Post by: Tim Calkins
Chick-fil-A has a significant and growing branding problem. The company has long been grounded in religious beliefs. It is owned by a Baptist family and embraces traditional ideals. The company donates to conservative causes. The restaurants are closed on Sunday. Recently, however, Dan Cathy, the company’s president, gave a series of interviews where he strongly […]
I suspect executives at McDonald’s are wrestling with a key branding question facing the company: should McDonald’s Corporation continue to focus all its efforts on the McDonald’s brand or is it time to broaden the brand portfolio and invest in a second brand? This isn’t an easy question. McDonald’s has been one of the great business success […]
PepsiCo is entering the yogurt category. Last week a number of news outlets reported that the company will soon start selling yogurt in several cities in the Northeast. PepsiCo has formed a partnership with German dairy company Theo Muller and will sell yogurt under the Muller brand. This isn’t a small introduction; the two companies […]
Microsoft is in the news this week with more bad news about its online division and its struggling search engine, Bing. Recent results have been just terrible; in the 9 months ending March 31 the division lost $1.45 billion on revenue of $2.1 billion. Microsoft this week announced a $6.2 billion write-off related to the […]
The New York Times ran a fascinating article on Sunday about Apple’s store employees. I pasted the link below. The article focused on a rather interesting situation: Apple manages to hire highly skilled and motivated people despite paying them about $11 per hour and providing no real career path. These people could likely make far […]
You can learn a couple important things from J.C. Penney’s Michael Francis. Francis, of course, was President of J.C. Penney until he abruptly departed earlier this week. He was at the company for about eight months. Learning number 1: It is all about the results. J.C. Penney is in the middle of a major […]
Tomorrow more than 500 students will graduate from Kellogg. Many of them are my students; I’ve had the joy of teaching almost half of the group in my marketing strategy and biomedical marketing courses. I’ll be at the ceremony but I won’t be addressing the students tomorrow; I was a finalist for professor the year […]
J.C. Penney is in the midst of a major transformation. As I noted a couple weeks back, the company is moving away from its reliance on discounts; J.C. Penney has lowered everyday retail prices and is doing less price cutting. This year the company stopped using the word sale entirely, instead focusing on what it called “month-long […]
Sara Lee announced today that it is changing its name to Hillshire Brands after it spins off its coffee division. This is a smart move but I wonder if the executives at Hillshire missed an opportunity. There was little chance the company would keep the Sara Lee brand. Sara Lee is closely associated with frozen desserts, […]
According to CEO Tim Cook, Apple will soon be launching some amazing new products. Yesterday at the D: All Things Digital conference Cook said, “The juices are flowing. We have some incredible things coming out.” Cook is clearly raising expectations for the new products. You don’t use the words amazing and incredible lightly. Is this a […]
General Motors announced last week that it will not buy any spots for the 2013 Super Bowl. This is a fairly surprising decision because this year General Motors made a huge investment in the Super Bowl; GM ran four spots, including three for Chevrolet and one for Cadillac. The company also spent an enormous amount […]
We got a lot of rather tough news this week, from more financial issues in Europe to slumping sales at J.C. Penney. But it was a good week for the coffee industry: the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that coffee consumption had a positive impact on mortality. And the more you coffee […]