Neutrogena broke its silence and leaves more to answer for
Neutrogena issued a statement that admits a feeling and blames the wait on a grieving family. Plus Goldman counted who's talking about AI on earnings calls
Neutrogena declines comment through a second Panettiere news cycle, so I wrote a statement for them. Plus NIPSCO's words are fine amid its weeklong outage but the substance isn't backing it up.
Sony got the decision right but it's running out of time on the delivery
The math backs Sony's call but the August 23 boycott is a different test than an earnings call. Plus: the settlement that closed X's lawsuit against its own advertisers.
Starbucks built a strategic narrative the market trusts
Niccol's two-year message finally cashes out — and now comes the hard part. Plus: OpenAI's models broke into Hugging Face on their own; how each company talked about it depends entirely on where they were standing
Four companies preparing for earnings this week needing to explain what their AI money bought, and a lettuce baron would rather discuss how little salad America is eating.
The tariff clock resets just in time for earnings season
A new tariff clock resets with next August's deadline already circled on the calendar, and BYD prices the same mistake twice before its customers do the math for them
Senators are talking about Olive Garden but Olive Garden is talking about pasta
Olive Garden ignores senators but answers customers, new data says your next crisis spokesperson may not be the CEO, and one retail chief gives his most honest sentence about pay to a reporter instead of his own people.
The week Taco Bell turned a parasite into a love letter
A lettuce scare that turned one brand into a customer favorite and left its supplier leading with the FDA's apology instead of the people who got sick — plus the chairman of the company that makes most of the world's AI memory, publicly arguing his own record prices down.
Taco Bell's very careful sentence, Taylor Farms' very loud silence, and the new Edelman number that says 70% of your readers assume you're lying anyway.
The Iran deal is dead, half your workforce is looking, and the CFO owns strategy now
The peace deal that lasted three weeks, the half of your workforce that's already looking, and the person deciding your 2027 budget who's never read a sentiment report.
What happens when you skip the hard part of change management
State Farm scrapped 19k agent contracts with zero warning. Cody Plofker beat everyone to the ugly truth about his own exit and Kristin Cabot is a year into learning that some stories need silence, not another interview.
Microsoft's silence after a public denial, and a Korean beauty brand's apology that missed the point twice. What both get wrong about the words you choose under pressure.
