Good Week: Pepsi – The world’s #2 soft drink and snack company dislodged archrival – and top dog – Coke as the official soda and snack provider of New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden, whose holdings also include other legendary Big Apple venues Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theater. The newly signed contract ends nearly a century-long relationship between the world’s most famous soda and the world’s most famous arena, where the Pepsi Generation hopes to endure as long as the Knicks Degeneration.
Comeback Week: RadioShack – Online shopping, ever-changing technology trends and two bankruptcies couldn’t keep the 97-year-old dead and buried. This week, HobbyTown announced a partnership under which it will open a “RadioShack Express” store-within-a-store at 100 of its locations nationwide. The announcement was met with wild celebration by the U.S. Soldering Iron Manufacturers Association (USSIMA).
Bad Week: Facebook – The social media goliath – the very vehicle through which all six of you enjoy this weekly diversion – experienced the biggest loss of value in the history of the stock market when shares plunged 19% after executives cautioned that revenue would slow as the company focuses on user privacy in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Nearly $120B in market value was erased in less than 24 hours.
Worse Week: Papa John’s – This might be the first time since the glory days of the Volkswagen emissions-cheating scandal or the United Airlines passenger-dragging event that a company has won (lost?) consecutive Worse Week honors. After being forced to step down as president and then subsequently forced to resign as chairman, Papa John’s Founder and Chief Controversy Magnet John Schnatter has filed a lawsuit against his eponymous company. Kind of the way my dog barks at her own image in the mirror, but far less dignified.
