Two brief stories from tonight’s brand management class (not necessarily marketing related):
- I was hanging out in the hallway before class. Someone commented on the prevalence of Macintosh use among business students. He went on to comment about the elitism associated with going to The Apple Store in the mall. He portrayed Apple Store employees as smug, believing themselves to be experts. Upon hearing this comment, I bit my tongue. The people at The Apple Store are experts (at least in I suspect they are in Apple products). When seeking wisdom, we should be ready to accept it. The attitude expressed was like someone getting into Heaven and asking, “Who the Hell made you God?”
- During our Kingsford Charcoal case discussion, the professor asked what power Kingsford (and their parent company Clorox) had to dictate prices against giants such as Wal-Mart. In a tongue-and-cheek fashion, I suggested that Kingsford could make the claim that Kingsford was too big to fail, and thus, Clorox was too big to fail. If forced to shut down, all of Clorox’s brands would no longer be available to be sold in Wal-Mart. I meant this to be funny, as a parody of the “too big to fail” argument being presented in terms of our current banking industry struggles. The professor thought it was a good point. Absolutely no one laughed, possibly because they don’t watch financial news all day long and didn’t make the connection or because the “too big to fail” argument is not funny. Either way, for me it was a lesson learned.
Anyway, even in the briefest of instances and comments, I suspect there are opportunities for timeless morals.
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