Posted on July 16th, 2007
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has built a remarkable business. My jaw still drops every time I walk in to a Whole Foods store. That’s one reason a seemingly customer-oriented, cool, together business like Whole Foods disappoints me when I hear their CEO completely lacking in common sense. Mackey’s anonymous participation in a Yahoo stock-market forum talking-up Whole Foods performance while trashing rival Wild Oats is a bit nutty. The tricky part for public relations professionals who represent Mackey and Whole Foods is how you defend this, at minimum, unethical behavior.
The SEC, FTC and a horde of lawyers will do what they have to do in determining if Mackey’s behavior was illegal. Legal or not, the result of “Rahodeb’s” postings on the Yahoo site is a loss of corporate reputation, the certain death of the proposed merger with Wild Oats and at some point it could mean Whole Foods says “bye bye” to its founder and CEO. (more…)
Posted on July 6th, 2007
If you watched Al Gore’s interview with Meredith Vieira on the Today Show the morning after his son was arrested on drug charges, you might have thought his greatest dread was the inevitable question about his son’s arrest.
I doubt it.
The former vice president had a good, dismissive response ready:
“We are dealing with this as a private family matter.”
It must have been painful to address his son’s arrest, but I suspect Mr. Gore was more concerned about keeping the interview focused on what he wanted to talk about; global climate change and the Live Earth benefit concerts scheduled for the upcoming weekend. (more…)
Posted on June 30th, 2007
The behavior of the media is being hotly debated in Colorado since the tragic death of former Denver City Attorney and one-time Denver District Court Judge Larry Manzanares. The 50-year old lawyer took his own life June 22nd just hours after appearing in court on charges of stealing a government-owned laptop computer. Some of the Judge’s family and friends say the local media “sensationalized” the events leading up to his death. And perhaps somehow media coverage contributed to his decision to take his own life. What occurred here is a classic case of a media storm gaining strength to the point that the center of that storm, Larry Manzanares lost control. Unfortunately here the final outcome was the tragic death of a respected community member.
This sad episode followed a series of events that started in February of 2007 with the first reports of the theft of the computer. Tracking software led investigators to the former judge’s home where they discovered the missing computer. Manzanares claimed the he bought the computer from a stranger in a city parking lot. He resigned as City Attorney after the allegations were brought to light. (more…)
