Good Week/Bad Week in Branding

Good Week: Unilever – The enormous international house-of-brands (think Hellmann’s, Lipton, Dove, Breyers… even Ben & Jerry’s) gets greener with the acquisition of Vermont-based Seventh Generation, producer of natural and earth-friendly cleaning products.

Bad Week: CEOs – It’s been a rough week for the corner office as two prominent CEOs – or Corporate Emergency Owners – were spit-roasted (it’s a step beyond “grilled”) at congressional hearings. The Senate Banking Committee ripped Wells Fargo CEO John Strumpf a new one over the bank’s out-of-control sales practices and Mylan CEO Heather Bresch got repeatedly jabbed by the House Committee on Oversight an Government Reform for the outrageous $600 price tag for EpiPens containing medicine that costs the company roughly $1 per dose to manufacture.

Worse Week: Yahoo – The company’s already perilously tenuous grip on the waxed rope of relevancy was further weakened this week when it confirmed that more than half-a-capital-B-billion (500,000,000) accounts were hacked in late 2014. The stolen data includes names, telephone numbers, dates of birth, etc.