Post by Jennifer George

Two stories today about how companies use people to make arguments - one about a succession, and one about what happens when the leader of the brand becomes the whole brand. First, Apple named John Ternus as Tim Cook's successor yesterday, and the most interesting part of the announcement is what *wasn't* said. For a company under more AI scrutiny than at any point in its recent history, the word AI doesn't appear once in any of the comms. Then there's the piece I couldn't stop thinking about after The Wall Street Journal documented the apparently booming market for CEO merch... yes, really. Published one day before The New York Times asked whether CEOs should be the face of their companies at all. I'm genuinely curious what you've seen in practice. Where have you watched CEO visibility work - really work, not just generate impressions? And where have you seen it backfire in ways that were hard to recover from? Because I have a pov on this but I suspect the people in this community have better stories than I do.