From Glenn Greenwald’s piece in Salon:
WikiLeaks suggested the “other source” was Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks associate who WikiLeaks claims took, without authorization, many WikiLeaks files when he left.
I am a fan of what WikiLeaks does but not so much of Julian Assange.
I’m sure he’s very upset about this.
Never, ever, let it be said that mere facts will come between an executive and his or her bonus. Transocean which – along with BP – is responsible for 11 deaths while creating the worst environmental disaster in US history, used its safety record as the reason for giving out exec bonuses.
According to the company’s financial proxy:
Transocean’s PR person (now there’s a job for you) said, "The statements of fact in the proxy speak for themselves” before adding the requisite comments about feeling bad for all the little people.
It is worth noting that the company’s execs did NOT get their bonuses the year before because of safety issues. It really isn’t reasonable to expect them to go two years without bonuses. That could lead to the departure of all the great talent that got the company to where it is today.
Let us not think that Transocean is alone. Our good friends in the banking industry have been doing the exact same thing even while they were destroying the economy.
A review of call reports filed with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., compiled by BankRegData.com, shows that average compensation in the last few years rose — and at the same rate as it did before the crisis. Employees of the largest banks realized the largest gains. The increases significantly outstripped inflation and can’t be attributed solely to shifts in pay schemes or recovering profitability. Banking in general shielded pay from its cost-cutting ax.
Ah, personal accountability in action.
As American Banker points out: “Over the last eight years, average compensation for a full-time bank employee has risen 35% to $83,050, twice the rate of inflation. In 2003, the banking industry’s 1.3 million full-time employees took home $78.3 billion. In 2010, its 2.1 million employees took home $168.1 billion.”
How much of that do you think went to the tellers and branch managers?
Oh and don’t forget: It’s all those millionaire public-sector employees’ fault.
Probably not, but it’s still impressive.
It’s a winner!
NOMINITAVE DETERMINISM IN ACTION!
There’s really nothing you could possibly add to that headline but if you want to read the FDA announcement go here.
NIGERIA is upset over financial fraud? Mr. Pot meet Mr. Kettle. HALLIBURTON is involved in bribery? I’m shocked. Just shocked.
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 me on Twitter at CurseYouKhan.
Image is from Logorama, which won the Oscar last year for best short animation.
Two news stories from the same day:
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. households with investible assets of $1 million or more.
A total of 43.6 million people lived in poverty last year, up from 39.8 million in 2008 — the third consecutive annual increase. Extended unemployment benefits lifted 3.3 million people out of poverty, compared with 900,000 in 2008.
Here are two of the 10 projects that came out of the “Journalism That Matters” conference at the University of Washington in January.
From my blog at EmediaVitals:
Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Idiocy) believes the press is biased and doesn’t represent the values of most Americans. Reasonable people could disagree on this but it’s certainly not an unusual or insane point of view. What is insane is Smith’s solution. The Media Fairness Circus, er, Caucus: “will encourage fairness and balance in reporting, while calling attention to biased coverage in a fair and reasonable way. By bringing attention to media bias and promoting an open dialogue between members of the media and elected officials, we plan to remind the media of their profound obligation to provide the American people with the facts, and not tell them what to think.”
Read the rest here at EmediaVitals.
It is worth noting that this level of stupidity isn’t limited to the legislative branch. Today, President Obama signed a bill promoting free press around the world. The bill was named after slain journalist Daniel Pearl. Here’s the kicker: Press access to the signing was restricted.
Edsel … New Coke … Lenovision.
NBC has joined the immortals of marketing stupidity. This year the molting peacock network and president Jeff “Have They Fired Me Yet?” Zucker decided to turn five of the primest pieces of prime-time real estate — the hour between 10 and 11 PM from Monday through Friday — into the Jay Leno hour.
The result? A 28% drop in viewership (through mid-November). This has not only killed network revenues but done in affiliates who have no lead-in for their late news casts.
Despite this, Jeff “10% Of Americans Are Unemployed and I’m Not?” Zucker recently said that all is going according to plan. “Right now, in terms of its performance on the television network, at NBC, in terms of ratings it’s doing exactly what we thought it would do.” Comcast recently bought NBC in what must have been an attempt to copy the government’s cash for clunkers program. Comcast shareholders can now only hope they are being lied to. The worst case scenario is that Mr. Z believes what he is saying.
On the plus side:
(Originally #9 — Who knew?)
Because I have a really limited imagination I thought the big celeb marketing mishap story of the year would be Michael Vick’s failed attempt to become a spokesperson for PETA. Then along came Tiger who prefers women with bad nose jobs to the Swedish bikini model he is actually married to. The story broke on Nov. 27th, when Mrs. Woods apparently decided to prove her own golfing expertise. This was unfortunate for Accenture which two days earlier had kicked off its annual Tiger campaign. A print ad which ran in the Nov. 30th Wall Street Journal featured Tiger Woods walking in the rough under the headline: “The road to high performance isn’t always paved.” And watch out for the trees and fire hydrants. Accenture has since declawed its Tiger connection.
First the banking industry made a big show of cutting the obscene bonuses it was paying itself for going on the dole. Meanwhile they hoped no one would notice the allegedly eliminated bonuses were now being paid as plain old salary.
But wait … that’s not all!
Apparently still feeling that their efforts to destroys the economy were still underappreciated, bankers started claiming Jesus wanted them to do it.
“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman’s [international adviser Brian] Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”
How much LSD do you have to take to interpret Scripture this way? However much it is, it is certainly being passed out at all the best financial institutions. Two weeks later, Barclays CEO John Varley spoke at the venerable St. Martin-in-the-Fields and tried to wrap the Bible around his bonus.
“There is no conflict between doing business in an ethical and responsible way and making money. We make our biggest contribution to society by being good at what we do. Profit is not satanic.”
I guess it all depends on who gets to determine how we define ethical and responsible. Perhaps Varley could have gotten away with this specious argument had he not added this gloss to the text after the service: “Is Christianity and banking compatible? Yes. And is Christianity and fair reward compatible? Yes.” (Not a good sign when a banker can’t even get his verb and subject numbers to add up.) Hey John, can we parse the word “fair” for a moment?
I believe the renowned 20th century theologian Ray Price put it best when he asked, “Would Jesus wear a Rolex on His television show?”
In the face of the greatest single corporate collapse in the history of the world, GM rolled out an ad that inadvertently explains the company’s failure.
It is a veritable symphony of weasel words.
Let’s be completely honest, no company wants to go through this.
By the end of that first sentence it is clear this ad has no intention whatsoever of living up to that initial clause. You can tell because the final pronoun is never made specific. That “this” covers billions of sins. It implies we all know what has happened without saying what that was. It is everything to everyone and thus means nothing. Is “this” an utter failure of leadership? Or is it an inability to have even the vaguest understanding of the needs of the marketplace? Sadly, I suspect “this” is “an economic calamity no one could have foreseen” – the preferred phrase of everyone from Alan Greenspan to, well, the Detroit-based car makers. There is no taking responsibility anywhere in this ad just as there has been no taking responsibility at GM for decades. (Read more here)
The October issue of French Vogue had a photo spread of the very Caucasian Lara Stone painted head to toe in dark make-up. Vogue went with the old “I’m sorry if you found my words insulting” defense and told the Daily Mail “it was unaware it had caused offence, but said it could not give any further comment.” (Worth noting: Italian Vogue’s issue for the same month was filled with actual Black women.) In a keeping up with the KKK move inflight magazine EasyJet ran a photo spread featuring brooding generic models dressed in black POSING IN FRONT OF BERLIN’S HOLOCAUST MONUMENT.
Fortunately for me marketers just can’t seem to figure out that Nazi = Bad. This years examples:
“Somali fashion, do-it-yourself henna kits, children’s books that draw inspiration from the lives of Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor: it’s not hard to find gifts created for and by people of color this holiday season.” (emphasis added)
Why it’s almost like they’re real people!
CandyExpress said its commemorative Barack Obama heads would only be available for a limited time, unfortunately it wasn’t limited enough. Off the top of my head I would say there are three things Mr. Obama should not be used to advertise: Chocolate, fried chicken (a German company did it), watermelon (that’s a yet). However, the Russians came up with a bunch of things I’d never thought of. They used our President to advertise a tanning salon, a dental clinic and pre-packaged ice cream with the slogan “Everyone’s talking about it: dark inside white!” The bars have a chocolate-flavored center embedded in a layer of vanilla.
However these are just idiocy, the sheer stupidity award goes to Beanie Baby maker Ty. First they decided to sell two new dolls named Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia. Then they tried to deny they were named after America’s First Kids.
Sorry dear, but in order to get away with a lie like that you have to be a bank.
The word of the year really should have been app. The ubiquitous iPhone has spawned an industry of companies trying to market their wares by providing allegedly useful and/or humorous apps. To paraphrase Pogo, this confronted Pepsi with an insurmountable opportunity. The company released an app called Before You Score for its Mountain Dew AMP brand. The app gives you 24 different types of women (sorority girl, etc.) and offers “appropriate” pick-up lines for each type and other similar information.
Not to be outdone, LawFirms.com, a legal referral site, decided to get attention with a campaign featuring the (fictitious) app iCoyote. It “packs all of the features of a real immigrant smuggler into the iPhone. Using GPS, navigate through the patrol packed desert without worrying about that pesky Border Patrol.”
The app included a variety of features such as:
- iWife. It “will take care of finding marriage prospects for you. Aggregating and analyzing data from a variety of online sources [to] match you up with only the most promising US Citizen candidates.”
- iLawyer. “Homeland Security is Cracking down. Not to worry. With iLawyer, you can find an attorney to convince the immigration court to grant Asylum Protection. A Green Card is a finger swipe away.”
- Weather Monitors. “The desert can get hot, and trying to cross it when it’s 120 degrees is not fun. Get up-to-date weather forecasts to pick the right time and ensure your trip to the US is comfortable and fun-packed.”
- City Statistics. “San Antonio? Albuquerque? Tucson? San Diego? Not sure which is best? Get unemployment statistics, current average wages, cost of living expenses and more. Get the job you want, at the right wage, tax free!”
Your child can learn that the homeless are just like real people once you spend $95 to buy her a “less fortunate” playmate for her other American Girl doll(s). The latest addition to the American Girl line of how-do-you-justify-it-ly expensive dolls is Gwen Thompson. Ms. Thompson
And should you also want to teach the kid that the disabled are people too, American Girl also sells a wheelchair for $30.
Why would you pay to have Oprah endorse your product if you didn’t know what the result be? In May the chain formerly known as Kentucky Fried Chicken paid Ms. Winfrey to discuss its new grilled chicken on her show. (This is part of an ongoing effort to rebrand KFC as someplace that serves something besides FC. By the time it’s over KFC will be Rhode Island Clam Shack. But I digress.) In addition to giving product to her audience — and how pissed were they? Other folks got a new car and they get a food experiment – viewers could go to a website and download a coupon for up to four free two-piece chicken meals with two sides and a biscuit. If there’s one thing the US loves more than Oprah, it’s Oprah and free food.
You’ll never guess what happened. OK, so maybe you will.
Several bajillion people downloaded the coupon and sprinted to the nearest KFC. Well, the food disappeared faster than a dollar bill on the floor of the Senate. As a result somefranchisees started refusing to accept the coupon, some told people the promotion was over for the day, some quickly pointed to the “while supplies last” clause, the more creative said that coupons with barcode numbers ending in “1234” are not valid. Look closely at the barcode below to see what that meant.
All this brought new meaning to the chain’s horrible new tagline: “Unthink What You Thought About KFC.”
Another chain, El Pollo Loco, moved smart and fast and sent out a twitter saying they’d accept the coupons on Mother’s Day. Soon Oprah was having to apologize for the stupidity and KFC issued rain checks to the disgruntled.
All of which goes to prove that whatever you have to pay Oprah, the ROI is REAL!
Blackwater president Gary Jackson said in a memo to employees the new name reflects the change in company focus away from the business of providing private security. “The volume of changes over the past half-year have taken the company to an exciting place and we are now ready for two of the final, and most obvious changes,” Jackson said in the note.
That exciting place seems to include a lot of lawsuits.
“We will call it Mexico flu. We won’t call it swine flu,” Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman, a black-garbed Orthodox Jew, told a news conference Monday, assuring the Israeli public that authorities were prepared to handle any cases.
CIO writer and friend Al Sacco came up with this: Swine flu isn’t a scary enough name. It needs a slogan, too: “Pork Plague, the (Other) White Death,” for example.
AMAZON DELISTS GAY AND LESBIAN BOOKS
The online retailer blamed an “employee in France” for a “software glitch” which oddly delisted gay and lesbian themed books from its search listings. (Example: Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain vanished, but not her book The Shipping News in which all the sex is hetero.)
CRAIGSLIST CEO SAYS SITE HAS NO SEX RELATED ADS
THE WISCONSIN TOURISM FOUNDATION
had to change its name to the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin
BONUS: A few other totally wrong products from the year
In order to market its then-new Matrix model, Saatchi & Saatchi proposed and Toyota OK’d a campaign whereby people who “opted-in” would get “e-mails for five days from a fictitious man called Sebastian Bowler, from England, who said he was on the run from the law, knew [the person] and where [he/she lived] and was coming to [his/her] home to hide from the police.” And oh, by the way, the participants were entered into the event by people who wanted to set up friends to be "punked."
What could possibly go wrong with that?
Plenty. So much that Amber Duick of LA has filed suit against the carmaker over emotional distress caused by being on the receiving end of the stunt.
Although Bowler did not have Duick’s current address, he sent her links to his My Space page as well as links to video clips of him causing trouble all over the country on his way to her former house in Los Angeles, according to the lawsuit. "Amber mate! Coming 2 Los Angeles. Gonna lay low at your place for a bit till it all blows over," the man wrote in one e-mail.
You may not have thought it possible, but it gets even stupider.
Duick’s attorney said the marketing company went so far as to send Duick a bill for damages the fictitious man supposedly made to a hotel room. "Amber, ran into a little problem at the hotel," a note with the invoice stated. "After I’m done visiting you, I’m going to go back and sort out that front desk Muppet."
The company’s defense? “Well, she did agree to the opt-in.” Said opt-in was buried in an emailed “personality test” which contained a link to a web page allegedly explaining what was going to happen. Duick’s lawyer characterizes the explanatory note as “indecipherable.” This point seems reasonable as you could hardly expect to punk someone who knows what’s coming.
The entire thing begs two questions:
Saatchi & Saatchi told the marketing magazine OMMA last year that it had developed the campaign to target men under 35 who hate advertising. The prank campaign, Saatchi creative director Alex Flint told the magazine, should gain the appreciation from "even the most cynical, anti-advertising guy.
HUH? How the hell does this actually sell the product? It sure as hell isn’t going to make anyone less cynical or anti-advertising. I want to ask did it ever once occur to anyone that even “men under 35” have been known to have problematic people in their lives – but we already know the answer.
Sadly this campaign is excluded for this year’s list of Top 10 (or so) marketing blunders as it took place in 2008. However, I suspect it may receive a special citation from a certain special interest group.
The cereals are just two of the foods to receive approval from a new food-labeling campaign called Smart Choices, backed by most of the nation’s largest food manufacturers. The green checkmark label is “designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.”
Smarter than what, you ask? Donuts according to Eileen T. Kennedy, (unpaid) president of the Smart Choices board and dean of the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts.
Quoth the NY Times:
Froot Loops qualifies for the label because it meets standards set by the Smart Choices Program for fiber and Vitamins A and C, and because it does not exceed limits on fat, sodium and sugar. It contains the maximum amount of sugar allowed under the program for cereals, 12 grams per serving, which in the case of Froot Loops is 41 percent of the product, measured by weight. That is more sugar than in many popular brands of cookies.
But wait, it gets better. Celeste A. Clark, senior vice president of global nutrition for Kellogg’s, which makes Froot Loops said Smart Choices’ standard for sugar in cereals was consistent with federal dietary guidelines which state “small amounts of sugar” added to nutrient-dense foods like breakfast cereals can make them taste better.
Great final quote from the wonderfully named Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at my alma mater, New York University. “The object of this is to make highly processed foods appear as healthful as unprocessed foods, which they are not.”
You will not be surprised to learn the Smart Choices research and campaign is paid for by food companies. So far 10 of them have ponied up as much as $100K for the right to have the seal on their products. I suspect many more will soon jump on board.
This program approved by:
Go here NOW! National Association of The Penguins of Irony fan club
Kenneth Gladney, 38, of St. Louis, claims he was injured when union members attacked the politically conservative Gladney last Friday. The union denies says this and says Gladney started it. Both sides are preparing the traditional “I’m made of rubber, your made of glue defense.” Whoever’s fault it was, the melee ended in six arrests. It was one of several at meetings around the country held to discuss ideas to reform the nation’s costly health care system.
Sadly the article doesn’t mention if anyone asked Gladney “Oh, irony where is thy sting?”
Cry Havoc and release the Penguins.
and her mother Janine fell on hard times when her father lost his job; they later lost the house as they were unable to keep up payments. Soon after, Gwen’s father left them and they became homeless the fall before the start of the book’s events. Initially, Gwen’s mother has them live in their car until the winter comes; she then takes them to Sunrise House, a place for homeless women and children. Sunrise House helps them get on their feet and eventually get a new apartment.
Collateral Damage 