Filed under: Marketing and advertising, McDonald’s (MCD)

Score a victory for corporate responsibility and good taste.

After drawing fire from almost everyone when a Seminole County, Florida, mother complained that her 9 year-old daughter’s report card arrived wrapped in an advertisement for McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), the company has decided it will discontinue that practice.

At the time of the original scandal, I wrote that I thought the ad campaign sent the wrong message: “The ad offered children a free Happy Meal for their good work. Shouldn’t children be taught to work for knowledge and pride, not crappy food and imported toys?”

Apparently McDonald’s ultimately concurred, saying it offered to reprint the report card envelopes without the ad at no cost to the school, “because we believe the focus should be on the importance of a good education.”

It’s a shame that young kids are exposed to cynical cradle-to-grave marketing strategies on TV, but parents should be able to send their kids to school without having to worry that second-grade teachers will be hocking Happy Meals.

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Filed under: Marketing and advertising

Recently gone-public clothing sensation American Apparel (AMEX: APP) has a new marketing campaign, and it isn’t just about selling clothes.

According to the New York Times, “In a new series of ads, American Apparel is moving in a political direction. The cause is immigration reform, and the ads say in part that the status quo “amounts to an apartheid system” and should be overhauled to create a legal path for undocumented workers to gain citizenship in the United Says.”

American Apparel CEO Dov Charney has never shied away from controversy. In a recent post on BloggingStocks, I discussed some of the more bizarre antics of his career and it isn’t just erotic advertising. This is a guy who actually masturbated in front of a reporter during an interview with Jane magazine.

It isn’t that I doubt the sincerity of Mr. Charney’s beliefs about immigration. As he said, “These people don’t have freedom of mobility, they’re living in the shadows. This is at the core of my company, at the core of my soul.”

The problem is that, now that American Apparel is public, it isn’t just Mr. Charney’s company. Now he has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, and putting his company at the center of divisive issues may not be in their best interests. When a company is private, it gets to make decisions about what’s important, and certainly has a right to use its own resources to take a stand for causes that are important to the owner. But as a public company, American Apparel has a responsibility to focus its resources on increasing its profits.

As intriguing as the company’s growth is, I do question whether Mr. Charney is well-suited to run a public company. He’s a brilliant maverick and an ingenious entrepreneur, but dancing to his own drum may alienate Main Street … and Wall Street.

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Filed under: Marketing and advertising, McDonald’s (MCD)

Score a victory for corporate responsibility and good taste.

After drawing fire from nearly everyone when a Seminole County, Florida, mom complained that her 9 year-old daughter’s report card arrived wrapped in an advertisement for McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD), the company has decided it will discontinue that practice.

At the time of the original scandal, I wrote that I thought the ad campaign sent the wrong message: “The ad offered kids a free Happy Meal for their good work. Shouldn’t children be taught to work for knowledge and pride, not crappy food and imported toys?”

Apparently McDonald’s ultimately agreed, saying it offered to reprint the report card envelopes without the ad at no cost to the school, “because we believe the focus should be on the importance of a good education.”

It’s a shame that young children are exposed to cynical cradle-to-grave marketing strategies on television, but parents should be able to send their children to school without having to worry that second-grade teachers will be hocking Happy Meals.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Marketing and advertising

Recently gone-public clothing sensation American Apparel (AMEX: APP) has a new marketing campaign, and it isn’t just about selling clothes.

According to the New York Times, “In a new series of ads, American Apparel is moving in a political direction. The cause is immigration reform, and the ads say in part that the status quo “amounts to an apartheid system” and should be overhauled to create a legal path for undocumented workers to gain citizenship in the United States.”

American Apparel CEO Dov Charney has never shied away from controversy. In a current post on BloggingStocks, I discussed some of the more bizarre antics of his career and it isn’t just erotic advertising. This is a guy who actually masturbated in front of a reporter during an interview with Jane magazine.

It isn’t that I doubt the sincerity of Mr. Charney’s beliefs about immigration. As he stated, “These people don’t have freedom of mobility, they’re living in the shadows. This is at the core of my company, at the core of my soul.”

The problem is that, now that American Apparel is public, it isn’t just Mr. Charney’s company. Now he has a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, and putting his company at the center of divisive issues might not be in their best interests. When a company is private, it gets to make decisions about what’s important, and certainly has a right to use its own resources to take a stand for causes that are important to the owner. But as a public company, American Apparel has a responsibility to focus its resources on increasing its profits.

As intriguing as the company’s growth is, I do question whether Mr. Charney is well-suited to run a public company. He’s a brilliant maverick and an ingenious entrepreneur, but dancing to his own drum may alienate Main Street … and Wall Street.

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Filed under: Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising, McDonald’s (MCD)

McDonalds Corp. (NYSE: MCD) won’t be promoting its food products along with elementary school report cards, according to the company. In a move that many considered appalling, the world’s largest fast food chain was marketing its Happy Meal food bundle products to kids who reached good grades in school — but just in an area of Florida as opposed to nationwide.

This was only happening in Seminole, Florida. McDonalds restaurants thought it would make sense to reward children with cheeseburgers and french fries for those As and good attendance records. But, after some public backlash, executives at McDonalds USA have decided to end the program completely.

As American kids remain fatter than ever, I’m not sure what to make of McDonalds restaurant owners who want to reward children with fast food. In one way, it’s business as usual for the burger chain. In another, it’s a slap in the face to critics of the obesity epidemic. McDonalds USA communications exec William Whitman explained the promo cancellation by indicating that the burger chain “believes the focus should be on the importance of a good education.” Well said, William.

The company will also pay to reprint the report card jackets containing the promotional offer instead of relying on the Seminole school district. Commercial-Free Childhood director Susan Linn said “In the absence of needed government regulation to protect schoolchildren from predatory companies like McDonald’s, the burden is on parents to be vigilant about exploitative marketing aimed at children.”

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Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Web services, Beta, Search

If you spend a lot of time in front of the computer, you probably collect dozens of little snippets of information each day: Web sites to visit later, documents you want to review some other time, contact info of people you want to catch up with next week, reminders about what to pack for your next trip.

There are all kinds ways to track your stuff on the internet (Del.ici.ous, Remember the Milk), but they leave your data segregated across several Web sites. There are also a few options for corralling and indexing all your stuff right on the computer (Google Desktop, Mac OS X Spotlight), but they don’t help much when you’re away from your desk.

The folks at iubo feel your pain and have designed a Web site where you can store on the internet all the dribs, drabs, and what-nots you accumulate and then access them later, no matter where you’re. Once you create an account, you can add and track information on pretty much anything you can think of: pictures, bookmarked Web sites, contact information, notes, documents, and so on. You can even add tags and color-code data for easier searching later.

Continue reading Score an invite to the private beta of iubo

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Filed under: Products and services, Starbucks (SBUX), Marketing and advertising, Employees, Private equity

Privately-held EMI Group is just not having a very good week, what with announcing painful changes in the works, and the prospect of several huge name artists threatening to withhold new albums until certain assurances from the label are met. Now comes news that longtime EMI act The Rolling Stones will be leaving the label at the end of the band’s current contract in May to join industry giant Universal Music Group, owned by Vivendi.

The difference in a large name like The Rolling Stones leaving EMI and say, Radiohead (who have also left since Terra Firma’s takeover) leaving, is that the Stones departure follows the company’s decision to eliminate 2,000 jobs worldwide.

Any real connection between the Stones’ decision and EMI’s layoffs is likely limited, since a new deal with another label has likely been in the works for a few weeks or months. However, the band was likely aware of the treatment other artists seemed to be encountering and the difficulties that were arriving after the Terra Firma buyout in August. The band has been signed to EMI since 2003, in a deal estimated at

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