• by John Gaffney , June 24, 2002

Harrrruuumph!: I could do a column every day about companies and key executives doing and saying irresponsible things. I thought at first that the WPP Group gloom and doom outlook delivered yesterday fit the bill. But if they think that a public stance of “few, if any, signs of a recovery” is going to serve WPP well, then have at it. What killed me were the events WPP thinks will lead to a true rebound in 2004: The US presidential election and the 2004 Summer Olympics. Right. And I’m Tiger Woods. The US presidential election might fill the coffers of a few networks and make a better Q3 for 2004 than expected. But with campaign spending debates going the way they are, I think it is quite reasonable to think that campaign spending might be down for 2004. As for the Olympics, we had the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and it did not fuel a recovery. In fact, if I remember properly, more than a few Olympic sponsors were quoted as reconsidering the return on investment for their Olympian spending. We can’t count on events to fuel recovery. Business is made up of processes, not events. The ad recovery will come from creative innovation, brand competition and relentless sales efforts. If you want to wait for Al Gore and GW to tee it up again, that’s your decision.

And Cisco Is Overdone, Too: Enough with the Microsoft! I am tired of reading about Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and the amazing things the company is doing while in the throes of the judicial system. Fortune, Business 2.0, Business Week…..the list goes on. I’d like to see business magazines get back to the cutting edge and stay away from Microsoft for a while. Won’t be too long before media buyers start to question the difference between Business Pub A and B.

The Definition Of Class: Judea Pearl, father of slain Wall St. Journal bureau chief Daniel Pearl, accepted the first Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism on behalf of their son over the weekend, at the Southern California Journalism Awards. He said: “We are hopeful that Danny's legacy will inspire other journalists to continue his quest for truth and understanding, to create new bridges among cultures, and to uncover seeds of hatred before they germinate."