Good morning. Today, Goodwill thrift stores set a creative example in broadening your product mix and customer base; a marketing leader looks like a contender for one of the biggest CEO jobs out there; and those giant Pillsbury Doughboy and Labubu balloons have to go somewhere when the Thanksgiving parade is over.

The K-shape-ification of the economy, which has driven many brands to go ever more upscale in pursuit of affluent free-spenders, is overshadowing that companies can sometimes still serve many kinds of consumers at once.

Procter & Gamble regularly makes that case as it promotes its strategy of improving its products, making them more competitive per consumer dollar, instead of lowering the prices on the package. Such innovation has actually driven a 2% to 2.5% price increase across P&G’s portfolio, the company said last month without regret.

A more surprising case study is emerging at your local Goodwill thrift store, where The Wall Street Journal's Kate King points out you’re increasingly likely to see barely worn designer clothing and accessories on racks.

While there’s no R&D lab at Goodwill to develop a more powerful laundry pod, it does have a strategy to bolster its selection: By opening larger, brighter stores in affluent neighborhoods, it’s gotten in position to benefit when wealthy donors clean out their closets. That inventory in turn can draw a broader mix of customers looking for bargains.

“For a while thrift wasn’t trending,” said Tim O’Neal, CEO of Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona. “The trend has changed. Everybody’s looking for a great deal.”

But many companies seem satisfied emphasizing either the arm or the leg of the K, and not so much both. “If all you want from your carrier is the lowest price, we are price-competitive,” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said at a Yahoo Finance event Nov. 13, discussing the carrier’s pivot toward premium. “But you may be one of the last people to board in line, [and] you may not have room for your bags.”

Or take the shoe company On, which isn’t trying to shield customers from the impact of tariffs, the Journal’s Inti Pacheco notes. It raised prices by $10 in July for several of its sneakers, including its popular, now-$170 Cloudtilt. CEO Martin Hoffmann said tariffs weren’t the only reason.

“As a premium brand, you have pricing power,” Hoffmann said. “The consumer doesn’t change with the tariffs.”

The question is when that approach unnecessarily limits a brand.

Investors aren’t convinced that On’s current path will escape all the challenges facing its competition. Despite the company’s rapid growth, its stock is down about 30% compared with a year earlier.

The club of marketing chiefs who have risen to CEO is small, especially compared with chief financial officers or chief operating officers.

Members include:

• Mary Dillon, who left McDonald’s in 2010 to become CEO of U.S. Cellular and went on to lead Ulta Beauty and Foot Locker
• ​former Target CMO Jeff Jones, who has been CEO at H&R Block since 2017
• Amrapali Gan, a marketing and communications chief at OnlyFans who was promoted to CEO in 2021
• Jen Cho, who ascended at the Wing for a brief reign in 2022
• Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, previously a marketing boss at Pizza Hut and Taco Bell
• former Zoom CMO Janine Pelosi, later CEO at Neat, a Norway-based maker of software and devices for videoconferencing
• and longtime General Electric CMO Linda Boff, who became CEO at marketing agency Said Differently last year.

Now there’s a prize on the horizon that could define the career of anyone who lands it: CEO at Apple.

Tim Cook remains firmly in place and as active as ever, but now that he’s 65, the chatter has grown over his possible successors at the iconic American company. The Journal’s Rolfe Winkler identifies four top candidates: Apple’s current leaders of hardware, software, services and marketing.

That last one is Greg “Joz” Joswiak, 61, senior vice president of worldwide marketing and a company veteran of nearly 40 years. Although the other contenders lead essential and defining functions at Apple, marketing is no afterthought at the home of “One more thing…”

It underpins the premium prices that iPhones command, the status that comes with a blue bubble in text messages and maintains loyalty among Apple faithful.

More promotions to come? CMOs are becoming better positioned to contend for chief executive jobs as their own roles gather responsibilities. They just need to understand that their marketing role is to visibly make the company more money, as another marketer-turned-CEO explained in 2021 at a CMO Network Summit.

Kristin Lemkau, by then the chief executive officer at J.P. Morgan Wealth Management, said she used her time as CMO at J.P. Morgan Chase to boost the share of marketing spending that was directly measurable by business outcomes—as well as the return on that budget.

“Don’t accept that CMO is your ceiling,” Lemkau told summit attendees. “Raise your hand, ask for the next thing, and say, ‘Why not me?’”

When was the term “Black Friday” first used to refer to retail?

What alternate name for the day did some retailers propose to avoid connotations of stock-market crashes?

What did shoppers line up for on Black Friday in 1983?

Take The Journal’s quiz and find out how much you really know about Black Friday. (Write me with your score if you want to know mine.)

If you watch the procession of branded balloons in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade next week, spare a thought for the handlers’ final task: making the floating icons vanish as quickly as possible.

In a ritual unseen by the cameras, volunteers heave the balloon toward the asphalt, yank open industrial-grade zippers to unleash a gust of helium and dive chest-first onto the collapsing character, Amira McKee writes for the Journal. The goal is to undo 90 minutes of inflation in just 15.

Marketers can’t do anything fun any more: Back when Macy’s let wranglers simply release the enormous characters into the sky after the parade, it ran a promotion promising up to $100 for the safe return of a balloon.

That lasted until 1932, when a cat-shaped balloon had a mid-air run-in with a 22-year-old student aviator in a biplane. The pilot landed safely, but deflation has been serious business ever since.

The community where marketing leaders drop the corporate speak and share what’s actually happening. The WSJ CMO Council unites leaders from the world’s most influential brands including Adobe, Audi, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, Taco Bell, P&G and Verizon.

Tap into the connections and WSJ intelligence that move careers forward and separate the prepared from the scrambling.

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Would you like to buy a car along with that $8 USB cord? Amazon, where Ford is the latest automaker to list cars for sale, aims to prove shoppers will add big-ticket items to their carts. [WSJ]

Teens are saying tearful goodbyes to their AI companions after Character.AI cut off access over mental-health concerns. [WSJ] 

ChatGPT rolled out a feature called “shopping research” just in time for Black Friday. [The Aisle]

American Eagle followed up its Sydney Sweeney and Travis Kelce campaigns with another headline-maker in denim: Martha Stewart. [Adweek]

Google’s new holiday campaign for the Pixel phone features cast members and reinterpreted scenes from the Christmas romcom “Love Actually.” [Little Black Book]

The CEO and executive team at the FutureBrand agency have left as parent company Interpublic nears its absorption by rival Omnicom. [e4m]

Former WPP CEO Mark Read was named chairman at measurement company Kantar Media, a one-time WPP property, following its acquisition by private-equity firm H.I.G. Capital. [MarketWatch]

Performance marketing specialist Wpromote bought the creative, media and strategy shop Giant Spoon. [Ad Age]

E.W. Scripps said it will evaluate an unsolicited acquisition bid it received from Sinclair as TV broadcasters continue to try to consolidate. [WSJ] 

The Iowa State Cyclones’ logo for its Senior Day game was “pure fan service”—in a good way. [Creative Bloq]