Vanguard’s Botched Email
Vanguard could have done a better job with service recovery after a mistaken email. Students will have ideas for improving the company’s response.
I received four of these emails (one for each transaction I submitted) on Tuesday at around 8 p.m. Each had the same subject line to match the body text, “We couldn’t process your request,” and the return address, do_not_reply@transactional.vanguard.com. Nothing says we don’t want to hear from you like a “do-not-reply” sender.
Dutifully, I called the number Wednesday morning. The recording said hold times were 25-30 minutes, so I entered my number for a return call and waited. The call came about two hours later.
The representative said the emails were sent mistakenly, apparently to a lot of us. Turns out, the orders had gone through (checking the account would have avoided the call). I don’t recall her apologizing, which is something I would expect in this type of situation—nothing elaborate, just an acknowledgment of the inconvenience.
The correction email came Wednesday at 3:43 p.m., about 19 hours after the first email was sent. A faster response would have avoided worries and phone calls like mine. Maybe the company is unpracticed at handling errors, or it had difficulty determining which clients were affected?
On the positive side, like the first emails, this one included a clear, specific subject line: “Correction: Please disregard our email about an account transaction.” Again, no apology. Also, why is the red horizontal bar blank, while, in the first email, the company name is inside? The two different reds look odd, but the website does use both.
This is a minor failing for a company with a solid reputation. Still, adding a few words during the phone call and in the email, for example, “We apologize for the inconvenience,” seems appropriate if nothing else. After all, the email said to call. For such small transgressions, little recovery is needed, but some acknowledgment seems fitting and expected.
History of “Ms.”
ChatGPT created a timeline (below) illustrating the evolution of Ms. as a courtesy title. Students might be interested in the history and The New York Times’ resistance to using it.
Letters from the early 1970s between Gloria Steinem and Abe Rosenthal explain her rationale for using Ms.—to match Mr., which doesn’t indicate marital status. Finally, in 1986, Rosenthal announced the paper would use Ms., noting that the term had become widely accepted. (Fun facts: Rosenthal was asked to retire two weeks after the decision, and Hillary Clinton asked the paper to use Mrs. before her name.)
Do we need the courtesy title at all? For students writing cover letters, we advise using full names when a gender is unknown, and the same logic seems to apply when marital status is unknown or irrelevant, which is probably always. In 2000, the AP Stylebook eliminated courtesy titles with a few exceptions. The guideline is to write only the person’s last name after writing the full name, as I have done in this blog since its inception in 2010. The Wall Street Journal stopped using courtesy titles in 2023, leaving The Times, as The Washington Post called it, “the most notable holdout.”
To be fair, the Times dropped these titles for much of its pop-culture coverage in 2018. The rest of the paper could follow.
Reading the history below (not fact checked), students might wonder why a gender-neutral singular pronoun hasn’t stuck in similar fashion. They has become a widely acceptable substitute, but attempts at thon, and ze, s/he haven’t. Both Ms. and singular they existed before their recent popularity. A pronoun like ze is a new entry and requires new multiple forms, while they and its multiple forms (them, their) already exist (although we know the plural-for-singular grammar is difficult for some to accept).
Mx., revealing neither gender nor marital status, never took off either, although The Times used Mx. for a short time for individual cases on request. The associate masthead editor for standards at the time explained the rationale in 2015, including this guiding principle:
In this as in other areas of language and usage, The Times is not looking to lead the way, set the rules or break new ground. Our hope is to reflect accepted, standard usage among educated readers.
Fair enough, but perhaps the paper doesn’t want to be behind either.
A Brief History of “Ms.” [not fact checked]
Today, Ms. is a familiar title for a woman, regardless of whether she is married. But the history of the term is older—and more complicated—than its association with the women's movement of the 1970s suggests.
From Mistress to Miss and Mrs.
The story begins with mistress, the feminine counterpart of master. In earlier English, mistress was not necessarily a reference to a woman's marital status. Over time, however, mistress was shortened into forms including Miss and Mrs., and by the nineteenth century the two titles had acquired distinct meanings: Miss generally referred to an unmarried woman, while Mrs. referred to a married woman.
Men, meanwhile, had a single standard title: Mr. Their title did not reveal whether they were married.
1901: The first modern “Ms.”
The idea of a marriage-neutral title appeared in print much earlier than is commonly assumed.
In 1901, the Springfield Republican in Massachusetts proposed Ms. as a useful title for a woman when her marital status was unknown or irrelevant. The newspaper even suggested that it be pronounced “Mizz.”
The proposal was essentially a practical one: rather than having to choose between Miss and Mrs., writers could use a title that avoided the question altogether.
This is the earliest known example of Ms. in essentially its modern sense.
The idea resurfaces
The proposal did not immediately catch on. Nevertheless, Ms. periodically appeared during the first half of the twentieth century, particularly as a suggested solution for business correspondence when the writer did not know whether a woman was married.
In 1949, linguist Mario Pei discussed Ms. as a possible combination of Miss and Mrs. The term was still unusual, however, and it remained largely on the margins of standard usage.
Sheila Michaels and the women's movement
The modern history of Ms. changed in the 1960s.
In 1961, feminist and civil-rights activist Sheila Michaels encountered “Ms.” on a mailing label. At first she assumed it was a typographical error. She soon recognized the significance of the term: it offered women a title that did not define them according to whether they were married.
Michaels began advocating for Ms. as part of the emerging women's movement.
In 1969, she discussed the term on a New York radio program. Among those who heard her was Gloria Steinem, who later helped bring the title to a much larger audience.
1972: Ms. magazine
The decisive moment came in 1972, when Ms. magazine was launched.
The magazine deliberately used Ms. to challenge the assumption that a woman's marital status should be part of her public identity. Its name helped transform a little-known, decades-old abbreviation into a symbol of women's equality.
The distinction was important:
The women's movement did not invent “Ms.” It gave an existing but obscure term a new social and political significance.
The 1901 proposal was primarily about convenience and uncertainty—What should I call a woman if I don't know whether she is married?
The feminist movement reframed the question:
Why should a woman's title have to tell you whether she is married at all?
1970s–Today
During the 1970s, Ms. increasingly entered mainstream American usage, with “Mizz” becoming its standard pronunciation. Dictionaries began recognizing it as an established courtesy title.
In 1986, The New York Times adopted Ms. in its news and editorial usage, an important indication that the title had moved beyond its feminist origins into conventional American English.
Today, Ms. is widely used as a neutral title for women. It is particularly useful when marital status is unknown, irrelevant, or intentionally not disclosed.
The evolution in one line
Mistress → Miss / Mrs. → Ms.
But the history of the final step is worth remembering:
1901: Ms. proposed as a practical, marriage-neutral title
↓
1960s: Sheila Michaels revives and advocates for the term
↓
1972: Ms. magazine popularizes it nationally
↓
1980s onward: Ms. becomes mainstream usage
↓
Today: Ms. is the standard title for a woman without reference to marital status.
The larger significance
The history of Ms. illustrates how language can change in response to changing ideas about social identity.
The word itself is old. Its meaning as a statement of equality is newer.
What began in 1901 as an elegant solution to a problem of etiquette eventually became, through the women's movement, a challenge to the assumption that a woman's marital status should be publicly encoded in the way she is addressed.
New Apple CEO’s One-Word X Post
Apple CEO John Ternus wrote, “Hello,” as his first social media post, apparently reinforcing his “wicked calm” presence.
How many of us can post one word on X and gain almost one million followers? That’s all it took for Ternus on X, which the Financial Times calls “his first public statement as CEO.” Of the replies to Ternus’s post, Elon Musk’s “Congrats!” ranks most popular, with Smith & Wesson’s request for Ternus to “Bring back the gun emoji” second and criticism of the Apple mouse’s misplaced charging port third. Everyone seems to want a piece of the conversation.
Anticipation of Ternus’s first on-stage presentation on Wednesday and speculation about his personality are intense:
Weeks [Corning CEO] describes Ternus as a humble “good guy” but adds that his hobby of racing cars might give an insight into another side of his character. “There are not many non-passionate people that drive race cars . . . but at the same time, you have to be wicked calm and really dedicated to excellence if you’re good at it. And John is good at it.”
As expected, Apple’s new leader page is straight-up corporate, focused on Ternus’s history and accomplishments. It reveals nothing about his personal life or character, but the page does show him wearing Steve Jobs’s signature black t-shirt (which the SVP of Services and Health also dons). Students might discuss this decision: an echo, a remake, a sign of respect, or just a comfortable tee?
Comm Lessons from Alan Greenspan
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s death at 100 is an opportunity to talk with students about two communication lessons: the power of his words and his choice to be unclear.
Words That Moved Markets
For decades, “his words moved markets,” but perhaps Greenspan’s most famous phrase is “irrational exuberance” from a 1996 speech:
We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy?
After that speech, global markets opened between 2 and 4% lower, although they did recover quickly. Some analysts are drawing analogies between the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, the housing crisis of 2007-2008, and the AI hype today, calling each irrational exuberance.
Intentionally Unclear Language
On a PBS News Hour segment, a reporter explained:
[He] would let his sentence sort-of go around with multiple subclauses, and it would just be incomprehensible. It was a tactic and a very successful one.
Greenspan acknowledged the strategy:
I have learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said. (1987 to a Senate Committee)
One of the problems that surprised me when I got into public life was that open, clear talk is—often creates problems. (2007 PBS News Hour interview)
[Asked about “fed-speak”] It’s a—a language of purposeful obfuscation to avoid certain questions coming up, which you know you can’t answer, and saying—“I will not answer” or basically no comment is, in fact, an answer. . . . So, I proceed with four or five sentences which get increasingly obscure. The Congressman thinks I answered the question and goes onto the next one. (2007 CNBC interview)
A Forbes writer discusses fed-speak (aka “Greenspeak”) and the pendulum of transparency over time. In business communication, we talk about transparency as an aspect of integrity. Greenspan’s approach might be challenging for students to reconcile.
UCF Commencement Speaker’s AI Talk Got Booed
A real estate executive addressed graduating students at the University of Central Florida about the promise of AI and got booed. Her audience analysis, the student’s reactions, and her recovery are worth class discussions.
Gloria Caulfield said, “The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.” “Boo!” from the crowd. She is surprised and looks back at others on stage, asking “What happened?” She is shaken. When she continues, her voice is unsteady, and more boos follow. Cheers follow when she says, “Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives.”
Perhaps most relevant is the audience. She’s speaking to graduates at UCF’s College of Arts and Humanities and its Nicholson School of Communication and Media—students who have faced challenging job prospects for years and are greatly affected by AI today. As one student said, “Talking about artificial intelligence at a college for arts and humanities can be, you know, a bit rough because it kind of goes against the humanities part.”
In addition, recent Gallup research shows a steep decline in young people’s confidence in AI. As of now, only 27% of people ages 14 to 29 feel hopeful about AI, and 48% of working Gen Zers in the workforce “believe the risks of AI in the workforce outweigh its benefits.”
The boos made headlines and took Caulfield off guard, but looking at the video of the crowd, we see a mixed response, with some students silent as others cheered loudly. Caulfield referred to the “bipolar topic”; another word choice might have been better.
LinkedIn comments give students a window into how academics and industry folks reacted to the commencement scene with some saying students need to face reality.
Students can discuss how Caulfield handled the situation. Was it a misjudgment for her to talk about AI as she did? Should she have anticipated the response? Should she have avoided the topic entirely? She did preface that part with a pep talk about change, but apparently, it wasn’t enough. Perhaps a softer approach, recognizing students’ vulnerabilities and fears would have been better—and solutions or suggestions.
How Universities Communicate Community Engagement Projects
Connecting with local businesses and nonprofits is challenging for universities looking for community engagement (service-learning projects). Students can analyze a few examples and recommend improvements:
First, students might identify the primary audience (partners) and communication objectives for these pages. The primary objective is to encourage organizations to partner with schools for student projects. More specifically, they want prospective partners to understand the potential value of student work and identify projects that fit course and learning objectives.
Second, an audience analysis will tell them that these folks don’t have a lot of time or resources to spend learning about the program or partnership. The webpage is an indication of how much work they’ll need to invest—and it can’t be too much.
Then, students can develop a short list of criteria for these pages—the usual for audience analysis, content, organization, writing style, design, etc. For example, they might judge “you-focus” on the partner, including what the partner will get out of the partnership; clarity and conciseness of the writing; a clean visual look; examples of past projects; branding for the university or college; and a call to action with contact information.
Following are a few examples of webpages, with a couple of notes on each. Students might notice that many start with the program mission, which sounds like academic jargon—not a good choice for the opening of these pages for a partner.
Cal State San Marcos: Clear call to action with a form to complete.
Davidson College: Strong “you” focus in the first few paragraphs.
Florida Gulf Coast Service Learning: Also good “you” focus and clear design (although a lot of clicks).
Michigan State Community-Engaged Learning: Finding something positive from this page, which starts with “Criminal Background Checks,” is challenging.
NYU Wagner Capstone: Strong description of students and the value they bring.
Seattle Community Partnerships: Confusing with two separate sections, and link headings aren’t descriptive or organized in an intuitive way.
University of Nevada, Reno, Partner Resources: Welcoming suggestion to contact them up front, but the service-learning guidebook isn’t available—why mention it?
University of Rochester Community Engagement: Starts with clear “you” focus, but the writing sounds like academic jargon, and the organization mixes purpose and programs.
West Texas A&M Quality Enhancement Plan: Big points for the only video in this bunch, but we hear from students and faculty—not partners. If information is available for partners, it’s not apparent.
AI’s Hilarious Descriptions of Competitors’ Writing
A Wall Street Journal writer asked ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to describe each other’s writing style, and the results are hilarious. But the writer’s conclusions about detection aren’t supported by research.
Gemini says Claude’s hallmark style is that of “a nervous graduate student terrified of losing their funding or offending the thesis committee.”
ChatGPT, in contrast, writes like a “McKinsey junior partner aggressively pitching a synergy strategy on LinkedIn,” according to Gemini. “It writes with absolute, unwavering confidence but strips out all specific, concrete details, resulting in prose that sounds authoritative but evaporates the moment you try to extract actual meaning from it.”
According to the OpenAI app, Claude is “an earnest grade [sic?] student who will not take a position. If you ask Claude, ‘Is this policy good,’ it replies: ‘It can be understood as operating within a broader ethical framework that may, depending on one’s normative commitment.’ By the time Claude finishes clearing its throat, the Roman Empire has fallen again.”
Perhaps like humans, AI bots have writing styles, although let’s stop short of calling them personalities.
Boldly, the writer claims in the article headline, “AI-Generated Writing Is Everywhere, and It’s Still Easy to Spot—for Now,” but the research says otherwise. Human detection is running around 50% (maybe better for business communication faculty, but who knows?), and detection tools aren’t reliable. As AI improves, detection will get more challenging.
Sure, we all heard about overuse of em-dashes and words like delve and myriad, but as soon as ChatGPT became public, our colleagues have been wary of accusing students of using AI.
The “Ningnong” Who Wants Replacement Parts
This customer communication from a model train company would make a fun class discussion or activity. The company focuses more on what they won’t do than how they can help.
In the “Limited Warranty” section of product documentation, they try to be funny, and I admire that, but it doesn’t land well. Projecting 44 years into the future when a customer might want to get repairs covered under warranty, the writer suggests that the customer should retreat to a bunker instead. Are we at that point where a pending apocalypse is funny?
I also understand that a company can get whacky requests. This one apparently has customers seeking replacement parts for lesser quality items purchased elsewhere. But are these “ningnongs” likely to read the company’s warranty information? They seem confused about their audience—and calling them ningnongs might not inspire them to become customers.
By far the overarching issue with this section is the company’s focus on the negative rather than the positive—the situations in which you can’t get your train fixed instead of what they can do for you. Even the bit about parts coming loose in shipping is strange. Why not help customers out by telling them the simple fix and apologizing because products really shouldn’t fall apart in transit. This situation seems like a good opportunity for a customer to call, make a connection, and perhaps order more parts.
Students may rewrite this section and compare their revisions. Obvious changes like removing ALL CAPS will immediately improve this missive. Students might want to rephrase “Limited Warranty,” but this is standard language that protects the company. Still, the rest of it doesn’t need to sound like a bad-news message.
That Grumpy Old Period
A writer wonders why we hesitate to use a period in texts and emails. Instead, we overuse exclamation points, question marks, and in less formal writing, emojis, “ha,” or “lol” to soften our message. He theorizes that “It’s the lack of context—the fact that more and more of what we communicate is aimed at somebody we don’t know or rarely speak to, with little base line of what we’re normally like.”
Students might discuss their own punctuation. Does it differ for people they know well? Are they less tentative in these situations and therefore more definitive? This might be tough to answer if they eschew punctuation entirely, as some young people do. The period has long been criticized for its finality, particularly in short texts, as in, “Sure.”—apparently meaning, to some, I will hate you forever.
In business communication, the period can be just a period, doing what it was intended to do: end a sentence. Students might develop the confidence to simply declare something.
On the other hand, we teach students to observe others in an organization and, to an extent, match communication styles. An email riddled with exclamation marks sent by a manager warrants one or two exclamation marks in return regardless of the employee’s personal style. Otherwise, exclamation points are more art than science, as the writer says:
It is widely understood that exclamation points must be inserted into the modern professional email at precise intervals—just enough to create a tone of eagerness and warmth without tipping over into sounding fake, sycophantic, or batty.
The period seems simpler, but maybe not to a student or new employee. Tone is trickly, and we don’t know each other at work as we did in the old days, when we met in person, spent time chatting over coffee, and went out after work. We could, in lieu of perfect punctuation rules, give each other the benefit of the doubt, assuming good intentions instead of overanalyzing every dot and dash.
Australian Government’s Comms Banning Social Networks for Kids
Students can analyze the Australian government’s communications to ban social network accounts for kids under 16 years of age. In many ways, this is a classic change communication case study with strategic communication planning and individual messages.
The initiative is bold, and the tone is unapologetic. Clearly, the government has support from officials, parents, and educators to enact this dramatic change. Messaging to young people is trickier, obviously, because they are affected and less inclined to agree. But young people are not the primary audience, as they don’t get a vote in the process.
An enormous number and variety of messages chronicled on the eSafety Commissioner’s webpage comprise the communication campaign called, “For the good of their wellbeing.”
To study the communication strategy and plan, students might work backwards to identify elements of communication planning:
Audiences (segmented for tailored messages)
Communication objectives for each audience
Medium/Channel choice for each
Key points for each
Messenger for each
Timing for each
This communication planning template can be used for this activity or others. (See sample completed template.)
The campaign includes messages to segmented audiences:
A “hub” of resources shown here
Videos for “parents and carers”
Radio/digital audio campaign materials for parents and carers, under 16s, and First Nations (worth discussing why this group is segmented)
Print materials
Community resources (e.g., emails, posters)
Digital toolkit
Research findings report
Additional resources for First Nations (e.g., parenting guide, workbook)
Some resources are translated into ten languages.
As the ban goes into effect, students may revisit the messaging to determine how other countries could communicate their own bans and adapt messaging for cultural differences.
Calibri Oust Offers a Lesson in Typeface and Analyzing Claims
The U.S. State Department demanded that agencies revert back to Times New Roman (14-point font!) instead of Calibri, offering an opportunity for students to learn about typeface and analyze claims for the change. In a cable, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cites the importance of “a unified, professional voice in all communications,” the “tradition, formality, and ceremony” of serif fonts, and “yet another wasteful DEIA program,” that is, the switch to a sans serif font to increase accessibility. Without the flourishes (little legs) of serif fonts, sans serif fonts may be more easily read by people with low vision, dyslexia, and other disabilities. (Here’s a deep dive into questions of legibility, readability, and accessibility.)
Students can analyze Rubio’s argument. One claim is that changing from Calibri back to Times New Roman “did not lead to a meaningful reduction in the department's accessibility-based document remediation cases.” They might question whether remediation—changes to documents—is that best way to measure success. Most often read on screens, what does the research say about serif and sans serif fonts? In addition, he doesn’t include the cost of what news reporters called an “about face”; after all, reprinting existing documents is remediation.
Rubio also argues for consistency with letterhead, but that could be modernized. Finally, what’s the value of what he refers to as “decorum” and “professionalism,” terms that have connotations of their own?
Poor Calibri. First replaced, after a 17-year run as Microsoft’s default font by taller, curvier Aptos, and now this.
My Beloved Em Dash—In the News
My favorite punctuation mark—meant to highlight important bits—has become the important bit itself. Let’s look at the AI issue.
Most business communication faculty probably know by now that the em dash has been viewed as a marker for cheating with ChatGPT and other Gen AI. Turns out, the dash is a weak indicator, if one at all. Let’s remind students that AI mirrors existing writing, including writing that uses and overuses the em dash.
An Insider Higher Ed contributor warns about overuse—in an article entirely em-dash free, which I find both laudable and disappointing:
[A]s writers, we should be connecting thoughts smoothly and taking care to use just the right punctuation for a specific purpose while resisting the allure of an em dash that might save us the expert work of choosing the precisely placed period, comma, parenthesis, semicolon or colon.
I see her point, but sometimes the em dash is the perfect mark, isn’t it? In my example before the indented quote, I see awkward alternatives:
An Insider Higher Ed contributor warns about overuse in an article entirely em-dash free, which I find both laudable and disappointing: [modifier problem: the overuse isn’t in the article, obviously]
An Insider Higher Ed contributor warns about overuse. In an article entirely em-dash free, which I find both laudable and disappointing, she writes the following: [choppy and needlessly long]
In an article entirely em-dash free, which I find both laudable and disappointing, an Insider Higher Ed contributor warns about overuse: [complicated and too long before we get to the main subject and verb]
Most important, none of these options use my favorite punctuation mark.
Although punctuation isn’t the most exciting business communication course topic, this might be time to discuss the differences among the hyphen, en dash, and em dash. (For geeks like me, you can read this history of the em dash.)
Whatever students decide for their own writing, I hope they don’t cast off the em dash for fear of a plagiarism accusation. We need all tools available for clear, fluid writing.
Lessons from Amazon Alleged Deception for Prime Sign-Ups
Amazon’s $2.5 billion “historic” settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offers lessons for ethical webpage design. The lawsuit accused Amazon of misleading customers to subscribe for a Prime account.
Following are examples of the FTC’s evidence—how students might avoid designing webpages that intentionally or inadvertently dupe users:
“Dark patterns”—design choices to intentionally deceive. One example is the prominent, yellow subscription button compared to the faint “No thanks.” Another example is the visual option for shipping. Students can compare how differently the shipping options are presented on Amazon today.
“Iliad flow”—a long, confusing process, for example, how to cancel a subscription. The FTC cited the need for customers to “navigate a four-page, six-click, fifteen-option process" to cancel but only one or two clicks to enroll.
Deceiving text—for example, this button for “30 days of Prime for . . . FREE.” When users selected this option, they were immediately enrolled but not told that the subscription would auto-renew monthly and for how much.
The FTC report also cites evidence from Amazon’s internal documents. Messages refer to “accidental” signups, acknowledge that “subscription driving is a bit of a shady world,” and call unwanted subscriptions “an unspoken cancer.” This is a reminder for students to watch what they put in writing, even in informal messages.
As we know, when a company settles a suit, it doesn’t admit guilt. Amazon’s short statement says little, but they did agree to the agreement terms, which include clearer buttons, explicit disclosures, and easier ways to cancel a subscription.
Cracker Barrel Subordinates the Change and then Reverts to Old Logo
Following backlash from updating the logo, Cracker Barrel will keep “Uncle Herschel”—the man and the barrel. Students can identify business communication issues in the communication.
The restaurant has a rich history, with its first store, a restaurant with gas station, opening in Lebanon, TN, in 1969. Now 664 restaurants, Cracker Barrel maintains an old-timey, country feel: a menu of comfort food and farmhouse decor with antiques unique to each location.
The logo and decor change are hidden in a press release on August 19 titled, “Cracker Barrel Teams up with Country Music Star Jordan Davis to Invite Guests to Discover ‘All the More’ this Fall.” It’s as though the company leaders knew trouble might ensue. Note the placement in this paragraph, further subordinating the news:
Since 1969, Cracker Barrel has delivered heartfelt service, homestyle food and an unmatched dining experience. With nearly 660 locations nationwide, the brand remains a go-to for guests seeking community, comfort and special moments they can carry with them long after they leave. Its more popular menu offerings like farm fresh scrambled eggs and buttermilk biscuits even serve as inspiration behind the hues of a refreshed color palette featured in the new campaign. Anchored in Cracker Barrel's signature gold and brown tones, the updated visuals will appear across menus and marketing collateral, including the fifth evolution of the brand's logo, which is now rooted even more closely to the iconic barrel shape and word mark that started it all.
After years of subtle adjustments, the dramatic logo change hardly supports the conclusion, “now rooted even more closely to the iconic barrel shape and word mark that started it all.” The redesigned logo is rounder, but the most obvious change—omitting the man (“Old Timer”) and the actual barrel—is key and unmentioned. We might say the leadership lacks accountability for the decision, hiding behind positive/neutral news like a music partnership.
Try as it might to update the brand, Cracker Barrel is thrown back to earlier days. Brighter interiors with fewer, better organized items were meant to appeal to younger crowds, but fell flat. Instead, it felt like an affront to conservative values and became a political issue. As Americus Reed, marketing professor at The Wharton School, said, “If it ain’t woke, don’t fix it.” In the end, the logo redesign was deemed intolerable, as evidenced by the 7% stock price drop.
Social media backlash was fierce, and President Trump’s Truth Social post might have been the final straw. In a rare about-face post on X, the company said they listened and would change the logo back. Unfortunately, in the message, we don’t see the barrel on the X account.
The stock rebounded, and all is right again. Students might discuss lessons learned: get better feedback, make more incremental changes, stand behind your decisions or don’t make them, and perhaps, above all else, stay attuned to the political climate.
Name Change from MSNBC to MS NOW Gets Ridiculed
MSNBC is rebranding itself as MS NOW, short for My Source News Opinion World, but memes are drowning out the company’s enthusiasm.
Critics say “MS,” leftover from when Microsoft held part ownership years ago, is most commonly associated with multiple sclerosis, and they question why the letters remain. My Source News Opinion World seems a forced fit for the letters and makes little grammatical sense. Luckily, they probably won’t be muttered out loud.
Others say “NOW” is so yesterday sounding, and that the logo “looks like something you’d scroll past in a pile of poltical [sic] campaign logos from 2004.” Although the company statement confirms no change, the American flag could signal a more conservative slant.
The statement also conveys a self-importance that might not resonate with viewers:
For our viewers who have watched us for decades, it may be hard to imagine this network by any other name. We understand. But our promise to you remains as it always has. You know who we are, and what we do.
Students might have reactions about the change—or about other brand changes they have noticed. Here are two recent controversial examples:
Broligarchy and Skibidi Added to Cambridge Dictionary
More than 6,212 words have been added to the Cambridge Dictionary, the primary resource for English-language learners. Students might enjoy an all-slang video, and the new business terms are interesting
The ones that made headlines—delulu, tradwife, and most popular, skibidi—are funny sounding and/or have ambiguous meanings. No one seems able to define skibidi except to say it’s an “all-purpose,” “dump” word.
Here are a few business- and tech-related words (from here and here):
snackable: content for limited attention spans
digital decay noun: process by which online content disappears or becomes inaccessible
fast tech: cheap products that lead to e-waste.
technofossil: plastic and other products that last forever.
vibecession: a period when people think the economy is doing worse than it is.
cardboard box index: a way to measure economic growth by the number of boxes shipped.
Dictionaries must evolve. As the Lexical Programme Manager of the Cambridge Dictionary Colin McIntosh says, "Internet culture is changing the English language, and the effect is fascinating to observe and capture in the dictionary.“ In addition, he explains, “It’s not every day you get to see words like ‘skibidi’ and ‘delulu’ make their way into the Cambridge Dictionary. We only add words where we think they’ll have staying power.”
A writer for The Times defends including slang words. Unlike the historian who criticizes dictionaries that have “surrendered to usage,” Oliver Kamm reminds us of a dictionary’s purpose:
Dictionaries record usage so we can learn the semantics, etymology and history of any given word. Sometimes these usages are slang, being the currency of particular demographic groups (especially but not only young people). I want to know what they mean; a dictionary that shuns them won’t help me.
In this fun video (start at 1:53), polyglot Arieh Smith (aka Xiaomanyc) delivers a speech entirely in “Gen Alpha” language. Students at Westtown High School in West Chester, Pennsylvania, go wild.
Columbia President's Resignation
Columbia University President Katrina Armstrong’s resignation statement serves as a worthy example for analysis. The political situation is extremely controversial, and she avoids direct references.
Her emphasis is on the “interim” nature of her position. In other words, she wasn’t planning to stay long, anyway. She mentions this early in her short statement and reinforces her “few months” of service at the end. She also emphasizes up front that she will return to her former role at the university.
Armstrong speaks well of Columbia and subtly refers to the controversy, using words like “healing” and “moving forward.” At the end, she hints at having a bigger voice: “The world needs Columbia University, and you can be assured that I will do everything I can to tell that story.”
It’s difficult to think of what else she could reasonably say, given the university’s precarious situation with the government and with all its many constituents. She may have said just enough.
This is one of those messages that could be classified as positive or negative news, depending on the receiver’s perspective. But appointing yet another interim president is not great, for sure.
Claude Wins a Writing Contest
A Washington Post reporter compared five AI tools and found Claude the clear winner. The prompts and analysis are interesting for a class discussion and activity.
The five prompts covered a range of communication topics: an apology to a friend, a CEO layoff message, a request to a spouse, a weird work proposal, and a breakup text. Five judges, “who have all written books and teach courses on communication,” rated the tools in this order:
Anthropic’s Claude
DeepSeek
Google’s Gemini
OpenAI’s ChatGPT
Microsoft Copilot
Judges found Copilot particularly “stilted” and “robotic,” generating the dreaded “hope you’re well.” That’s too bad because Copilot is built into all Microsoft 365 products, a popular choice for work.
I wish we could see all the writing samples and judges’ feedback, but the article includes only a couple of examples. But students could use the same prompts for a class activity and compare results.
We could ask students to put more effort into the prompt, with detailed context and a more thorough audience analysis. We also could give students more specific guidance for evaluating the results. Or, students could create their own prompts. With more instructions—both to AI and to students—students might rank the tools differently.
Comparing Stock Charts for Perspective
This was a bad week for the U.S. stock market, but graphics make the news look worse than it is. Students can compare charts to see how truncated axes affect perception.
Yahoo!’s monthly chart has a short range: 41,000 to 44,000 for this monthly line chart. With the red line and shading, the results look awful. Noting the 6.87% drop is helpful—it’s not great but not devastating either. For the 62% of Americans (varying largely by demographic group) who own stock in some way, their portfolios are unlikely to be invested 100% in DJIA stock, so their personal losses are probably smaller.
This one year chart, also Yahoo!’s, shows a more complete view of the market. Over a year, stocks were still in positive territory—green(!)—and the recent dip is in clearer perspective. Not that short-term investors and perhaps retirees shouldn’t be concerned, and we might be headed into a recession, but this chart recognizes the extraordinary gains in the past year as well as the recent losses.
Students can find longer-term charts to see an even fuller picture of U.S. stock market returns. They might also find, or need to create, charts with a Y-axis starting at 0.
As always, the data visualization depends on the audience and purpose. If your audience is television viewers, and your purpose is to engender fear, then short time frames and truncated axes do the trick. If you’re a financial advisor, and your audience is a client who is a long-term investor with a balanced portfolio, you would probably not show these charts at all and instead focus on their portfolio returns over time.
New AI Copyright Ruling and My Book Guidance
Students may want to know about the U.S. Copyright Office’s new ruling: AI-assisted works can be copyrighted if enough human creativity contributed to the product.
With 207 citations, the 52-page report clarifies what AI output can be copyrighted, challenging previous thinking that no output can carry the protection. The ruling is most relevant to people in creative fields who use AI to produce music, film, artwork, etc., but has implications for all of us. The National Law Review summarized the latest:
The Office reiterated its position that copyright protection may currently be available for: (a) human-created works of authorship used as inputs/prompts that are perceptible in AI-generated outputs; (b) creative selection, coordination, or arrangement of material in the outputs (i.e., compilations); (c) creative modifications of the outputs; and (d) the prompts themselves if they are sufficiently creative (but not the outputs created in response to the prompts).
The last point is perhaps the most relevant: prompts alone do not constitute human intervention into AI results. Additional human creativity and authorship are essential.
With a reference to Paula Lentz’s article on ethical authorship, here’s what I included in the upcoming 12th edition of Business Communication and Character on the topic:
Regardless of how you use AI, you are always the author of your work. Maintain your own authorship, including your authority and authenticity, over your writing—in other words, yourself. You want your writing to represent you and your character—not whatever content GenAI generates from existing sources; that output isn’t necessarily original work. Depending on the task, think of AI as a collaborator, an assistant, or a coach—but never a replacement for you.
With this guidance, AI output can certainly be copyrighted. For example, inputting a curated dataset or rearranging or changing results could be enough human creativity. But what is sufficient to reach this threshold remains to be seen.