[itsoktocry]

>For a public company, the CEO has to be a celebrity CEO.

Is it?

From the DJIA: can you even name the CEO of 3M? Cisco? Amex? Visa?

I don't think celebrity is a pre-req for being a CEO. And as OP suggests, it could even be a detriment.

[mikepurvis]

It's also a double edged sword where greater visibility leads to greater scrutiny. Galen Weston Jr stepped into the public eye much more during the pandemic as the face of Loblaws (Canadian grocery chain), and although it originally was welcome, he ended up outing himself as just another entitled, out of touch zillionaire, and at least in my social circles becoming kind of as punchline.

[wintogreen74]

>> just another entitled, out of touch zillionaire,

You can level a lot of criticism at Jeff but I don't think this one applies.

[creaturemachine]

Why he thought to cast himself in commercials is beyond me.

[randomdata]

Why's that? He has been doing the commercials for around a couple of decades, staring long before he was the one doing the casting. Even after taking that role in 2016, the previous commenter points out that the commercials continued to be well received until well into the 2020s. It was a successful formula for a long time.

Indeed, positive audience sentiment has an expiration date. He rode the wave too long, perhaps, but it is hard to know when to stop. All ongoing media productions (e.g. TV shows) suffer from the same problem and question of when to keep going and when to move on.

[mikepurvis]

I didn't actually know that he'd been doing it for a while, but I've not ever been a regular TV viewer. The change from my perspective was the commercials showing up in my Facebook feed and my family group chat joking around about the latest dispatches from old Gal Pal and how we could pick up a shrimp ring for 20% off.

So even if it was a longstanding thing, pushing the content toward a more millenial/gen-z audience is still a new direction and risk.

In the end, the biggest factor was the dissonance between his warm, cozy "all in this together" messaging combined with grocery price hikes and news like this coming on the other side of it all: https://www.blogto.com/city/2022/11/loblaw-report-profit-foo...

[randomdata]

Funny thing is that restaurant patronage has declined considerably in Canada in the past year or so. Even with many restaurants now operating at a loss (i.e. paying you to eat) to try and win back customers, they are failing to capture hearts and minds.

If people aren't eating at restaurants, it is almost certain they are getting their food at the grocery store instead. For all the mockery of Galen, it seems the marketing strategy has been unbelievably successful.

That's probably why he continued to cast himself even as the audience focus shifted to millennials and gen-z. Letting someone laughing at you for a few minutes is no big deal. Watching them love you when they show up at your store over and over makes it all worthwhile, I'm sure.

[gkoberger]

I can't. But could most people name Jeff, even in tech? I bet people in finance certainly know (and closely watch) the CEOs of these companies.

I did reword my comment though, because I don't agree Jeff is a "celebrity" as much as a "public" CEO.

[nostrademons]

I work in tech and had never heard of Jeff or George. I could name every CEO of Twitter or Google, or the founding CEOs of companies like Stripe, AirBnB, Uber, Coinbase, etc. Companies like Twilio and Unity don't really register.

[swozey]

I've worked on some of the foss tech (infra and ptsn) that twilio has used for almost a decade. Know all about what the company does. Have applied there (to which they never replied). Known plenty that work there.

Ironically my previous partner works there and she didn't know anything about the company prior to taking the job so me not even getting a reply to my application was a jab. I've always seen twilio in a positive light they do some really interesting work.

I live in the city of their HQ. I have no clue who the people mentioned in this thread are either but it makes sense that they'd see the CEOs in a positive light with how much positive I hear(d) about the place.

[Snow_Falls]

Twilio is more of a "how the sausage gets made" type of company, I do t really think its the type that benefits from a celebrity CEO

[roflulz]

everyone knows the Stripe founders tho...

[bearcobra]

Being able to keep track of the craziness that is the leadership history at X/Twitter is kind of impressive.

[nostrademons]

There actually haven't been that many, and double-checking against Wikipedia I forgot Parag Agrawal but Wikipedia forgot Linda Yaccarino. I divide them up into eras and power struggles:

1. Jack Dorsey. Founding era, founding engineer, forced out when Twitter was ~30 employees because he had no management experience.

2. Evan Williams. Growth era. Another founder, but one who had past experience dealing with hypergrowth, getting companies acquired, and working inside a big company.

3. Dick Costolo. Maturation era. Adult supervision, he's the professional CEO hired to manage Twitter because both of its previous CEOs were really startup people.

4. Jack Dorsey (2). Came back after gaining some political savvy and learning how to launch a boardroom coup. Founded Square in the meantime and got a bunch of experience being CEO of another company. Also famously the guy who shut down the Jan 6th insurrection by blocking the sitting U.S. president from Twitter.

5. Parag Agrawal. Caretaker; Twitter was in trouble by then and Jack Dorsey was either forced out or decided it was better to die a hero than be remembered as a villain.

6. Elon Musk. Bought Twitter in a fit of insanity.

7. Linda Yaccarino. Glass cliff. Installed as CEO so that X's eventual demise is not Elon Musk's problem.