Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney overshadowed Anheuser-Busch InBevs quarterly results this week, as the global beverage giant sought to assure investors the fallout from its controversial partnership can and will be contained.

The companys sales in the U.S. had dropped after its Bud Light brand linked up at the start of April with the American social media star, who boasts nearly 11 million followers on TikTok, to promote its low-calorie beer.

The post on Instagram immediately sparked a culture war backlash that led to consumers ditching the brand as part of an apparent grassroots boycott.

Fielding numerous questions from investors on the matter, AB InBev CEO Michel Doukeris disavowed the idea on Thursday.

We will need to continue to clarify the fact that this was one can, one influencer, one post, and not a campaign, and repeat this message for some time, Doukeris said on his companys first-quarter earnings call.

While he wanted to see beer at the table of every important social debate, the CEO argued the key lesson his management team has learned is that their product should not find itself at the center of the debate. 

We need to understand the current environmentand especially the social media landscapeand how consumer brands, especially big brands with significant reach, can be pulled into a discussion like this one, Doukeris said. 

The native Brazilian told investors it was not his intention to wade into identity politics and effectively blamed the move on junior marketing staff making decisions that went above their heads.

Bud Lights vice president of marketing Alissa Herrscheid has since found herself taking a leave of absence following her decision to promote the brand on Mulvaneys Instagram channel, where the 26-year-old is followed by nearly 2 million users.

Doukeris indicated managers at her level would no longer be allowed to assume such responsibility on their own when it comes to campaigns that can quickly go viral, and not in the way management intends.

One key thing in the U.S. was quickly adjust and streamline our structure, he said. So that in this situation and given the current environmentespecially for the social media landscapewe have senior marketers running the programs.

Tripling U.S. media spending this summer

Boycotts like the one targeting Bud Light are increasingly becoming a tool in the transgender debate on both sides of the issue.

In February, LGBTQ+ activists hoped to quash demand for Warner Bros. Discoverys new Harry Potter video game in a bid to hurt author and transgender critic J.K. Rowling. 

Responding to the criticism, Budweiser has since released a new social media ad steeped in Americana imagery, sponsored last weeks NFL draft, and maintained a strong presence at last months Stagecoach country music festival as it sought to wrap its brand name around sports and entertainment rather than politics.

While Doukeris did not refute the damage visited upon his U.S. business, the CEO did attempt to frame it in the context of his sprawling empire, where AB InBev remains the largest beer brewer in the world. 

Doukeris argued sales declines from the consumer boycott in the U.S. only reduced its overall global volume by 1% in the first three weeks of last month.  

Pressed whether Bud Lights controversy had started to hurt demand for its other products, Doukeris conceded it had. Publicly available data shows some spillover effect across the other brands, while the majority of the impact is still on Bud Light, he said.

Although he claimed it was too early for us to understand the duration and the total impact, he nonetheless reaffirmed the companys 2023 financial targets. 

To restore Budweisers credentials as the brand of choice for the everyday, down-to-earth beer drinker, Doukeris now plans to triple U.S. media spending in the summer.

Mulvaney meanwhile has since broken her silence on the matter: Ive been offline for a few weeks and a lot has been said about me, the TikTok star said last Friday.

It was so loud, I didnt even feel part of the conversation so I decided to take the back seat and just let them tucker themselves out.

Americas employers added a robust 253,000 jobs in April, evidence of a labor market that still shows surprising strength despite rising interest rates, chronically high inflation and a banking crisis that could weaken the economy.

The unemployment rate ticked down to 3.4%, matching a 54-year low. Last months hiring gain compared with 165,000 in March and 248,000 in February, and is at a level considered vigorous by historical standards.

The job market has remained strong despite the Federal Reserves aggressive campaign of interest rate hikes over the past year to fight inflation. Layoffs are still relatively low, job openings comparatively high. Still, the ever-higher borrowing costs the Fed has engineered have weakened some key sectors of the economy, notably the housing market.

Since hitting a four-decade high last year, inflation has steadily eased yet is still well above the Feds 2% target level.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell himself sounded somewhat mystified this week by the job markets durability. The central bank has expressed concern that a robust job market exerts upward pressure on wages and prices. It hopes to achieve a so-called soft landing cooling the economy and the labor market just enough to tame inflation yet not so much as to trigger a recession.

One way to do that, Powell has said, is for employers to post fewer job openings. And indeed the government reported this week that job openings fell in March to 9.6 million a still-high figure but down from a peak of 12 million in March 2022 and the fewest in nearly two years.

The Fed chair said he was optimistic that the nation could avoid a recession. Yet many economists are skeptical and have said they expect a downturn to begin sometime this year.

Another encouraging sign for the Fed is that more Americans are looking for work. The more workers who are available to employers, the less pressure employers face to raise pay.

Still, steadily rising borrowing costs have inflicted some damage. Pounded by higher mortgage rates, sales of existing homes were down a sharp 22% in March from a year earlier. Investment in housing has cratered over the past year.

Americas factories are slumping, too. An index produced by the Institute for Supply Management, an organization of purchasing managers, has signaled a contraction in manufacturing for six straight months.

Even consumers, who drive about 70% of economic activity and who have been spending healthily since the pandemic recession ended three years ago, are showing signs of exhaustion: Retail sales fell in February and March after having begun the year with a bang.

The Feds rate hikes are hardly the economys only serious threat. Congressional Republicans are threatening to let the federal government default on its debt, by refusing to raise the limit on what it can borrow, if Democrats dont accept sharp cuts in federal spending. A first-ever default on the federal debt would shatter the market for U.S. Treasurys the worlds biggest and possibly cause an international financial crisis.

The global backdrop already looks gloomier. The International Monetary Fund last month downgraded its forecast for worldwide growth, citing rising interest rates around the world, financial uncertainty and chronic inflation.

Since March, Americas financial system has been rattled by three of the four biggest bank failures in U.S. history. Worried that jittery depositors will withdraw their money, banks are likely to reduce lending to conserve cash. Multiplied across the banking industry, that trend could cause a credit crunch that would hobble the economy.

At the staffing firm Robert half, executive director Ryan Sutton still sees pent-up demand for workers.

Applicants, not employers, still enjoy the advantage, he said: To attract and keep workers, he said, businesses especially small ones must offer flexible hours and the chance to work from home when possible.

Giving a little bit of schedule flexibility so that somebody might finish their work late or early so that they can take care of children and family and elderly parents these are the things that the modern employee needs, Sutton said. To not offer those and to try to still have a 2019 business model of five days a week in an office thats going to put you at a disadvantage in finding and retaining talent.

The fate of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) worth of unsold Yeezy stock is weighing on the German sportswear company as it tries to engineer a turnaround from the loss of the lucrative sneaker line and the continued fallout over its former ties to Ye.

Adidas is getting closer and closer to making a decision on what do to with the sneakers and the options are narrowing, new CEO Bjorn Gulden said in a conference call Friday after reporting 400 million euros ($441 million) in lost sales at the start of the year.

But with so many interested parties involved in the discussions, no decision had yet been reached, he said.

Adidas is stuck with stacks of its flagship Yeezy brand shoes after ending its relationship with Ye in October over his antisemitic and other offensive comments on social media and in interviews.

Gulden, who became CEO in January after the Ye split, declined to say if destroying the shoes had been ruled out but that the company was trying to avoid that.

He has previously said other options have drawbacks: selling the sneakers would mean paying royalties to Ye, restitching them to remove the brand identification would be dishonest, and giving them away to people in need could lead to resale because of their high market value.

Gulden would not say how many pairs of Yeezy shoes that Adidas is stuck holding because then the consumer would know how many we have and that could have an impact on demand.

Losing the Yeezy brand is of course hurting us, Gulden said in a statement. The breakup will reduce earnings by 500 million euros this year if Adidas decides not to sell the remaining Yeezy stock, the Herzogenaurach-based company said.

Net sales declined 1% in the first quarter, to 5.27 billion euros, and would have risen 9% with the Yeezy line, the company said. It reported a net loss of 24 million euros, a plunge from a profit of 310 million euros in the same period a year ago.

Operating profit, which excludes some items like taxes, was down to 60 million euros from 437 million euros a year earlier.

Gulden said the results for the Adidas were a little better than we had expected as the company seeks to restart growth and move beyond the breakup with Ye. He called 2023 a year of transition on the way to a better 24 and a good 25.

The company faces other problems tied to the rapper. Investors sued Adidas a week ago in the U.S., alleging the company knew about Yes offensive remarks and harmful behavior years before the split and failed to take precautionary measures to limit financial losses.

The lawsuit representing people who bought Adidas securities between May 3, 2018, and February 21, 2023 pointed to 2018 comments where Ye suggested slavery was a choice and reports of Ye making antisemitic statements in front of Adidas staff.

The company said last week that it rejected these unfounded claims and will take all necessary measures to vigorously defend ourselves against them.

Ending the Ye partnership also cost Adidas 600 million euros in lost sales in the last three months of 2022, helping drive the company to a net loss of 513 million euros.

An operating loss of 700 million euros is possible this year, Adidas said, mostly due to the 500 million-euro hit it would take if it doesnt sell the existing Yeezy shoes.

CFOs have become central in steering business strategy and value creation. But that task is about to get a lot more comprehensive in scale.

The workforce is changing into an ecosystem, consisting of full- and part-time employees, but also includes robots, chatbots, contractors, gig workers, professional service firms, app developers, and even customers. These internal and external elements all contribute to an organizations value creation and strategic goals, according to the new book, Workforce Ecosystems: Reaching Strategic Goals with People, Partners, and Technologies.

Two of the authors explained their research on Thursday during MIT Sloan Management Reviews (SMR) virtual summit on the future of work. When Amazon decided it wanted to have its own transportation system, it didnt hire people, said Elizabeth J. Altman, coauthor and an associate professor of management in the Manning School of Business at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. It started subcontracting, often with mom and pops. These people add value to Amazon, but dont work for Amazon.

She continued, If you think about YouTube or TikTok, those content creators are contributing to the business in a very meaningful way, and enabling the business to go forward. For many platform businesses that rely on contributions from users, those users absolutely, in my mind, are part of the workforce ecosystem. However, the relationship between the company and their customers or contributors is a little more complex than it was when a company was just selling a product to customers, Altman said.

The years of research culminating in a book included global surveys of more than 10,000 business leaders across industries, and more than 100 executive interviews, with 26% of the businesses surveyed earning more than $1 billion in revenue. 

When external contributors are considered to be part of an organizations workforce, thats a nontrivial shift, said David Kiron, a coauthor and editorial director of MIT SMR. Its so nontrivial that three-quarters of managers agree that effectively managing these external folks is critical to their organizations success, Kiron said. Its especially true for organizations like Cisco and Novartis, and some of these other organizations that have tens of thousands of external contributors getting the work done. 

However, based on their research, just 30% of business leaders agreed that their organization is sufficiently prepared to manage a workforce that relies on all of these external contributors. Those leaders who are taking this issue seriously consider it to be a holy grail, or a potential strategic differentiator for them to figure this problem out, Kiron said. 

Regarding a workforce ecosystem framework, four vital themes emerged in their research: management practices, technology enablers, integration architectures, and leadership approaches. Senior leaders and business unit leaders have to manage these themes. And the departmentsHR, procurement, finance, legal, and ITclosely collaborate in a cross-functional approach for the workforce, internally and externally. There cant be departmental silos in this approach. 

However, a workforce ecosystem comes with challenges like issues of ethics, compliance, and regulatory matters. The third part of the book is about ethics and social responsibilities and corporate social responsibility, Altman explained. Were very aware that this structure leads to all kinds of questions. Like, who owns the intellectual property, for example. That is an ongoing discussion. There are different mechanisms for working with it. Its not that it hasnt been addressed at all, but I think these discussions continue to evolve as workforce ecosystems become more prevalent.

In a workforce ecosystem, I asked the authors if company strategy and value creation ultimately fall under the purview of the CEO and CFO. We have realized that these discussions move to the C-suite, Altman said. They are strategic conversations because they get to the heart of how organizations compete [in their] industry, how they develop new products and services and move into new markets. So yes, ultimately, we think this is a very cross-functional C-level discussion. But we also see it going down deep into an organization.

A workforce redefined, for sure.

Enjoy your weekend. See you on Monday.

Sheryl Estrada
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Big deal

The "Nasdaq 2023 ESG & Climate Survey" is based on feedback from executives in North America and Europe. Companies of varying maturity levels report they are leaning in on sustainability initiatives despite an unclear path forward and with regulation looming on the horizon. Forty-five percent of companies have been tackling ESG strategy for fewer than three years, and 9% of companies have been tackling ESG for more than five years. As companies advance in their journey, teams grow and become more integrated into day-to-day operations and decision-making.

When asked how the most senior team member responsible for ESG and sustainability was appointed, 47% of executives said the person voluntarily took on responsibilities on top of their own role. Meanwhile, 39% said the team member migrated internally from other teams, and 14% said the person was hired for the role.

Courtesy of Nasdaq

Going deeper

Here are a few Fortune weekend reads:

"A famous hedge fund chief who managed to net record returns as stocks fell in 2022 says investors should look abroad to profit" by Will Daniel

"Frank founder sued by JPMorgan for making up customers is in talks with DOJ over fraud charges" by Luisa Beltran

"Airbnbs CEO spent 6 months living in his companys rentalsand found the core problem with his business" by Trey Williams

"7 ways to bounce back after a bad nights sleep" by Alexa Mikhail

Leaderboard

Here's a list of some notable moves this week:

Markus Neubrand was named CFO at Guess?, Inc. (NYSE: GES), effective Aug. 1. Neubrand will succeed interim CFO Dennis Secor. Neubrand currently serves as group CFO of luxury fashion brand MCM Worldwide. Before that, he spent 17 years at Hugo Boss, in roles including managing director of Scandinavia, and group director of financial planning, then COO and CFO. 

Teresa Chia was named CFO at Vertafore, an insurance technology company. Before joining Vertafore, Chia was a senior partner and managing director at White Mountains Insurance Group, a publicly traded holding company. She was responsible for White Mountains' direct investing and corporate mergers and acquisitions activity. Before that, Chia was a private equity investor at Permira Advisors, where she focused on investments in the global technology and consumer verticals.

Tim MacCarrick was named CFO at project44, a supply chain visibility platform. MacCarrick has over 25 years of senior executive experience in finance and operations roles. He's held both COO and CFO roles at public and private companies including Qlik, Xerox, DLL, and most recently OutSystems. 

Patricia Kaelin was named CFO at Safe & Green Holdings Corp.(Nasdaq: SGBX), a developer, designer, and fabricator of modular structures, effective May 2. Kaelin served as CFO of Buddies Brand, a privately held consumer packaged goods (CPG) company. Before that, she served as CFO of 1933 Industries, Inc., a publicly traded CPG company. Kaelin also served as CFO of business operations at Clifton Larson Allen, a CPA and consulting firm. 

Jay Matushak was named CFO at Bright Health Group, Inc. (NYSE: BHG), the technology-enabled health care company, effective May 12. Matushak will succeed Cathy Smith, who is stepping down to pursue another opportunity. Matushak joined Bright Health in 2021. He currently serves as SVP of finance. Matushak also serves as CFO of Bright HealthCare, the companys insurance business. 

Michael Dougherty was named CFO at bioAffinity Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: BIAF; BIAFW), a biotechnology company. Most recently, Dougherty served as CFO of Alexa Business Domains, Amazons Alexa AI and Voice division. Before that, Dougherty was chief financial and operating officer of TINT and CFO at Filestack. He also previously served as CFO for Amazon Pay. 

David Black was named CFO at Proterra Inc. (Nasdaq: PTRA), a commercial vehicle electrification technology company, effective May 16. Karina Padilla, the current CFO, will step down from her role, effective May 15. Black served as a special advisor to the CEO of BWX Technologies, a supplier of nuclear components and fuel to the U.S. government. Before that, he served as SVP and CFO of BWX Technologies. 

Overheard

"We continue to see our customers return to us for reasons of the product innovation...in areas like refreshers, iced shaken espresso, cold foam, those are difficult to make at home, they give customers a reason to come in."

Starbucks CFO Rachel Ruggeri told Yahoo Finance.  

A senior software engineer at Google wrote a critique asserting that the internet search leader is losing its edge in artificial intelligence to the open-source community, where many independent researchers use AI technology to make rapid and unexpected advances.

The engineer, Luke Sernau, published the document on an internal system at Google in early April. Over the past few weeks, the document was shared thousands of times among Googlers, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss internal company matters. On Thursday, the document was published by the consulting firm SemiAnalysis, and made the rounds in Silicon Valley.

In Sernaus analysis, Googles rivalry with startup OpenAI had distracted from the rapid developments being made in open-source technology. Weve done a lot of looking over our shoulders at OpenAI. Who will cross the next milestone? What will the next move be? he wrote. But the uncomfortable truth is, we arent positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI. While weve been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch. Im talking, of course, about open source.

Sernau did not respond to a request for comment.

As progress in generative artificial intelligence accelerates, employees at Google and other tech giants have engaged in spirited discussions internally and externally about the technology that is remaking their industry. Google, in particular, has come under pressure as the wild popularity of OpenAIs chatbot ChatGPT has sparked concerns that the company may be losing its advantage in artificial intelligence, a field where it has long been a leader. 

Yet Sernau asserted that the real threat to Google is coming from open-source communities, where engineers are speedily advancing models that rival the quality of those at big tech companies, and can be made more cheaply. These models, he said, can be faster, more customizable and more useful than Googles own.

We have no secret sauce, Sernau wrote. Our best hope is to learn from and collaborate with what others are doing outside Google. He expressed concern that clients would not be willing to pay for models with such high-quality technology on offer for free. 

The spokesperson for Google did not provide a comment on the content of the post. In a recent earnings call, Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said, Our investments and breakthroughs in AI over the last decade have positioned us well, pointing to progress in developing models and working with developers and other partners. Pichai has called for AI regulation in the past, cautioning that the technology could be very harmful, if not deployed in a thoughtful way. 

In February, a large language model created by Meta leaked out into the open, jump-starting progress on generative AI in open-source forums. The model, known as LLaMA, is smaller than the models that Google and OpenAI have been touting, making it easier to work with; researchers currently have to apply to Meta to access LLaMA. 

Google would do well to shift its focus to smaller more nimble models, Sernau argued. Giant models are slowing us down, the engineer wrote. In the long run, the best models are the ones which can be iterated upon quickly.

Employers and their workers are at loggerheads over returning to the office.

On the one hand, many businesses are still paying to lease a large office space and understandably want their workers to use the money pit. 

Plus, many CEOs who Fortune has spoken to feel that staff work harder in the office where they can be seeneven if research consistently shows that staff can be just as productive from home. 

But employees simply dont see the point of wasting money and spending hours commuting to do the very same tasks that theyve been proving for the last three years they can do efficiently from home.

Ciscos CEO Chuck Robbins gets that.

Youre going to tell somebody to go to the office and get on video and talk to people in another office all day long? he said in an interview with Forbes. They could do that from home.

Thats why the tech giant is giving the traditional office an overhaul and building workspaces fit for the future of hybrid workingcalled collaboration centerswith just 10% of the space reserved for working alone. 

Just last month Cisco unveiled its latest hub in Atlanta, exactly a year after opening its similarly smart New York space (which Robbins unveiled to Fortune at the time) with further plans to refurbish some of its other offices and relocate several of its underutilized offices to areas where theyll get more employee foot traffic.

The office is 90% for communal gathering

In the year since opening its 58,000-square-foot space in Manhattan, Robbins learned that workers dont want to go into the office to then work on their own. 

When employees were showing up, they werent going in private rooms. They were just sitting at tables, he said. They wanted to spend time [with coworkers] and they wanted those interactions.

So Cisco decreased the amount of space for individual work from 30% in its New York office to 10% in its new Atlanta space. The majority of the hubs square footage is dedicated for meetings, communal gatherings and team-based work.

Plus, as Ciscos own research found that up to 98% of all meetings will include at least one participant attending remotely, hybrid collaboration hasnt been forgotten. 

For example, the meeting rooms in its new Atlanta office have been decked out with the latest video conference systems that follows each speakers voice and points the camera to whos talking. 

Meanwhile, even the furniture is aimed to help workers collaborate, whether they are in-person or dialing in remotely, with slightly curved conference room tables to maximize each persons visibility on screen. 

You have to earn your workers commute

After having splashed the cash on such a lavish space, youd assume that Cisco is now mandating workers make full use of it.

But actually, employees are not going to come five days a week, Robbins told Forbes, while adding that even pre-pandemic some 15% of Cisco employees already worked remotely full-time. 

Instead, the company is hoping it will get its return on investment just simply by making the office worthy of its workers commute.

Were trying to create a series of events in offices to get people on site, he adds, including all-hands meetings and a leadership summit for Black employees. 

It all comes down to whats your return on commute?, according to Robbinsand thats a worthy question for employers trying to entice their workers back into the office.

When Cynt Marshall graduated UC Berkeley she wanted two things out of her career: to be paid as much as possible and to be the boss from day one.

The CEO of the Dallas Mavericks has achieved that and morelanding her latest role off the back of a cold call from Shark Tank star Mark Cuban.

In an interview with LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, Marshall discussed her 30 years at telecommunications company AT&T, where from 1981 inwards she worked variously as a recruiter, network engineer, and chief diversity officer.

Following a battle with stage three colon cancer, in 2017 Marshall retired from the Dallas-based company to launch her own consultancy brand helping businesses transform their company culture.

Yet when it was barely off the ground, she got a phone call from an unknown numberMark Cuban was on the other end of the line.

He asked her to become CEO of his basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, which he purchased in 2000 for $285 million.

I thought twice about it, Marshall admitted. I was loving what I was doing with the consulting but here was an opportunity to serve, to have an impact.

The telecoms executive said she was well aware she didnt know the business of basketball but Cuban was undeterred.

You dont worry about that, Cuban, who is worth approximately $5 billion, told her. I will teach you the business side of basketball and others will do the same.

Marshall admitted she became more and more aware of the gaps in her knowledge as she spent more time at the club, but said Cuban kept his promise to teach her.

I had to dig in and learn which I love, the first female CEO of the Mavs said. Some of the gaps still exist, I will never know what some of these people know about the business of basketballbut I dont need to know it. I learn from it every day.

What I need to do is lead these people, learn from these people and love these people. And I try to do that every day.

Lead by the first black woman CEO of an NBA team, around 50% of the Mavericks staff are now women and nearly half are people of color.

The club was recently awarded the leagues Inclusion Leadership award, flying in the face of headlines in the past about harassment at the organization.

Turning down promotions

Marshall also revealed she turned down a total of four promotions in her career, saying she always asks two questions about a new roleif the answers didnt satisfy, she didnt take the offer.

Those questions are: What is it that I have to do in this job? Because whatever it is I want to deliver above and beyond.

The second is Who is it that you want me to touch? I always believe that I am in a position for a reason and if I get a good sense and if I get a good sense that Im doing something that adds value to the business and that Im going to be a blessing, Im ready to go.

Marshall continued she initially turned down the biggest promotion of her career 20 years into her stint at AT&Twhich has been named among Fortunes 100 Best Companies to Work For in the pastbecause she was being asked to change who she was.

After she had been approached to become one of the officers at the company, Marshalls boss handed her a magazine of what to wear and was told her name of Cynt would have to goshe would be Cynthia or Cindy.

In short, Marshall said, her boss didnt believe Marshall was sophisticated enough to be an officer.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Marshall turned the offer down, telling her boss: Im flattered but youre fundamentally asking me to change who I am.

Marshall said she later revealed a call from the chairman of the company, though didnt name him, who told her: The person the board has signed off on to be an officer is Cynt and thats who we want to walk into our doors tomorrow.

More Articles ...

  1. BMW tells owners do not drive 90,000 cars and SUVs
  2. U.S. to crack down on foreign ownership of land near military sites
  3. Even in the metaverse, companies need to be socially responsible
  4. Apple CEO Tim Cook: Mass layoffs are a 'last resort'
Page 257 of 1160

Newspapers

Spinning loader

Breaking News, data & opinions in business, sports, entertainment, travel, lifestyle, plus much more. IdigNews.com is the leading news source for the internet  users...

           

Business

Entertainment

POST GALLERY