GETTING IT FROM ALL SIDES

The tech industry had a bad week. President Trump said Google search results are "RIGGED" against him. He said it in ALL CAPS, which apparently makes it much worse.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders was all over Amazon and Jeff Bezos, “The taxpayers in this country should not be subsidizing a guy who’s worth $150 billion, whose wealth is increasing by $260 million every single day...”

Then The Wall Street Journal stuck it to Facebook. They ran an article headlined, "Coming Soon to Facebook: Lots of Extreme Political Ads. Campaign strategists say the social-media giant’s advertising platform rewards extreme messaging." To back it up they quoted a former Democratic strategist, who "tested a range of online campaign ads including 'pretty and ugly, nice and incendiary'.... Ugly and incendiary won every time...”

It seems like suddenly every whiner with an axe to grind has become a critic of the Silicon Valley aristocracy. I miss the good old days when it was just a few of us Luddite dinosaurs screaming about those people and everyone looking at us like we were crazy.

Ford In Their Future?

WPP is the world's largest agency holding company and probably its most problematic. They got rid of Sir Martin Sorrell a few months ago reportedly over alleged sexual indiscretions (apparently everyone's favorite kind.) This came after they had experienced some serious erosion of share value.

This week one of their biggest worldwide clients, Ford (with a total marketing budget of over $4 billion) announced that they were handing a project assignment to independent agency Wieden & Kennedy. Ford is in the midst of a global review for its account in which both WPP and W&K are finalists. The third finalist is BBDO.

Industry insiders say that WPP will be announcing a new CEO in the next few days. Good luck, amigo.

NY Times Jumps The Gun

Two weeks ago, The New York Times had a piece in their Magazine entitled "The Unlikely Activists Who Took On Silicon Valley — and Won" The article was about data privacy activitists who boxed the California legislature into a corner by threatening to take the issue of online data privacy to the public in a ballot initiative.

The reason this is important is that a law in California, where most of the tech giants live, would, in effect, become national policy.

My opinion is that the Times story is naive at best. The idea that the activists "won" is highly debatable. The Silicon Valley big shots and their benefactors in Sacramento have plenty of time, and lots of incentive, to undermine the intent of the law before it takes effect in 2020. My bet is the details of this legislation will be eroded one drop at a time and we will never live to see the benefits of its full effect. You read it here first.

Celebrating An Anniversary

To celebrate the one-year anniversary of BadMen, on Wednesday I lowered the ebook price to 99¢ for one week. After Tuesday, it will go back up to $1,000,000. Meanwhile, by buying it right now you'll save $999,999.01. amzn.to/2xGR1fg

Ninety-nine cents is less than a Snickers bar. And BadMen doesn't make you fat and pimply. Usually.

By the way, since I lowered the price from $2.99 to 99¢ the book has gone to "#1 Best Seller" in its category at Amazon. Which just goes to show you what the market says my writing endeavors are worth...

I know I said last week that I might have to take some time off to get my new book out. It's a week-to-week thing.

Subscribe here. All previous newsletters can be found here. For info on having Bob speak, go here