Apple has already convinced half of America that it has a case to defy the FBI. Now Tim Cook has extended the company’s clear, jargon-free communication to its own employees, and to the public with an Answers page. According to a survey of over 1,000 people from the Pew Research Center, 51% of the respondents think Apple…
Apple’s in a bind. The FBI wants them to crack the encryption on a San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone. Apple believes that’s a dangerous precedent. Apple CEO Tim Cook’s open letter is breathtakingly simple and clear. Learn from it. Here’s Apple’s logic: Breaking encryption creates a “back door.” Any such back door would inevitably get out. Thieves…
Maybe you saw the football game last night. You probably noticed the commercials. Some were funny and sharable. Some were effective for the brand. But not that many were both. If you talk about your product, you’re probably being boring. If you try to be funny or cool, you risk wasting effort, leaving the viewer mystified about…
The press release for Pepsi’s new bar (oops, I mean “experiential lounge”) shows how you can pump up almost anything with extra fizz. This is fashion. Fashion can’t just use simple words like “blue” and “polyester”; similarly, a fashionable bar talking about drinks would sound boring. So we get “experiences.” Let’s look at some fabulous excerpts. I’ve…
Three organizations have screwed up recently: The Motion Picture Academy nominated zero actors of color for Oscars, Chipotle made its customers sick, and the Boston Globe couldn’t deliver papers. I wanted to follow up on my recent posts about Chipotle and the Globe, and see if the Academy Awards folks could do any better. All three needed to…
The NFL’s Cleveland Browns just hired stats guru Paul DePodesta, a baseball guy, as “Chief Strategy Officer.” I’ve read the press release, and I still have no clue what that means. You’ve probably heard of DePodesta. He was the analytics whiz in Moneyball, the one that Billy Beane embraced to turn around the Oakland A’s. (Jonah Hill…
The Boston Globe has managed to survive the inescapable digital transformation of the world, only to destroy itself in spectacularly shortsighted analog fashion. Like all media, the Globe faces digital disruption. But from the innovative launch of Boston.com in 1995 to the responsive-design works-on-all-devices site of today, its digital steps have been clever and effective. The paper’s…
The fantasy world of merger announcements bears no resemblance to the reality of mergers. Michael Dell’s post about the Dell-EMC merger is a fine example. Why do companies merge? There’s always language about “complementary skills and assets,” but that’s always bullshit. There is always language about “serving customers better” but that is also bullshit. Companies merge for…
If you want a great book launch, your focus after completing the manuscript should be on promotion and relationships. Great books sell, but they don’t sell themselves. The traditional publishing process has three stages. In the first stage, you create a proposal and pitch the book to publishers. In the second stage, you complete your research and…