During the month of August, there were many news stories that reflected brand identity, brand promotion, brand storytelling, brand strategy, personal branding, product packaging, and more.
NO MORE MRS. AFFLECK
The marriage that everyone wanted to last dissolved with a public announcement in August. Singer and actress Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from actor and director husband Ben Affleck after a brief two-year marriage. While the couple nearly wed two decades ago and called off the wedding at the last moment, everyone was rooting for them this second time around. In addition to the end of the marriage, Lopez legally dropped the surname "Affleck" to return to her professional (stage) name. How will this turn of events affect both careers and personal brands?
AMAZON RETURNS
Amazon has launched a new program called "Fulfillment by Amazon Returnless Resolutions," which will allow sellers using its fulfillment services to issue product refunds without items being returned. Amazon's aim is to increase customer convenience by rolling out this "keep it" return option. Competitor Walmart's e-commerce platform, Walmart Marketplace, also gives sellers the ability to allow customers to keep their items and receive a full refund. Will this new Amazon program increase sales?
BAN OF WOMEN'S VOICES
According to CNN, Afghanistan's Taliban has banned the sound of women's voices in public. Apparently, "Since a woman's voice is considered intimate, it should not be heard singing, reciting, or reading aloud in public."
LOCAL NEWS AND RADIO
Once upon a time, local news was a mainstay on the radio. But no more due to shrinking ad revenues and how people consume news. New York City's biggest news radio outlet, WCBS 880 AM, announced that it would sign off the air this month, which ended a nearly six-decade run as a local news source for the nation's largest city. The news format will be replaced by sports talk programming.
SPACE TRAVEL
We learned that two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, currently residing at the International Space Station - who had initially planned on being there for 8 days - will have to remain there until February 2025. According to NBC News, "NASA will free up two seats on an upcoming SpaceX launch, that will be taking a new rotation of space station crew members to the orbiting outpost. By transporting two astronauts instead of the planned four, Wilmore and Williams will be able to fly back in the open seats in February." How does this impact NASA's brand?
STARBUCKS NEWS
While Starbucks announced that its Pumpkin Spice Latte would return to stores on August 22nd - earlier than ever - there was other Starbucks-related news. Current Chairman and CEO of Chipotle, Brian Niccol was appointed chairman and CEO of Starbucks and will begin in those roles in early September. The big news, however, is that he will get a private jet to commute from his Southern California home to his Seattle office. According to CNN Business, "Niccol's private jet perk has brought some attention to the climate change implications of those flights and Starbucks' projection as an environmentally friendly business, which recently rolled out new cups that use less plastic and eliminated plastic straws...Niccol is expected to travel often, visiting stores and workers since he's running a global operation of 39,000 stores and 450,000 employees."
On a related note, IHOP and Krispy Kreme also launched pumpkin spice items. According to Nielsen, "Pumpkin space has cemented itself as a fall staple, with Americans spending more than $500 million on pumpkin spice products each year."
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION
The 2024 Democratic National Convention will go down in history (or should I say HERstory?) for the nomination of VP Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Even Meghan McCain, daughter of John McCain, former Senator from Arizona (and prisoner of war hero), wrote, "Maybe Republicans just shouldn't have conventions...just forfeit because I DO NOT KNOW HOW YOU CAN COMPETE WITH THIS! #DNC2024 (August 22, 2024 on Twitter/X) We'll see if the Democrats' ticket and message resonate in November.
SECOND LIFE FOR PARIS OLYMPICS EQUIPMENT AND ATHLETES' VILLAGE
While the event seats and Athletes' Village are now empty, what happens to all the equipment from the 2024 Paris Olympics? According to France 24, "Over decades, the Olympics have forged a reputation for monumental waste, with whole stadiums sometimes left to rot once the two-week sporting extravaganza moves on. But Paris promised to do things differently, using temporary venues to cut construction work but also forcing suppliers to think about a "second life" for the equipment they supplied, from tennis balls to the sand for the beach volleyball.
"Before we ordered anything, we thought about what this thing is going to become afterwards," Paris 2024 sustainability director Georgina Grenon explained. "At the start of the procurement process, every time Paris 2024 issued a tender, they included a clause asking the supplier to propose a second life for their products. Many of the facilities and much of the equipment used for the Olympics will be immediately redeployed for the Paralympics, which run from August 28 to September 8.
But after that, they will head to new homes. For example, the extra-fine sand used for the beach volleyball court in front of the Eiffel Tower, one of the Games' iconic venues, has been promised to a club in the Paris region. In addition, "Paris 2024" logos will be scrubbed off podiums so that they can be used elsewhere. The 600,000 items of office furniture leased from French company Lyreco will be taken back and used by the firm to launch a new second-hand furniture business. The more than 14,000 mattresses made from recycled plastic used in the Olympic Village will be given to the French army, while their cardboard bases will be recycled. The tennis balls used at Roland-Garros Stadium, including those hit by teary gold medal-winner Novak Djokovic, will be donated to French sports clubs, as will much of the other sports equipment from javelins to shot puts. Two swimming pools, the climbing wall, and the skateboarding parks are also set to be dug out and moved – most of them to the deprived Seine-Saint-Denis suburb northeast of Paris. The rented scaffolding from the temporary stands will be dismantled and re-used."
And according to Dwell.com, "Officials plan to retrofit athlete apartments from the Olympics Athletes' Village into housing for local residents. The area will contain schools, shops, gardens, parks, 2,500 homes, a hotel, offices, and city services."
JORDAN CHILES CONTROVERSY
While the Olympic bronze medal that was originally awarded to American gymnast Jordan Chiles was re-allocated to Romanian gymnast Ana Barbosu in Bucharest, the controversy continues, adding a sad asterisk to the very successful Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA
After more than 100 years of address-free living, this California seaside town where actor and director Clint Eastwood once served as mayor is moving forward with a plan to assign street numbers to homes and businesses but many long-time residents are unhappy about the change. According to ABC News, "When asked for their address, residents describe their homes' color or style, nearby landmarks like cypress trees and fire hydrants, or their location relative to the nearest cross street. Many houses have signs with whimsical names like Neverland, Dreamcatcher, and Pinch Me or descriptors such as "San Antonio 3 SE of 9th...In 1953, Carmel threatened to secede from California over proposed state legislation requiring house numbers. The bill didn't pass."
And of course, without street numbers, there's no mail delivery service. Everyone picks up their mail at the U.S. Post Office, the only building with an official address in town.
DEATH OF WALLY AMOS - HE CHANGED CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
According to Biography, "Wallace WALLY Amos Jr., the man behind the Famous Amos cookies brand, has died. The 88-year-old was surrounded by family, who said the cause of death was complications from dementia. Amos was best known for the cookie brand he started in 1975 and sold in 1988. But before his entrepreneurial days, he was the first Black talent agent for William Morris Agency. While there, he discovered Simon & Garfunkel. Amos spent his later years developing additional cookie companies, a muffin brand, and promoting children's literacy.
In 1967, Amos moved to Los Angeles, where he struggled to set up his own personal management company. Burdened with the debt of his failing business, Amos began to take comfort in baking chocolate chip cookies. He started bringing cookies along to business meetings. With financial backing from singers like Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy as well as an innovative marketing initiative that included an extensive advertising campaign and a gala grand opening, the first Famous Amos cookie store opened on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in March 1975. (I vividly recall visiting that location often in my youth!) Within months, 38-year-old Amos had opened two more West Coast locations, and the New York–based Bloomingdale's department store had begun selling the cookies.
Outside of his entrepreneurial work, Amos traveled as a motivational speaker and dedicated himself to ending illiteracy in the United States. He worked with organizations such as Read to Me International, the YMCA, and Literacy Volunteers of America, serving as the group's national spokesperson from 1979 until 2002. President George H.W. Bush presented him with the Literacy Award in 1991. He even had a reading room at his cookie shop in Hawaii, where he relocated in 1977. Wearing a watermelon hat, he read to children at his shop on Saturdays."
DEATH OF PHIL DONAHUE - HE CHANGED TV TALK SHOWS
Sad news was reported by The Hollywood Reporter. "Phil Donahue, the talk show innovator who changed the conversation and the course of daytime television with the weekday program he hosted for nearly three decades, has died. He was 88. According to his family, he died at his New York City home following a long illness. Survivors include his wife of 44 years, "That Girl" star Marlo Thomas. They met when she was a guest on his show — he was a divorced single father living with and raising his four sons at the time — before marrying in May 1980.
The Cleveland, Ohio-native hosted more than 6,000 iterations of "The Phil Donahue Show," from the first, broadcast from a Dayton, Ohio station on November 7, 1967, through the last, seen nationwide on syndication via Multimedia Entertainment, on September 13, 1996.
Donahue addressed contemporary and controversial topics and invited his studio audience to participate, carrying his microphone into the crowd. He became adept at interweaving their questions and remarks with his own commentary.
The issue-oriented approach was novel, and his topics — abortion, incest, artificial insemination, alcoholism, penile implants, homosexuality, same-sex couples raising children and priests' pedophilia, to name just a few — proved cutting-edge, making his show notorious and popular.
Donahue had things pretty much all to himself until 1985, when Oprah Winfrey launched her own talk show. He said, "It's just not possible to overstate the enormousness of her impact on the daytime television game. It was staggering." (She would dethrone him atop the ratings in 1987.)
After he had turned 60 and received 11 Daytime Emmy's, Donahue called it quits in 1996, and Winfrey presented him with a Lifetime Achievement honor. She said, "I want to thank you for opening the door so wide, wide enough for me to walk through. Had there not been a Phil Donahue, I don't believe there could have been an Oprah." In May 2024, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden."
What other recent marketing buzz caught your attention? There's always something happening that impacts marketing, so tune in to #DebbieLaskeysBlog for the scoop!
Image Credits: Starbucks, Amazon, and Harris/Walz Presidential Campaign.
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