymore
We used to take trust for granted, and we depended on that unmentioned certainty. Then the Internet blew it up. We need to reclaim it. Traditionally, our institutions did little to earn trust. They asserted it and people gave it, presuming that governments, news media, academia, financial institutions and markets, Read more…
Innovation
Communications Devolution Or Revolution?
It’s trendy for big companies to devolve authority to operating units, and the jury is still out on whether or not making them compete as collections of smaller independent ones makes any sense (the management consultants who came up with the plans will be long gone before there’s a verdict). Read more…