Tag: Media and Marketing

Latest Headlines

July 12! Amazon sets second 24-hour Prime Day; two Conn. groups push against Humana-Aetna; and the Internet gorges on story about ‘world’s angriest’ Taco Bell customer

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 10:04 a.m.

AMAZON said this year’s 24-hour Prime Day sale would include more than 100,000 specially discounted items. U.S. members can shop starting at 3 a.m. ET/midnight PT, with new deals as often as every five minutes (press release). Last year, in addition to a 266% increase in orders vs. the same day in 2014, Prime Day also spurred more people than ever to try the $99-a-year Prime service. It also drove more sales than any of the retailer’s previous events — even beating Amazon’s 2014 Black Friday (The Verge). Apparently responding to complaints last year that some items sold out too quickly, Amazon said this year it would “dramatically” boost inventory and make it easier to search for deals by sorting through categories (Cnet).

Amazon employs 6,000 workers in the Louisville area at mammoth distribution centers in Jeffersonville, and in Bullitt County’s Shepherdsville. Plus, another big Prime Day is good news for the retailer’s shipper, UPS; with 22,000 workers at its Louisville International Airport hub, it’s the city’s single-biggest private employer.

HUMANA: Two Connecticut activist groups and the state’s medical society have criticized regulatory reviews of the proposed $37 billion Humana-Aetna merger in a letter this week to the U.S. Justice Department; they’re asking the trust-busters “to protect people from the harm these mergers will cause.” Aetna is based in Hartford. The groups, which also criticized a similar planned merger between Anthem and Connecticut-based Cigna, were joined by 40 other state doctors’ associations and health-care charities nationwide (Hartford Courant). Humana employs 12,500 workers at its downtown Louisville headquarters and other sites across the city.

UPS and the 2,500-member Independent Pilots Association  today announced a tentative agreement on a new five-year labor contract, including improvements across all sections. Specific details of the agreement will not be disclosed before the IPA presents the proposed contract to all UPS pilots (press release).

Also, a looming pilot shortage will soar to 15,000 by 2026, according to a study by the University of North Dakota’s Aviation Department, as more captains reach mandatory retirement age of 65, and fewer young people choose aviation as a profession. “And that’s in an industry,” says the Dallas Morning News, “where captains on the biggest international jets average more than $200,000 a year — with some pushing $300,000” (Morning News).

FORD‘s decision to bypass an employee for a position based on his use of opioids was not enough to prove his disability discrimination claim, the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has found (National Law Review). The automaker employs nearly 10,000 workers at its auto and truck factories in Louisville.

PIZZA HUT: In New Orleans, police arrested a man and woman early yesterday who allegedly carjacked a Pizza Hunt deliverer’s car at gunpoint Tuesday night, then led cops on a car chase before they were apprehended. The driver told officers he was making a delivery about 11:30 p.m. when a woman who said she placed the order — Simonne Walker, 19 — approached him. But instead of paying him, the woman’s companion — Kenneth Rainer, 20 — walked up, put a gun to the driver’s back, and demanded cash and his car keys. Walker and Rainer then got into the car and sped off, the cops say (Times-Picayune).

ChambordBROWN-FORMAN is promoting its Chambord black raspberry liqueur through a “Just Add Chambord” Royale cocktails campaign starting tomorrow. The campaign targeting hotel bars and lounges runs through Sept. 30. The Louisville spirits giant will supply participating establishments with Chambord-branded flute glasses, recipe and tent cards. Nidal Ramini, marketing chief for Bacardi Brown-Forman brands said (in a very odd quote): “We are confident the new platform will inspire the on-trade in particular, to transform and elevate serves, whilst helping them understand how Chambord can be the perfect way to elevate a simple glass of bubbles, and ultimately increase profit” (Harpers). Here’s the Royale recipe.

PAPA JOHN’S fired an employee at Continue reading “July 12! Amazon sets second 24-hour Prime Day; two Conn. groups push against Humana-Aetna; and the Internet gorges on story about ‘world’s angriest’ Taco Bell customer” →

Media and Marketing

Among media at Olympic trials in Omaha, WAVE stood alone. (But in the Instagram age, does it even matter?)
WAVE screen grab
Connie Leonard reported live last night from Omaha, with in-studio anchors Scott Reynolds, left, and Shannon Cogan.

WAVE’s solo was hardly surprising, of course, because the station is an affiliate of longtime exclusive Olympics broadcaster NBC, which paid $4.4 billion in 2011 for rights to the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 games.

The station was in Omaha to cover 21-year-old University of Louisville swimmer Kelsi Worrell, who made the U.S. swim team last night after beating her own personal best time last night, to win the final of the 100 meter butterfly in 56.48 seconds.

WAVE is owned by Raycom Media of Montgomery, Ala. The summer games start Aug. 5 in Rio de Janeiro; latest news.

The Omaha coverage — including this broadcast story — was a reminder of how much the city’s once-dominant media outlet, The Courier-Journal, has retreated as newspapers across corporate parent Gannett continue losing readers and advertising. The CJ apparently covered last night’s final by watching WAVE. “It’s a dream come true,” the paper said Worrell told NBC.

But in the age of Twitter and Instagram, more newsmakers bypass conventional media altogether. Worrall celebrated on both platforms moments ago.

Latest Headlines

Louisville companies snap two-day losing streak, as Dow Jones soars 269 points; and Yum China bidders reportedly bust deadline, balk at $10B valuation

A news summary, focused on 10 big employers; updated 4:16 p.m.

Those 10 companies tracked by Boulevard joined U.S. stocks clawing their way back from two consecutive days of steep losses, following Britain’s stunning vote last week to quit the European Union. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed moments ago at 17,410 — up 1.6%; the broader S&P 500 index jumped 1.8% to 2,036 points, and the Nasdaq climbed 2.1% to 4692.

June 28 Guardian
Today’s Guardian.

“This is going to take a long time to play out and I think the initial shock is being a little reversed right now,” Doug Cote, chief market strategist at Voya Investment Management told CNBC. “This is not 2008. It’s more like 2011.” (Read the latest Brexit developments in Britain’s Guardian.)

In Louisville, virtually all of Boulevard’s top 10 rose by the time markets closed at 4 p.m. They included Kindred, which got pounded yesterday, falling 7%. The closing prices:

Those gains came even as Ford said it expects the double-whammy of any softer post-Brexit industry and a weaker British sterling “would have an adverse impact on our operations in the long term,” a Ford spokesman told financial news site The Street. Ford also said it would issue revised 2016 guidance during its second-quarter earnings call July 28 (The Street). Ford shares have now tumbled nearly 8% since Britain’s surprise vote to leave the European Union — nearly twice as much as the broader S&P 500 index.

In its most recent annual report, in February, Ford warned about the impact of a possible Brexit, saying it “could cause financial and capital markets within and outside Europe to constrict, thereby negatively impacting our ability to finance our business, and also could cause a substantial dip in consumer confidence and spending that could negatively impact sales of vehicles.”

Last year, the U.K. was Ford’s single-biggest market after the U.S., accounting for 8% of the automaker’s $149.6 billion in sales:

Ford sales graphic

Ford employs nearly 10,000 workers at an auto assembly and a truck factory in Louisville.

In non-Brexit business news: At YUM, potential bidders for the fast-food giant’s mammoth China division  Continue reading “Louisville companies snap two-day losing streak, as Dow Jones soars 269 points; and Yum China bidders reportedly bust deadline, balk at $10B valuation” →

Media and Marketing

150th-birthday campaign: How to play the Jack Daniel’s whiskey barrel scavenger hunt

Starting Friday in its Lynchburg, Tenn., hometown, the Brown-Forman unit is hiding 150 prize-filled whiskey barrels across the globe at historic and cultural sites, with clues on Jack Daniel’s Facebook pages to help fans find them.

The clues, tied to the history of each region, will be revealed on the day of each local Barrel Hunt, and barrels will be opened when the first person to arrive gives the correct password. The hunt is a social-media marketing centerpiece of the distiller’s 150th anniversary. It runs through Sept. 30.

Photo, top: A barrel gets the Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 brand.

How important is Jack to the company?

It’s the only one of Brown-Forman’s product lines to be Continue reading “150th-birthday campaign: How to play the Jack Daniel’s whiskey barrel scavenger hunt” →

Books

A UPS aircraft mechanic, her ‘Dark Brown Lies’ book, and a very expensive advertisement on the CJ’s front page today

Many Courier-Journal readers were no doubt left totally confused this morning when they saw an advertisement on the front page — one of the most expensive you can buy — for a three-year-old book written by a former UPS aircraft mechanic.

CJ June 26 detail

Debbie Simpson’s “Dark Brown Lies” doesn’t show up in the CJ’s database, which means a lot of readers were learning about it for the first time. The book, which she self-published through a company she apparently incorporated in Arkansas in 2013, is about her 19-year-career at Louisville’s biggest private employer — one that ended very badly.

Debbie Simpson
Simpson

“This true story,” she writes on her website, “is about a female aircraft maintenance technician that worked for one of the most powerful companies in America and the consequences she faced for standing up and speaking out against harassment within the workplace. The consequences were: employee entries, warning letter(s), retaliation, intimidation, suspension, the constant real threat of termination and termination.”

What exactly happened isn’t detailed. But her beef with UPS, which employs 22,000 people at its hub here, may stem at least partly from a whistleblower case she lost in 2008 before the U.S. Labor Department.

Simpson’s advertisement this morning is only indirectly about her book. Instead, she’s drawing attention to another legal case where a pilot, Douglas Greene, has sued the Frost Brown Todd law firm in federal court in Louisville and two of its attorneys. Simpson says she’s dealt with one of the attorneys, Tony Coleman, in her own legal fight against UPS.

Wayback News

50 years ago today: Dressing for establishment success at Stewart’s

It may have been the swinging ’60s somewhere in Louisville, but you wouldn’t have known it from a Courier-Journal advertisement for some seriously sober women’s attire on June 23, 1966. Stewart’s department store at 4th and Walnut (now Muhammad Ali Boulevard) was offering a “trans-season costume” from the Quaker Lady company for $14.98*.

Stewart's ad 1966.png

“You’ll look your ladylike best all through summer and into fall in this town costume of polyester and combed cotton,” Stewart’s promised. “So easy-care, it’s a wash and wear, requires little or no ironing! Dress is freshly and femininely styled with jewel neckline, slenderizing straight skirt. Jacket has stylish notch collar, tab pocket trim effect, ¾-sleeves. Sizes 12 to 20, 12½ to 22½. Blue, green or wineberry plaid.”

* That $14.98 would be equivalent to $111 in 2016 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator.

Here’s what the store looked like in 1923, when it was known as Stewart’s Dry Goods, in a photo from the University of Louisville Photographic Archives. The building now houses a 304-room Embassy Suites Hotel that opened in April 2015.

Stewart's Dry Goods
Muhammad Ali is on the left, Fourth Street on the right.

Stewart’s continued as a separate nameplate until early 1986, when parent Associated Dry Goods sold most of the stores to Ben Snyder’s. By 1992, the last surviving former Stewart’s — the L.S. Ayres location in Evansville, Ind. — closed amid the Associated Dry Goods merger with the May Co. of St. Louis.

Related: Read a short history of Louisville department stores.