Day: June 15, 2009

Why Did Rockstar Energy Drink Boycotters Wear ‘Vendetta’ Masks in the LA Gay Pride Parade?

Jon Ponder

Rockstar boycotters appeared at the 2009 Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade dressed in “V” masks

As if events* around the boycott against Rockstar Energy Drink weren’t surreal enough, a protest group’s appearance in the Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade yesterday took the oddness of the campaign up a notch.

Dressed in black and masked as “V,” the anarchist in the 2005 film, “V for Vendetta,” the protesters handed out stickers that bowdlerized Rockstar’s logo as “Hatestar.”

The boycott has been called because the CEO and founder of Rockstar is Russell Weiner, the son of radio hatemonger, Michael Savage. Weiner also shares his father’s extreme right-wing political views. And Savage’s wife, Janet Weiner, is the corporate secretary-treasurer for Rockstar — the same position she holds for Savage’s production company.

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Joan Walsh Demonstrates How Liberals Should Deal With Nutcases Like O’Reilly

Jon Ponder

After the interview, Joan Walsh, who is the editor of Salon.com, filed an after-action report on her site:

I think the high or low point was when he shrieked at me, “You have blood on your hands!” At one point he also either told me to “Shut up” or “Be quiet,” I can’t remember. (If I’m wrong about that, when I see the clip, I’ll correct it. UPDATE: Actually, he shouted “Stop talking!”) He called me “vile.” I think I said he was vile, too. There were a couple of “I know you are but what am I?” moments that I’m not totally proud of. It was a kaleidoscopic nightmare, a TV acid trip, and I don’t do acid. It almost seems like O’Reilly does, but I don’t think so. The man is driven by demons. God bless him and save him.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue. It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.

— CIA Director Leon Panetta, in an interview with the New Yorker, on former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticisms of the Obama administration.

Former Exec Says GM Is a “PowerPoint Culture”

Trish

They say good could come from this recession: many of us will learn to focus on value instead of mindless vanity, the financial industry could be reformed, and health care might begin to work. One of the best possible scenarios is that some of the companies who most need to “get it” will.

After reading what the former vice president marketing for General Motors, Mike Jackson, says about the car maker, it’s easy to see why America is choking in a sea of SUVs even though the world is running out of oil. Apparently, the entire company’s decision-making system is deeply flawed.

He dubbed GM as a “PowerPoint culture” and a “bureaucracy of meetings culture.”

He dubbed GM as a “PowerPoint culture” and a “bureaucracy of meetings culture.” During his tenure at the automaker, Mr. Jackson said that “there were no meetings where people just sat down, had a discussion and made a decision.”

Mr. Jackson also was critical of GM for putting engineers and finance people with no marketing training in key marketing positions. That means the agency teams often presented their work to executives with less experience and often no experience outside the auto industry, though he added that his former employer has lots of company in this arena across the auto industry.

…If an [ad] agency doesn’t fall in line with the marketer’s demands, the client threatens to move the business…The agencies present work they know will get approved, not cool, risky creative, he said. As a result, ho-hum work is perpetuated.

One of the “five Ps” of marketing is the product itself. It’s no wonder that bad processes were leading to bad products at GM. Let’s hope GM 2.0 wises up.