My father spent 39 years at Nestlé, and often described the food business as one of the most operationally-demanding areas in consumer goods. Unpredictable costs, complex supply chains, and intense retail competition make it really difficult for even leading brands to keep growing the bottom line. So Unilever’s decision to combine its foods business with ..
Tag : Voice
Big companies always have a pecking order First the CEO. Then CFO—who often eventually becomes CEO. This conveyor belt of corporate succession is replicated across every sector on earth. But in fashion, the CFO is a back-office function. It is the creative director who sits alongside the CEO, sometimes as a junior partner, sometimes as ..
Many will have done a double take recently after seeing the words “Netflix”, “Warner,” and “deal” in a headline together. But rather than a last-gasp plot twist in the streamer’s bidding war with Paramount, the “Warner” in question is Warner Music Group. The deal grants Netflix multi-year, first-look privileges on documentary series and films exploring ..
Twenty years ago, as I prepared to graduate with a degree in English, everyone asked me the same question: “What are you going to do with that?” At the time, it was fair. Specializing in language wasn’t a direct path into business or tech. Today, that same skill has a new label: prompt engineering. The ..
Before marketers learn AI, or the language of the boardroom, or purpose, or storytelling, or any of the other things we keep telling them they need to master, many of them need to learn something more basic. They need to learn marketing. There, I said it. I know it sounds provocative. It isn’t meant to ..
After over 25 years in marketing, I learned that many targeting decisions aren’t driven by sound commercial logic. They are driven by faulty logic, a lack of empathy, and the recurring fantasy that the consumer most attractive to marketers is automatically the most valuable one. The same mistakes always come back, usually wrapped in a ..
Principal media buying has moved from a quiet industry practice to a very public flashpoint. While much of the current discussion focuses on digital and programmatic channels, principal media spans the full media ecosystem, from traditional linear channels to programmatic marketplaces. The practice has long existed across traditional media—broadcast, cable, radio, and outdoor—where agencies could ..
The Devil Wears Prada 2 won’t hit theaters until May 1, but it’s already spawning a brand ecosystem. TRESemmé, L’Oréal Paris, and Grey Goose all aired campaigns during the Oscars. Diet Coke is rolling out limited-edition cans across Europe. Cinemark has six collectibles. TRESemmé is the most interesting one to me. It recently announced its ..
On February 3, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski posted a video on Instagram where he held up the chain’s new Big Arch burger, marveled at its size, took a careful bite, and called it a “product”—a word that any CEO would use. His post sat largely unnoticed for three weeks. Until a comedian in Ireland found ..
When a founder wires $150 million of his own money into a stock that is down 60 to 70 percent, he is not just betting on his company. He is betting on how media will be bought in the future. Jeff Green’s open market purchase of roughly 6 million shares of The Trade Desk, about ..