View From The Glass House

Best Buy should be dead and buried. It was predicted the end was nigh years ago. But Best Buy is still here and doing quite well, thank you. The stock price is rising and they’ve beat analysts’ financial estimates for 22 quarters. In a row. Christmas sales were up 9%. The biggest gain since 2003. Does this mean brick and mortar is back? Kinda. But it really means, human beings are back. No question, Best Buy has re-imagined their stores, updated their offerings and gotten competitive on price. You don’t have to be a marketing genius to know that could never be enough. So they did something very interesting, they moved into your house. Best Buy In-Home Advisors bring the store to you and Geek Squad makes it all work. So instead of ordering all these gadgets, having them show up and being frustrated because you can’t make them work, Best Buy does all that for you. They’ve stretched that from routers and sound systems to refrigerators and TVs. To be hones...

John Schnatter screwed up and now he’s gone. The stock price sank and as soon as he resigned it came back up. Good job everyone, whew, glad that’s over. Trouble is, it’s not even the beginning. Huge piles of bodies were left in the wake of the Papa John’s debacle and we may never know the full extent of the damage. In May, the agency Laundry Service was celebrating picking up the Papa John’s account. Later the same month they had the infamous conference call with John Schnatter and now in July they’ve laid off 10% of their workforce including the agency’s founder. Today they’re in a war of worlds with Schnatter and those words include racism, lynching, lawsuit and extortion. If the Laundry Service survives this, it will be a miracle. The body count goes even higher. The first ads from Laundry Service didn’t feature Schnatter like previous ads had. Suddenly, the Papa John’s Chief Marketing Officer who hired Laundry Service was gone, the agency was gone ...