When the Leaders Divide, Business Must Lead

Insert overtaxed “political football” headline here…

Money Quote: Tuesday Sept. 25

Nike, an NFL sponsor, takes clear side in Trump vs NFL

In the time of Trump, sponsors are being forced to take a side, or a the very least, speak out of both sides of their mouths. While some major sponsors hedged (Under Armour) or offered support for both sides (Ford), Nike took a stand, showing a spine that others lacked. Money quote: “Nike has taken an obvious stance on the Trump vs NFL controversy, a story that is unlikely to go away in the coming weeks. For now, Nike stands alone. But other sponsors may be studying the response to Nike’s statement for an indicator of what they should do.”

Under activist pressure, Nestle sets margin goal

I’ve long written about the financialization of our markets (Rana Foroohar is my guide), and the place to see that in action is with “activist investors” in large public companies. Nestlé is a European company with a proud heritage, but as P&G already knows, it’s awful to be in the crosshairs of America’s slash and burn capitalists. This latest move feels like a defensive play, I doubt it will be enough. Money quote: “Nestle, under pressure from activist shareholder Third Point, set an operating margin target for the first time, although it was seen as conservative and fell short of rival Unilever’s ambitions.”

Target Embedding Pinterest Camera Search Tool in Its App

This is a novel partnership, and Pinterest’s largest ad deal ever, which I kind of predicted in this piece (I suggested it be Walmart, but oh well…). The integration of offline and online is a massive trend that is only beginning. Money quote: “The accord shows how Pinterest is hunting for new ways to bring in money and attempt to chip away at the dominance in online advertising by Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. Tim Kendall, the company’s president, said Pinterest expects to take a similar approach with other advertisers, using other technology and data to woo large ad deals.”

China Blocks WhatsApp, Broadening Online Censorship

WhatsApp is a Facebook property, as you’ll recall. Once again, China is proving itself the only power in the world capable of throwing roadblocks across Facebook’s path (well, besides Robert Mueller). This appears to be specific only to WhatsApp, which of course threatens WeChat and other native Chinese services. Money quote: “The blocking of WhatsApp text messages suggests that China’s censors may have developed specialized software to interfere with such messages, which rely on an encryption technology that is used by few services other than WhatsApp.” State-sponsored capitalism #FTW!(I’m sure this has nothing to do with Zuck’s attempts at speaking fluent Mandarin…)

Silicon Valley and governments are going to have to play nice if we want to save the world

I just love the picture of Merkel with a robot. Money quote: “The real issue here,” said Mary Snapp, the vice president of philanthropies at Microsoft, at the High-Level Event, “is that billions of people in the world still do not have connectivity. And not only are they in the emerging markets, they’re also in the more developed markets. In the United States, 23.4 million people still do not have connectivity. In some places where we have large data centers with the best of technology, you can walk across the street to the coffee shop and find that there is no internet access. So it’s important for us to think about internet access for all in emerging countries as well as in developed countries.”