With Sir Martin Sorrell gone from the integrated marketing services company he assembled and led for over 30 years, there’s talk that it’ll be broken up in the face of competition from digital tech and management consultants. I’m ready to lead a unified WPP out of this crisis. Here’s my Read more…
Recent events in Philadelphia revealed that Starbucks needs to address issues of racial bias in its stores. It also showed that it doesn’t have a clear company policy on handling visitors who haven’t bought something, called nonpaying customers. I’d never heard the term before. I thought customers were buyers of Read more…
Since some of the people in the US Congress who grilled Facebooks’ Mark Zuckerberg a few weeks ago don’t “get” social media, they have no business questioning it? “You need to experience the platform to understand what you’re talking about if you do want to challenge the validity of what Read more…
P&G plans to purchase Merck’s consumer health business. I think it says something about the way forward for its consumer brands. The Merck products sound like drugs, with names like Neurobion and Nasivin; the former is a B vitamin tablet that is based on a prescription injectable, and the latter uses a chemical Read more…
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Kentucky’s Governor Matt Bevin. Starbuck’s CEO Kevin Johnson. We’re awash in apologies lately, and they’re all worthless. Zuckerberg apologized before Congress last week for Facebook’s business practices, just as he has done publicly since 2003 (Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky prepared a list). Every mea culpa was a variation on the Read more…
“Extreme fossil fuels” are those that come from the most difficult and dangerous sources, and generate the worst pollution. Big banks upped their investments in such projects last year. You’d think they’d do the opposite, considering Europe’s nascent carbon-neutral economies, and Millennials’ avowed interest in saving the planet. Despite political, Read more…
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…