Category: Strategy
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Why Amazon Will Buy Starbucks
I’m not usually one for predictions with due dates. I see the trends, where the dominos are falling, but spotting precisely when a trend will happen is harder. This time, though, I’ll go out on a limb because two events this week have combined to make me think that Amazon will buy Starbucks within the…
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Anti-Vaxxers and the Arts of Persuasion
People decide with their hearts and then later justify those decisions with their heads. Once you accept this, then how you approach communications changes because all communication is about persuasion in one way or another. Learning simply to ask the question, “where is the heart in this?” can be powerful, although it can also be…
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Secret Stories: Microsoft, Activision, Spotify, Joe Rogan, Neil Young, Facebook
When a big business story hits I try to ask myself, “what else is going on?” When Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, for example, the obvious story was that the ecommerce giant wanted to tap into the nearly $800B annual U.S. grocery business. Less obvious was that by buying Whole Foods Amazon also acquired…
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Amazon’s Secret Strategy with its new Department Stores
Amazon never does things for only the obvious reasons, which makes me wonder what the company is up to with its latest retail foray: department stores. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported: The new retail spaces will be around 30,000 square feet, smaller than most department stores, which typically occupy about 100,000 square feet,…
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THIS is the kinder, gentler Uber?
This week, the California legislature passed an important bill that could result in the reclassification of Uber and Lyft drivers as employees instead of contractors. The change might entitle drivers to minimum wage, benefits, collective bargaining, and a host of other knife-to-the-neck threats to the short-term survival of the ride-hailing companies that are, in the long term,…
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Why Amazon made “The Boys”
Amazon Prime Video’s new superhero satire is too niche to be a big hit, but it pieces into Amazon’s strategy of taking shrewd advantage of the blind spots of other businesses. As I write this sentence, I have watched six of the eight episodes of “The Boys”— the superhero series that Amazon released on Friday, June…
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A better streaming model
On July 26th, “Veronica Mars” will return for a fourth season, twelve years after the end of the third and five years after a movie that had a slender theatrical release. Instead of UPN or the CW, which broadcast the first three seasons, the fourth will premiere on streaming service Hulu for a short, eight-episode…