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…
Rupert Murdoch and Robert Thompson are speaking out against Google and Facebook’s carte blanche business models. Murdoch says that tech giants should pay for the content they post on their platforms, and Thompson says that “bot-infested badlands” have “debased” the digital environment. I get the pushback on their argument: As two grumpy old white guys, they’re Read more…
Google thinks not, and will defend itself in a UK court next month, as two people have asked it to take down links to info about crimes for which they’d been convicted. Neither crime is required to be disclosed to potential employers, according to a UK law passed in 1974 that Read more…
CVS is going to make sure the products it sells aren’t promoted with images that have been “materially” altered. It’s a great start. The announcement earlier this month read, in part: “We want our beauty aisle to be a place where our customers can always come to feel good, while representing and Read more…
Herb Schmertz, who passed away last week, did amazing work that made him my idol when I started in the business. Little did I know that he was inventing the future of PR, too. At least three of Schmertz’s innovations are now mainstays of business communications today: He pioneered native content. Read more…
There are many reasons why we shouldn’t regulate artificial intelligence, or “A.I.,” one reason why we should. The case against regulation was argued most recently in a New York Times op-ed that gave at least three reasons: 1) nobody can agree on what even constitutes A.I., 2) machines have been doing “smart” things Read more…
Olivia Solon just wrote a brilliant piece in The Guardian about the inanity of the Consumer Electronics Show. I worry the situation may even be more dire than she suggests. Solon notes that the show’s theme — “whoa” features prominently on its website and in various speech intros — evidences less true innovation to Read more…
Whether or not you think it’s right that information from our government gets leaked to the media, it might be helpful to remember that our country was all but founded on one. In 1773, passions were running high in Britain’s American colonies. Various taxes and increased violence like the Boston Read more…