No Mercy / No Malice

Best and Worst Brand Moves of 2018

The most and least impressive action taken by a brand this year both happened on the same day

Editor’s Note: No Mercy/No Malice is a column from Professor Scott Galloway, where he shares various reflections on business, tech, and life on his mind each week.

The most and least impressive action taken by a management team to support or erode enterprise equity, so far in 2018, both happened on the same day — September 5th.

Worst

Google’s decision to wave the middle finger in democracy’s face, and not send a senior exec to the Senate hearings, can be explained with one number: 90. Google commands a 90% share of a sector that, by dollar volume, is greater than the entire ad market of any nation except the US. If the search firm had a 30%, or even 60% share, one of the three senior execs (Larry, Sergey, or Sundar) would have fired up the jet and found their way to DC. Instead, Google cemented the notion that these firms have decided, or know, they are more powerful than elected officials. In sum, Google said to the Senate…