NEWSLETTER #124 / August 5, 2018
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GOOD WEEK FOR PARANOIDS
"It's really just a matter of plugging your USB drive in for five seconds and the thing's completely compromised...It's very simple." That's a security expert telling us how a hacker figured out how to hack a voting machine in an hour and a half. This took place at DefCon in Las Vegas.
The idea was for a bunch of hackers to get together and show how easily voting machines could be compromised. A security firm involved in the test reported that in one case they found a poll worker in Virginia who had hacked a voting machine to play Minesweeper.
A worker at the security firm said that once a voting machine has been compromised changing votes can be as easy as updating an Excel document.
Meanwhile, in further election horrors... Facebook shut down over 30 accounts this week which insiders say were there to influence the 2018 midterm elections in a similar fashion to the attempts at influencing the 2016 election. Except these new accounts were a lot more sophisticated.
Yahoo news says that according to security experts, "creators of fake accounts and news pages on Facebook are learning from their past mistakes and making themselves harder to track and identify." Remember, the whole art of disinformation is to avoid detection, and Facebook can only shut down the ones they detect. Let's just say their track record at detecting fraud isn't exemplary.
If you're paranoid this was a good week. If you're not paranoid, you're not paying attention.
Brand Purpose: Try Not To Poison People
One of the inescapable marketing clichés of the current era is "brand purpose." Delusional marketers think it's not enough to offer us satisfactory goods and services. They think we want to be their friends, and have relationships with them, and have conversations with them and exhibit "brand love."
Listen to this horseshit from the CMO of Chipotle: "Our ultimate marketing mission is to make Chipotle not just a food brand, but a purpose-driven lifestyle brand..."
"There is such a unique emotional component to this brand stemming from its authenticity and transparency about food... No one has such great tasting food that you feel good about eating like we do ...Chipotle will become a brand that people want to know about, want to be a part of and want to wear as a badge."
Yeah, right.
About a half-hour after Mr. Purpose Driven Drivel issued this claptrap news reports started rolling in..."On Wednesday, the Delaware General Health District announced that—as of July 31—it had received 518 inquiries from the public related to a possible outbreak of foodborne illness at a local Chipotle." The number is now 700 reportedly sick.
Of course, Chipotle has a long history of being a great enabler of the purpose-driven e-coli lifestyle.
But wait...there's more.
While the reports of sickness were being catalogued, Chipotle added insult to diarrhea with a "National Guacamole Day" promotion that went seriously south of the border. Trying to go all hipster/digital, Chipotle offered a free order of guac to anyone who ordered food online or through its app. I'm sure you can guess the rest -- both the website and the app crashed.
What benefit do CMOs get from all this brand purpose bullshit? When you can't do anything right, hide behind philosophy.
And what do consumers think? "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges."
MDC Soap Opera
MDC Partners is kind of a mini agency holding company. Among its agency holdings are 72andSunny, CP+B (formerly Crispin, Porter & Bogusky) and Anomaly.
What MDC has become famous for over the past few years, though, is not advertising. It's drama.
In 2015, then CEO Miles Nadal stepped down for having played a little hanky-panky with his expenses. He is reported to have returned $20 million to the company. (Don't you wish you had $20 million to return to someone?) That started a long slide during which time the share price has dropped from almost $30 to about $5.
In the interim they got an infusion of $95 million from Goldman Sachs, which got a seat on the board. Which means there's probably some shopping going on.
A few days ago MDC laid off a bunch of execs, including their global CMO. Then a few minutes later, CP+B brought back their storied former creative chief, Alex Bogusky, after an 8-year absence. Which resulted in the current global chief creative officer, Linus Karlsson, packing up and leaving after having been at the agency for less than a year.
And then there's this nasty little lawsuit. CP+B former Chief Creative Officer Ralph Watson was called out by a group of anonymous hit-persons called Diet Madison Avenue whose website outed alleged sexual wrongdoers.
As a result, CP+B canned Watson and he is suing Diet Madison Avenue for defamation and CP+B for wrongful termination. This week a court "signed an order allowing...Ralph Watson to serve business record subpoenas to Instagram, its parent Facebook and Gmail ...to provide identifying information about the anonymous individuals behind Diet Madison Avenue." I promise, this is going to be great theater.
News You Can Lose
- Speaking of sexual misconduct (and who isn't?) ...Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS who is under scrutiny for alleged sexual misconduct has relinquished his seat on - you ready? - USC's Commission on Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace.
- World's Worst Job? According to Marketing Week Facebook is looking for a CMO to “...build, manage and inspire a global marketing organisation focused on its consumer business and overall company reputation.”
Good luck.
- Can't Make This Shit Up: According to Adweek, a company in Japan is selling advertising space on the armpits of young models. It's official. The ad industry has lost its mind.
