Ronald McDonald rings opening bell on Wall St., then threatens to cut insurance for 30K workers

These two items appeared in rapid succession in my Twitter feed: 9:26 AM — @CNNLive ‘Ronald McDonald’ rings Wall Street opening bell. Live: http://on.cnn.com/cnndcl2 9:29 AM — @WSJ McDonald’s says it may drop health insurance for nearly 30,000 workers unless a new requirement is waived http://on.wsj.com/acZl03   In case you are wondering, you can follow [...]

Interview with a cranky guy talking about Disney, Epcot and American history

Apparently it was a slow news week on the Disney front because Mrs. CollateralDamage had to resort to interviewing me for her podcast, Those Darn Cats. Mostly I talk about how Disney screwed up the telling of American history in the American Adventure Pavilion at Epcot. Don’t tell anyone but I also say a few [...]

Facebook worth more than $XX billion, say people with a vested interest in Facebook

Quiz time: Facebook  is worth how many billions of dollars? 3.7 9.5 23 33 Different people have given all of the above answers and a lot of other places have published them as fact, even though these numbers are are self-serving and cannot be verified. The first two are by Facebook itself, in February and [...]

Chevy harkens back to a time when women were things

Chevy used the above last month as a billboard to celebrate last month’s Woodward Dream Cruise classic-car event. But if you missed it you can get your own copy at the company’s online store. Ah, yes. The good old days. Back before the voting rights act and when you could still legally pay women less [...]

Greatest product placement ever?

A boy dropped his DS in a gorilla cage and inadvertently created the best photo op ever. Via GamesRadar which has more great pictures.

The drawback with internet ad placement is …

Via TNW

US has record number of millionaires, poor people, irony

Two news stories from the same day: Millionaire Population Soars — Again According to a new survey from Phoenix Marketing International’s Affluent Market Practice, the number of American households with investible assets of $1 million or more rose 8% in the 12 months ended in June. The survey says there now are 5.55 million U.S. [...]

Thoughts on marketing & racism

TV programs get to do clip shows all the time, so why can’t I? This originally ran in Brandweek on April 16, 2007 DON IMUS and Uncle Ben. Two icons emblematic of a very strange moment in how Americans and the people who market to them think about race. Call it cultural schizophrenia—we denounce racism [...]

It’s Just A Manly Thing

From the archives: I wrote this for Brandweek in 2006 and thought I’d share it. WHILE there’s always been money to be made preying on men’s insecurity, it seems to have reached truly ridiculous proportions of late. How else to explain the prevalence of the Hummer or "nutraceuticals," whose only effect is to enlarge the [...]

Drake University boasts about being a D+ school

Let’s pretend you are an institution of higher learning. Let’s say the name of your institution starts with the letter D. Now you want something special for your marketing, something that talks about the special magic that occurs when a student comes to your university. So what do you call it? Anything BUT “D+.” Well, [...]

Why I had to stop reading Michael Lewis’ The Big Short

I’m a fan of writer Michael Lewis. Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, Sandra Bullock Wins An Oscar, are all good books. As is The Big Short, his latest. I started reading it yesterday and by bedtime I was half-way through (it’s a short book and I’m a fast reader). When I got up this morning Mrs. CollateralDamage [...]

Medal of Honor video game shoots itself in the foot

Simple marketing rule: Don’t include a feature in your product that directly contradicts the name of your product. Case in point: The Medal of Honor video game from EA games. In this first person shooter, players get to pretend they are soldiers. I assume it lets you pretend you are a US soldier since those [...]