It was in 2002 or 2003, when the executive editor at the mid-size southwest central Ohio newspaper I was working at informed the copy desk that "branding" was as important as "content."
That's when I knew it was over for newspapers, but I'd seen it coming for about a decade: the infestation of MBAs into the newsroom and their inability to squeeze money out of an already overstretched staff in order to conjure up a product someone would want to buy.
Because in modern American business it doesn't matter whether you actually have a product. What matters is can you deliver what the stockholders want — dividends.
And if you have a decreasing profit margin {or one that doesn't increase as fast as the feckless, faceless stockholders desire} you must cut costs.
I would often muse with colleagues that the company's board members must huddle together, nervously clutching their spread sheets and fantasizing about "how much money we could be making if it weren't for that damn payroll."
Greed is going to be the death of us.
As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I'm heartsick with the incessant MBA-induced zeal to paste your name onto everything and consider it mission accomplished. But the example of Citigroup spending $400 million to plant their logo on the new Mets stadium (while sucking $45 billion from the feds for Citi's cataclysmic underperformance) typifies why the U.S. is in such bad shape and that business is so out of touch.
Despite alarm bells for years [and simple freaking mathematics] wages held steady as housing prices soared, fueling a whole industry [built on lies and absolute greed] of buyers, sellers and mortgage lending. For a number of years corporations were making money — astronomical amounts — so nobody bitched about it.
Bernie Madoff made off with tens of billions because his investors didn't care what he did [for fifteen years!] as long as they got paid.
I wonder if Bernie's been branded yet in his new dwelling.
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