Two competing textbook publishers, McGraw-Hill and Cengage Learning, have proposed to merge. Reducing competition in markets fueled by predatory pricing is a bad idea. But why are textbooks so expensive? When I worked in the textbook publishing industry, the CEO of my startup publisher told me that what we did was “dog food marketing.” When…
Adobe announced yesterday that it would acquire commerce platform Magento for $1.68 billion. It’s clear that an army of lawyers and PR people spent days crafting the 1001-word announcement, with is laden with highly refined, state-of-the-art tech-vendor bullshit. So let’s take the announcement apart. I’ll highlight jargon in bold and meaningless weasel words in italic, and…
T-Mobile has agreed to acquire Sprint. But the two mobile carriers need regulatory approval to go forward with their merger. Rather than the usual lobbying, they’ve released a video. It’s notable for its clear, simple message addressed directly to consumers. Here’s the video, which already has 84,000 views. Reducing a complex message to simple and…