In the CEO Afterlife

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. Crisis Management: The Ultimate Test of a Leader. The sudden, unexpected and potentially catastrophic event that threatens a business is a CEO’s greatest challenge. Everyone watched as CEO Tony Hayward made blunder after blunder while BP’s crude killed. How is it possible for three months of crisis management ineptitude to occur in an organization the size of BP with a product as environmentally toxic as oil? Main menu Home.

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In the CEO Afterlife

NOVEMBER 20, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. The concept of a Pepsi advertising campaign designed to capture America’s youth had its roots in the 1960’s. Pundits attribute Coca-Cola’s rebound to the reintroduction of Coke Classic and better marketing and advertising. Seemingly they believe that a return to comparative advertising is the way to go. However, it woke up Coke who were forced to look beyond their advertising and instead at their operational strategy. Main menu Home.

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Leading Blog

FEBRUARY 8, 2019

M INTZBERG’S 20th book, Bedtime Stories for Managers , is a thought-provoking page-turner. (In The theme running through most is that managers/leaders need to get out from behind their desks and see the world from the perspective of their employees and customers. To this end, he dedicates the book to “all those managers who eat the scrambled eggs to help their organization work like a cow.” Management is not eating the eggs. Advertisement. Management

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In the CEO Afterlife

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

When my business book Do Less Better was published, I had the pleasure of meeting National Post journalist Peter Kuitenbrouwer who interviewed me about the challenges facing an ex-CEO hell-bent on finding a publisher for his historical fiction manuscript. From coffee boss to ‘rookie novelist’: How Nabob’s former CEO found meaning after the corner office by Peter Kuitenbrouwer. The management team focused on coffee.

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In the CEO Afterlife

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

When my business book Do Less Better was published, I had the pleasure of meeting National Post journalist Peter Kuitenbrouwer who interviewed me about the challenges facing an ex-CEO hell-bent on finding a publisher for his historical fiction manuscript. From coffee boss to ‘rookie novelist’: How Nabob’s former CEO found meaning after the corner office by Peter Kuitenbrouwer. The management team focused on coffee.

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CEO Golden Parachute Library Hotels 100

In the CEO Afterlife

OCTOBER 17, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. The CEO as Chief Brand Custodian. CEOs who continually talk about brand assets are often the ones living off the luster of yesteryear’s brand equity. The reason: a fundamental flaw in the management process that is supposed to renew brand health. The blemish is the abdication of brand attention by top management. I’m not suggesting restructuring the entire brand management system. 3 Responses to The CEO as Chief Brand Custodian.

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In the CEO Afterlife

JULY 24, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. ABSOLUT Vodka’s advertising campaign is one of the most successful and longest running consumer products campaigns in the history of advertising. The original concept, created by Art Director Geoff Hayes in a bathtub, and perpetuated by several creative notables, has managed to stand the cruel test of time and create the 3 rd largest-selling liquor brand on the globe. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant.

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In the CEO Afterlife

SEPTEMBER 3, 2012

Sure, it isn’t business as usual, and yes, every CEO has to make some moves to shore up sales and profits. CEO’s justify across-the-board cuts because they think it is fair. When it comes to belt-tightening, the astute CEO will target those areas or projects that don’t detract from the vision/strategy or the company’s competitive differentiation. When I was a CEO, I managed to squirrel away a “rainy day” fund for nasty business blips. At best, they are managers.

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In the CEO Afterlife

OCTOBER 23, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. Steve Jobs managed to harness the resources of 49,000 employees to introduce and successfully market a slew of breakthroughs. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife. Main menu Home. Leadership. Branding. The Essence of Strategy (Part 1).

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In the CEO Afterlife

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

Last week, Mathew Creamer of Advertising Age said Linds Redding’s ‘Short Lesson in Perspective’ was the best piece of advertising writing you’ll ever read. Turns out that Linds Redding, an illustrator and designer, spent most of his career crafting advertising in the UK and New Zealand, before opening an animation studio. This piece was written for anyone involved in advertising and/or creative endeavors. as the old advertising joke goes.

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In the CEO Afterlife

DECEMBER 11, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. Believe me, there’s nothing that can match the turnaround experience in teaching or seasoning a young manager. I was Nabob’s VP of Marketing, a 32 year-old disciple of an excellent turnaround CEO – a fellow by the name of Hugo Powell who eventually moved on to Interbrew (now Anheuser-Busch InBev ) as CEO. Familiar examples are spending more on advertising, introducing new products or line extensions, expanding distribution.

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In the CEO Afterlife

OCTOBER 11, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. There’s not a Brand Manager that doesn’t want to build brand equity. Consider this exchange between Hogwash Detergent’s CEO and the Brand Manager I’ll call Janet. CEO: “Okay Janet, you’re saying the awareness and image of Hogwash is up by a couple of points. Janet: Aware that the impact of brand advertising can take time, Janet says, “As you know, our brand-building effort is an investment for the future.

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In the CEO Afterlife

SEPTEMBER 6, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. Why HR and the CEO should be joined at the Hip. My regret is that I did not free up my other hip for Human Resources, a group of eager young managers at the rear of the functional pecking order. Ultimately, it is the CEO who determines the corporate culture, whether good or bad. Today, with declining loyalty and greater job hopping, it is critical that CEOs partner with HR. An adept HR executive is the CEO’s window.

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In the CEO Afterlife

APRIL 17, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. Anxious to learn as much as possible about this unique brand, I sent a Brand Manager to Switzerland to interview those in the know. The exuberant Brand Manager came back with plenty of information including a story that had been long-buried in the company archives in Neuchatel. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter.

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In the CEO Afterlife

MAY 16, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. One of my best mentors during my CEO years was my monthly Harvard Business Review. I can tell you, the articles’ principles helped guide me as a CEO and later as a strategy consultant. Excessive layering kills ideas before they get to top management. How are you to manage your brand when selling yourself without a flashy label? Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. Main menu Home.

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HR Digest

APRIL 10, 2022

According to a report by As You Sow , a shareholder advocacy firm, 2021 saw a significant increase in shareholder rejections of CEO pay packages. More than half of shareholders rejected CEO pay packages at 16 companies last year, up from ten in 2020 and seven in 2019.

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In the CEO Afterlife

FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Branding Leadership Marketing Strategy Uncategorized Advertising Albino Rhino Beer Business Creativity Crisis Management Earls Restaurants Entrepreneurship In the CEO Afterlife Jacobs Suchard John Richard Bell Leaderhip Oreo Social Media VisionLast week I wrote about a complaint to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal by a person with albinism – Is Political Correctness Coming to a Brand Near You?

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In the CEO Afterlife

MAY 23, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. Ironically, this slogan was not created by an ad agency but by an Allstate sales manager in 1950. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife. Main menu Home. Leadership. Branding. The Perfect Brand Slogan. by John • May 23, 2011 • Branding , Marketing • 3 Comments.

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In the CEO Afterlife

JULY 10, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. There’s unlikely a responsible CEO in America who hasn’t at one time, said, “You know what folks? Whether the CEO is driven by personal ethics, a socially changing world, or headlines praising “sustainable” organizations, business is finally responding to the green trend—albeit slower than many would like to see. I am a member of Houweling’s Board of Directors and a big fan of Casey Houweling, the greenhouse grower’s energetic and visionary CEO.

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In the CEO Afterlife

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. Leaders who suffer the tough days of turnarounds and manage to resurrect a business are the ones who think about momentum in strategic terms. The management team believed they were doing the right things to create change. The shareholders benefited handsomely, and so did several young managers who were part of that company before the Kraft takeover. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant.

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In the CEO Afterlife

AUGUST 1, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. After the stint at Bristol-Myers, I moved on to Beecham Products (now GlaxoSmithKline) as Brand Manager of Brylcreem Hairdressing, Macleans Toothpaste and Silvikrin Shampoo. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife. Tags: Advertising , Branding , Marketing , Nostalgia. Main menu Home.

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In the CEO Afterlife

DECEMBER 4, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. And although pundits continue to encourage entrepreneurial thinking for stagnating mega-businesses, these bureaucracies can’t break from risk-averse management. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife. Main menu Home. Leadership. Branding. Gretzky, Gates, Zuckerberg: Can they see the Unseen?

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In the CEO Afterlife

APRIL 23, 2012

Years ago, I worked on Pillsbury’s Refrigerated Fresh Dough advertising as a Leo Burnett Account Executive. With 100% share of market, our strategy was market growth and we managed to double sales in four years. Leadership Life Marketing Strategy Advertising Apple BlackBerry Branding Business Culture Google In the CEO Afterlife Innovation John Richard Bell Research in Motion RIMI ’m an extremely competitive person.

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In the CEO Afterlife

APRIL 4, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. I went in assuming his students believed corporate management and entrepreneurship were principles of contradiction and the only contrarians would be members of the flat earth society. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife. Main menu Home. Leadership. Branding.

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In the CEO Afterlife

AUGUST 1, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. After the stint at Bristol-Myers, I moved on to Beecham Products (now GlaxoSmithKline) as Brand Manager of Brylcreem Hairdressing, Macleans Toothpaste and Silvikrin Shampoo. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife. Tags: Advertising , Branding , Marketing , Nostalgia. Main menu Home.

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In the CEO Afterlife

MARCH 27, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. Most CEOs want their companies to do things right because that’s a sign of good management. But good management isn’t necessarily good leadership; good leaders are obsessed with doing right things. CEO’s have plenty of generic strategic choices to drive a business forward. That culture emanates from the CEO’s office. If a risk-averse CEO is recruited, an entrepreneurial spirit can dissipate in days. Main menu Home.

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In the CEO Afterlife

AUGUST 23, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. My intent was to write about business, life and writing - 30 posts later, I’ve managed but one post on life (Lessons from 9-year Olds) and one on writing (Branding the Aspiring Novelist). Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife. Main menu Home. Leadership. Branding.

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In the CEO Afterlife

MAY 1, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. The most blatant was the Boards of Scott Paper and Sunbeam hiring ‘Chainsaw Al Dunlap’ as their CEO despite his reputation as a corporate sociopath. It’s not just that they are lousy people managers. If they can be labeled in ways other than as sociopaths, e.g., under-skilled, they can be managed. We look at ways to manage around them. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant.

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In the CEO Afterlife

APRIL 14, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. I’ll take an educated guess and say that P&G and Unilever top management knew absolutely nothing of the conspiracy until the regulators came knocking. In Canada and the United States, there is so much ‘trade money’ offered and generated by volume incentives, co-operative advertising and in-store activity, that aggressive retailers put those monies into lowering a brand’s selling price to generate store traffic. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife.

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N2Growth Blog

MAY 30, 2013

Management is your day job; leadership is your career. That is a variation on a comment I heard recently from an executive who was speaking about the responsibilities that senior managers have to lead their organizations through change. Managers are expected to handle the workload; leaders are expected to determine what comes next. Management is a disciplinary process while leadership is an aspirational intention.

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In the CEO Afterlife

AUGUST 29, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. There are all sorts of strategies in today’s business – at the top is corporate strategy, followed by a slew of functional and sub-functional strategies ranging from marketing to waste management. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife. Main menu Home. Leadership. Branding.

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In the CEO Afterlife

JUNE 26, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. Isn’t top management supposed to be the strategic experts of the organization? Every CEO wants buy-in. Getting it is a case of the CEO sharing the plan with employees, communicating what should be done, why it should be done and how it will be done. If employees nod to that, the CEO has buy-in. Every time I suggested the single page to a new client, the CEO would raise an eye. Being CEO isn't enough. Main menu Home.

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In the CEO Afterlife

MARCH 7, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. One of my marketing managers recommended the company join Rick’s sponsorship group. Formerlife: CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), Strategy/Branding Consultant. link] #branding #marketing #advertising #design Follow Me on Twitter. © 2011 In the CEO Afterlife. Main menu Home. Leadership. Branding. Then and Now: The Greatest Wheels on Earth. by John • March 7, 2011 • Life , Marketing • 0 Comments.

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In the CEO Afterlife

JUNE 8, 2016

And everyone is trying to climb to the top of that to get ahead,” explains Heather Fadali, senior brand manager for coffee at Kraft Heinz, Nabob’s parent company. “It’s At one point, it was “kind of like the Kraft Foods of Western Canada,” says former Nabob CEO John Bell. The change in management, which included Bell and Powell, meant a big change in how the company would operate in the following decades.

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Women on Business

JANUARY 8, 2011

NASDAQ: APPL ) has named Andrea Jung , CEO of Avon  (NYSE: AVP ), as the eigth member of its board of directors. Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, stated that Jung will bring a “new dimension&# to the company’s board. She became CEO of Avon in 1999, and in the past 9 years, she has helped to grow the company to achieve an annual revenue of $8.7

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Coaching Tip

MARCH 27, 2011

In 2001, Page and Brin hired their first CEO, Eric Schmidt, who had a Ph.D. in computer science and twenty years of management experience in tech companies; most recently, he had been the CEO of Novell. By 2002, when I began advertising with Google, the company had become very profitable, thanks to a novel program called AdWords, in which advertisers bid to display their ads whenever the user searches for keywords.

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Women on Business

JANUARY 23, 2011

Meg Whitman, 51, has been quoted saying a CEO should never stay with the same company for more than 10 years, because by that time the company needs a fresh outlook. Tags: Meg Whitman , eBay , Meg Whitman eBay CEO , Meg Whitman retires , Meg Whitman politics , John Donahoe , women in business , women on business , female executives , female CEOs , businesswomen , leadership , businesswomen role models Related posts: You Go, Girl!

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In the CEO Afterlife

FEBRUARY 5, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. When I was a young product manager back in the ’70s, the only people I could talk to about brands were my colleagues in the marketing department and the advertising agency. Now my accountant, my lawyer, my portfolio manager and even my neighbour talk to me about brands. It’s a subject that I’ve never tired of, but I must admit to some frustration in seeing how brands have been managed over the years. Main menu Home.

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In the CEO Afterlife

APRIL 22, 2015

Kudos to CEO Roberto Goizueta for having the good sense, (and the courage) to “kill his darling” and reinstate Coke Classic. At Zappos, CEO Tony Hsieh has set his cultural sights on a holacracy management system a radical change from conventional structures. Hsieh is still hell-bent on achieving a world of self-management and self-organization, but not through more cultural changes, through quicker evolution of that initial change.

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In the CEO Afterlife

DECEMBER 11, 2012

My educated guess says that P&G and Unilever top management knew nothing of the conspiracy until the regulators came knocking. In Canada and the United States, there is so much ‘trade money’ offered and generated by volume incentives, co-operative advertising and in-store promotion schemes, that aggressive retailers channel these funds into lowering a brand’s selling price to generate store traffic. As you might guess, that CEO of Nestle is no longer with the company.

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In the CEO Afterlife

DECEMBER 11, 2012

My educated guess says that P&G and Unilever top management knew nothing of the conspiracy until the regulators came knocking. In Canada and the United States, there is so much ‘trade money’ offered and generated by volume incentives, co-operative advertising and in-store promotion schemes, that aggressive retailers channel these funds into lowering a brand’s selling price to generate store traffic. As you might guess, that CEO of Nestle is no longer with the company.

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Price Discount Incentives Retail 133

In the CEO Afterlife

MARCH 1, 2016

This company earned that honor by re-staging a tired coffee brand with innovative packing technology and breakthrough advertising. After buckets of red ink and much soul searching, our young management team came to terms with the fact that Nabob could not survive as a ‘generalist’ against multi-nationals twenty times its size. In the CEO Afterlife. Times. Places. Some remain etched in our minds no matter how many decades come and go.

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In the CEO Afterlife

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011

In the CEO Afterlife. I retired from the CEO’s office in 1994 and from strategy and marketing consulting in 2008. I valued the power of the big idea; big ideas facilitated growth on the brands I managed. The top links were check lists of need-to-knows about how to implement a social media strategy – generic stuff such as everyone working together, senior management endorsement, engaging users, maintaining presence, and measuring success. Main menu Home. Leadership.

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