A while back, premium exercise bike brand Peloton learned a hard lesson in how quickly perception can overtake intent. They ran a holiday TV ad featuring a husband gifting his (very thin) wife a Peloton bike. The spot follows her documenting a year of workouts and ends with her thanking him for...
Hockey is having a moment. Between Olympic excitement and controversy (which we’re not touching), the success of the PWHL and the buzz around the television show Heated Rivalry, the sport is lighting up the scoreboard. (Remember, this is not a pun free zone!) So why did the NHL hand critics the...
Maria Stagliano had the backbone to say what I’ve been thinking when she wrote this column in O’Dwyer’s. I have found it fascinating to see how many different people in communications say they do crisis management. You don’t hear me say I do fashion PR or CSR. This is why I have a vast network...
Do you remember the Cracker Barrel outrage when they tried to evolve their brand? It was their first logo update in nearly 50 years. They rolled out a cleaner, text-only look and dropped the iconic “Old Timer.” There was a lot of customer outrage, right? That’s what it looked like at first. It...
I used to work for a remarkable woman named Sharon Carstairs. She has been in Canadian politics since she was a child and her dad was premier of Nova Scotia. She followed his footsteps rising all the way to a cabinet member in the Chretien government. To this day, she is one of the smartest people...
When leaders go off-script, even the most comforting brands can suddenly feel cold. That’s exactly what happened a few weeks ago to Campbell’s Soup after a senior executive referred to its products as being “for poor people,” and also made a racially insensitive comment about employees. The...
When supply and demand don’t align, even the strongest brew can turn bitter fast. You may have seen the recent headlines about the disastrous release of Starbucks’ limited-edition Bearista cup (a $29.95 teddy-bear-shaped holiday tumbler for the uninitiated). The launch of the viral must-have...
As the year winds down (gulp, how?) and we gather to reflect on what we’re grateful for this coming Thanksgiving, it’s natural to count the obvious blessings: growth milestones, successful launches, strong partnerships. But in the world of business, there’s another kind of gratitude. One that is...
This time last year, we wrote a Halloween-themed article, “Very Scary Marketing Decisions,” highlighting baffling and ill-conceived advertising and branding blunders, such as: Bath and Body Works launching a line of holiday candles, which included one bearing the design of a “snowflake”...
35 percent. Did I get your attention? It got mine. Only 35% of consulting startups make it to 10 years. Today, I’m proud to say that Kith is part of that 35%. That statistic says a lot. It says that what we do matters. It says that our clients have trusted us through some of their hardest moments....
We’re taking you way back in the wayback machine to when I was a little kid in Canada. It was 1991 when Winnipeg-based Old Dutch Foods entered the Ontario market hoping to gain ground but instead faced a salty standoff. Rival Hostess Frito-Lay was accused of buying all the Old Dutch chips from...
You may have heard recently that Perrier’s fizz has gone flat overseas. Parent company Nestlé Waters is facing a major environmental scandal after investigative reports revealed years of illegal waste dumping at its bottling sites, including massive landfills filled with plastic, debris, and even...
Is your organization prepared to respond to a crisis and protect its hard-earned reputation? Take our quiz and find out!