Recently, I scheduled a morning meeting at Panera’s restaurant with a vendor. Since I don’t drink coffee, I typically order hot chocolate. However, the clerk informed me that management recently discontinued serving hot chocolate. As a financial guy, I understand limiting the number of products you serve to enhance profitability. However, I wonder if management researched the other implications ...
After Bud Light’s misstep of spotlighting a transgender spokesperson, you’d think that most corporations would avoid making the same mistake. But recently, Doritos headed down the same path. Doritos Spain featured a transgender singer who supposedly had made past inflammatory and sexualized comments that were offensive to many Doritos customers. The backlash was swift as many conservative posts called for ...
As the world’s richest man, Elon Musk’s tweets are watched closely. Last fall he forwarded someone’s tweet that many claimed was antisemitic. He endorsed the tweet by commenting, “You have said the actual truth.” Musk only wrote six words, but those words cost his company, X, an estimated $75 million in advertising. Musk eventually apologized, but the cost for ...
Surprisingly, there’s one thing Republicans and Democrats agreed on recently; the impact small businesses have on America. When research firm, Gallup, asked about which institutions have the greatest positive impact on American society, small businesses won hands down. 85% of survey respondents named small business as having the most positive impact on society, beating out churches, the military, and large ...
In the 1950s, the Philadelphia police referred to the day after Thanksgiving as Black Friday, due to all the people starting their Christmas shopping. A negative day for police, however, became a great day financially for merchants. Eventually, marketing savvy merchants became concerned about attaching a negative term like Black Friday to their best sales day. These merchants changed the ...
Many years ago, my old Malibu needed some work. I found a car repair business in a Christian directory that had a fish symbol in their advertisement. I gave them a try. It was a horrible experience. Their level of incompetence was staggering. When I challenged the owner, as a fellow Christian, to make it right, the owner laughed and ...
Early in my former consulting practice, a friend convinced me I needed to hire a salesperson. Weeks later, I hired Steve. The first call Steve went with me on was to a company that I knew desperately needed our help. But I had never closed the deal. That day, Steve told the prospect. “I’m not leaving until you sign a ...
In our changing culture, there are growing risks for the brands of our small businesses. When someone sees our brand images, they tie it to whatever messaging is attached. Recently, someone emailed me from an organization I was involved with decades ago. The signature line in her email had her name, title, then under her title it said, “she/her/hers,” then, ...
Recently, Bud Light experimented and embraced the “woke” agenda in their controversial ad with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney. Their decision didn’t go well for their beer sales. Considering the point of advertising is to increase sales, the fact that Bud Light sales decreased over 20% for weeks afterwards, doesn’t bode well for their experiment. Bud Light should have known their ...
When I was a child, our local shopping center, Truman Corners, creatively advertised a ping pong ball drop. A helicopter was scheduled to drop ping pong balls into the parking lot. The ping pong balls would be marked with potential prizes. This creative idea filled the parking lot with thousands of people chasing bouncing ping pong balls. The individual ...
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