The Outsider Guide to America's Favorite Companies by opinionated

The Outsider’s Guide to America’s Favorite Companies

By André Martin and Mark Fitzloff Design by Lau Peltzer 2024

Have

you ever wondered what it would be like to work inside of

Nike, Google, Amazon, or

Patagonia?

In our first conversation about this book, we realized there is a moment, some time in nearly everyone’s early teens, when you realize the brands you love are companies where actual people work–not our parents perhaps, but other people. If you were like Mark and me, that moment changed your life forever. Our careers, Mark’s as an advertising exec and mine as a top organizational psychologist, have been defined by these big brands and revered companies. They are intertwined with our existence in ways that make it impossible to separate them from our depth of craft, the livelihood of our firms, our dayto-day work, and our buying patterns as consumers.

These places are our modern kingdoms, our hallowed halls, and our ivy league of corporations. They are woven into all of our daily lives. They pepper our news feeds and are the subject of LinkedIn posts, business school cases, and conversations over coffee. They are often considered the pinnacle of employment. And, they are all different–different in their origin stories, in their ways of working, in their lore and myth, and in the kind of employee that thrives within them.

We find the most revered companies to be bizarre and beautiful, mythical and maddening, inspirational and imperfect. Most of all, we find them fascinating.

They are quirky, cult-like, and mysterious. They are everything you would expect and nothing like you imagine. They are often the living embodiment of their founders or the pure essence of their brand or product. They are places where every ambitious 20-something wants to start their career and anyone wishing to be amongst the corporate elite wants to have on their resume.

Maybe this is why working in them and with them has enthralled Mark and me for the last 20 years. You see, when you get inside, even for a moment, you are captivated by the nuance and hum that make Target, Nike, Apple, Pepsi, Patagonia, Netflix, and others truly unique. The problem is most people never get inside.

Thus, The Outsider’s Guide to Companies was born.

The companies as a group Retail + Apparel Companies Consumer Goods Companies Tech Companies Introduction Big Box E-commerce Companies 55 60 65 70 Nike Adidas Patagonia Lululemon 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Google Apple Meta Microsoft 75 80 85 90 P&G Coca-Cola Johnson&Johson Mars Lego 5 Amazon Walmart Target The Home Depot Table of Contents

Investment Banking Companies Auto+Energy Companies Media Entertainment Consumer Services QSR Appenddix 110 115 120 95 100 105 135 140 145 160 125 130 150 155 Berkshire Goldman Sachs JP Morgan Chase Tesla Ford Chevron Disney Netflix Delta Airlines Fedex Allstate McDonalds Starbucks The method behind the madness

We both grew up in the 80s, it was back in the dark ages before the internet (nothing like making yourself feel old and irrelevant in less than 20 words... ugh)

Amid all the video arcades, Saturday morning cartoons, pegged jeans, and visits to the Food Court at our respective town mall (mine was Battlefield Mall and Mark’s was the Stanford Shopping Center), there were a few ways that we learned about the world. There was the World Book and Encyclopedia Britannica, the local news, or occasional magazine subscription to Newsweek or Time that would grace our coffee table at the close of some class or club fundraiser. Those much coveted assets were our brief snapshot of the world.

Then, there were movies and music and a few books that were all about the future, about possibility, about the big world waiting for us beyond the dull monotony of our well coiffed neighborhood streets and Brady Bunch-esque weekday nights. Two books that stood tall in our impressionable youth were: the Fiske Guide to Colleges and the Fodor’s Travel Guides.

Both of these “bibles for burgeoning youth” would get thumbed through, highlighted, tabbed, and filled with folded pages and well-worn creases, because during the time when we were teens and young adults, these were our dopamine hits, our doorway to daydream, imagine, and get inspired about what life could be.

We would read about colleges in distant lands like Cambridge, Mass or Ann Arbor, Michigan and imagined ourselves on the campus or at a party before the big game. Or, with Fodor’s,

we would read about cool hotels and bars in Paris or the perfect thing to do with 3 hours in Marrakech. They were invaluable to us thinking broader about ourselves and our many Choose Your Own Adventure (yep, 80’s, again) options awaiting us upon graduation.

These books kept our attention because they painted a picture of life in the day-to-day and told stories and gave examples of what a moment might feel like if you ever found yourself in it. You could literally close your eyes and see yourself at that college in Athens, Georgia or that cafe in Positano, Italy. It was mesmerizing and honest-to-God fuel to be more, do more, and go more places. It was, admittingly a simpler time. There was less access to knowledge back then and more around each corner than your imagination could ever envision.

Fast forward to 2023, instead of living in a world void of information, we live in one saturated by it. In the 80’s we hungered for more insight about the world so we could dream about our place in it. Now, we need someone to make sense of everything we read or death scroll through, so we can truly understand it, see it for what it is instead of what it looks like out of our periphery as we speed by it on our Instagram reel. Case in point, and the average time a Tik Tok user spends a day watching videos is 82 minutes, so that works out to viewing about 1490 videos per day.

In the firehose of stuff coming at us and the many algorithms influencing our limited attention capacity, we pick up a headline, a tidbit, a partial truth, or a slice of a larger narrative, but we aren’t able to go deep or find the signal in the noise. Thus, much of the nuance, interesting sidebars, and color commentary is being lost in the world.

So, we thought we would bring it back, that we might mash up the Fiske Guide, Fodor’s, and your favorite “Most Admired, Best, Coolest Company to Work for” list, 80’s style.

Should you read this book? Magic 8ball says... It is decidedly so

It is important to answer the question “Who is this book for?” Well, we would like to think it is for everyone. What we wrote was a fun, quirky, odd tidbit filled exploration into companies and brands everyone knows. In that way, it is the perfect dinner party conversation starter.

“Have you heard about this Outsider’s Guide to Companies? It is awesome!”

“No, what is it?”, their dinner neighbor asks.

“Well, this brand guy and this corporate shrink wrote this book where they dug into 30 companies and brands that we all know with a simple aim–to be fascinated. They pulled out stories and artifacts and profiles of who would succeed there. And, they freaking nailed. You gotta grab it.”

Ok, so it would be amazing if that happened at every dinner table across the planet, but that sort of infamy wasn’t our aim at the onset. We began writing the Outsider’s Guide with two specific groups in mind: the job seeking day-dreamer and the fresh-out-of-college, ambitious Gen Z talent.

The first group was purposefully broad and seemingly in need of some inspiration about work these days. In the research for this book, we combed articles on the state of work and decided it kinda sucks, like cold french fries suck or the last slice of the night from Sbarro’s sucks. Only 32% of employees are engaged, 75% of employees in America suffer from the “Sunday Scaries”, 40% of employees are isolated, 53% of managers are burnt out, and terms like great resignation, quiet quitting, languishing, and crisis of commitment pepper headlines.

Part of the issue is work is harder than it needs to be, and there are plenty of people working to make it better. But, we also see many employees infinitely browsing (1,400+ 3.3 second videos a day are being consumed) which has created a sort of societal FOMO in all areas including work. We get a glimpse of work, a blurry outline, a sketch of what life is like. We see none of the flaws, just a few of the beautiful imperfections, and remain mostly ill informed about the distinct differences of these revered companies. You see, our Tik Tok-induced FOMO has made many of us certain that there is a perfect company where people, other than you, get to work. With the Outsider’s Guide, we hoped to balance the scales and show that one isn’t better than the other, just different. We wanted to give those who want to get back to their dreamiest daydreams a tool to do so.

That brings us to the ambitious Gen Z. Let’s be clear, they know everything and nothing about work. Gen Z is amongst the most diverse and most educated generations ever. They are the first generation not to have any recollection of life before the internet and they will walk into adulthood with the least work experience of any generation before them. And, due to their education, the many positive strokes given to them by their parents, their exposure to the world through social media, and the pressure to be the next “whatever,” they have unvalidated and (maybe) unreasonable expectations of what life at work will be like.

If we could entice them into the Outsider’s Guide, maybe in some small way they will walk out more informed about the world of work, more ready. Maybe they will see that there is no perfect fit and no perfect company–they are all flawed and fabulous. Maybe they will realize that there is stuff below the surface, things to look for and suss out. Maybe they will see careers not as destinations, but as a set of unique adventures or explorations. Maybe they will gain a bit more skill in how to look at these companies or any other. Maybe they will see the diversity of these profiles and think harder about who they are and what they are solving for in their careers and in their life.

Maybe they will just get a kick out of it and find companies as fascinating as we do. Any and all of those outcomes would be great.

Oh, and if you are in neither of those groups, keep reading. You will still dig this book. We promise there are things in here that you have either never seen or thought of in the way we have strung them together. It will be fun, fast, often funny, and always optimistic, we promise.

The totally unscientific way we thoughtfully chose the companies

Did you know that there are an estimated 334 million companies around the globe? Until we started the research for this book, that number had been completely out of sight, out of mind. Now, as we have dug into the companies within these pages, we are both humbled and intrigued by the idea that within the walls of these 334 million companies are 334 million different brands and cultures —different origin stories, casts of characters, anecdotes, ways of working. Though all of them are fascinating in their own right, we needed a way to narrow the list. Our process started by culling “the world’s best brands” and “the most admired companies” lists to explore the overlap.

Still staring at a list of over 100 companies, we went back to the drawing board on our criteria and what would allow this book to be what it was meant to be a--fun, informative, and engrossing read. That landed us in a simple but important realization about the kind of company we had in mind for the Outsider’s Guide: one that both captivates us as consumers and seduces us as a potential place to work. As we dug in, our formula for inclusion in this guide became crystal clear:

1 • The brands within the company had to be captivating across generations.

2 • The company had to hold some interest as a vaunted place to work amongst the next generation of talent.

3 • The company had to be based in the USA or have a strong presence here as a brand so multiple sources of public information were readily available.

4 • The final list of 30 would cover major industry verticals as well as geographic regions (we wanted to avoid the enticing infinity hole that is tech companies based in Silicon Valley, for instance.)

5 • Lastly, the companies had to hold our attention. After all, we are the one’s writing the book (gotta love the power of the pen.)

Given point #1, the Outsider’s Guide absolutely and unapologetically tilts towards consumer goods and consumer services.

We are, after all, consumers, all of us. And, the brands that cross through our front doors, are displayed proudly on our sleeves and our feet, and penetrate the day-to-day rhythm of our lives, they matter to us. This is not at all out of disrespect for all the other great companies out there, but if you aren’t consumer facing, you aren’t as inherently “fascinating.” At least not to us.

Sorry.

Before we move beyond this list, it is important to take stock of what this group of companies represents. The estimated market capitalization of these combined companies is X. They employ over X employees and are spread across X cities around the world. The oldest of the companies is X and the youngest is X. There are X tech companies, X consumer goods companies, X retail/e-commerce companies, and X financial services companies. In this list, we have a member of the cola wars, a toy maker, a candy producing pet care company, a couple darlings of the 80s, and (of course) Silicon Valley is well represented.

All and all, this list of companies consumes much of our pocketbook and a fair amount of our attention. Now, let’s hop into the point of this guide.

So, this totally unscientific method left us with the following companies:

Retail / Apparel Companies

(Apparel / Retail)

Consumer Goods Companies

Tech Companies

(Consumer Goods)

(Medical / Consumer Goods)

(Consumer Goods)

(Tech) (Tech) (Tech)

(Tech / Gaming)

Big Box / E-Commerce Companies

(Big Box Retail / E-commerce)

(Big Box Retail / E-commerce / Home Goods)

Cola

P&G Coca

Adidas

Apple Meta Microsoft Amazon Walmart Target The Home Depot

Johnson&Johnson Mars Lego Nike

Patagonia LuluLemon Google

Investment / Banking Companies

Berkshire

Goldman Sachs

JP Morgan Chase

Auto + Energy Companies

Media / Entertainment

(Investment/Banking)

(Consumer Service/Entertainment)

Consumer Services

(Consumer Services / Insurance)

(Consumer Services / Shipping & Logistics)

(Consumer Services / Insurance)

(Consumer Service / Restaurant)

QSR

Airlines

Allstate

Disney Netflix Delta

FedEx

McDonalds Starbucks Tesla Ford Chevron (Auto) (Auto) (Energy)

What is the point to the

Outsider’s Guide

point (If

there is one)

Guide to Companies?

As we shared earlier, The Outsider’s Guide is part Foder’s and part Fiske’s. It is meant to function as an instrument for daydreamers as much as it is a resource for actual jobseekers. Given it is all of those things, maybe the easiest place to talk about the point of the guide is to share what this guide is not.

The Outsider’s Guide is not in any way a ranking or a “best of list”.

We are uninterested in comparing these companies for the purposes of determining who is the best or worst at anything. We will treat them equally and fairly to give you, our reader, a deeper, richer and unique perspective of these places. Conversely, you can head over to Fortune, Forbes, or Fast Company (what is it with business periodicals starting with an F-word, weird) to get their take on the best of the best.

The Outsider’s Guide is not a comprehensive list, it is a curated set.

Unlike the Fiske’s Guide to Colleges which chose to encapsulate the entire universe of colleges and universities in the USA, the Outsider’s Guide was written to go deep and allow for more color, more commentary, and more richness. With fewer companies, we got to go deeper and learn more. And, by only focusing on 30, we left space for volume 2 and volume 3

The Outsider’s Guide, obviously, is not an insider’s guide.

It feels strange even saying that but, it is im portant for you to know that this is not an inves tigative journalist exposé of the inner workings of these revered companies and brands. We are not trying to dismantle myths or pull skel etons out of closets, far from it. Mark and I are standing outside of these companies, looking in with all of our years of experience, depth of expertise in brand and culture, and our love of all companies. We are in many ways interpret ing what we read, watched,and researched by putting it in a larger context via Mark’s deep expertise in brand identity and marketing, and my expertise in culture, organizations, and employee engagement. Towards the end of the book, we will share our method to our process (yes, there was one) so you can continue this fascinating journey with additional companies that intrigue you.

The Outsider’s Guide is not Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica.

As you read the book, you will quickly see that much of the fun of the book is imagining what a fact could mean in context or using our expertise to interpret a fact from the past to help us gain a better understanding of the brand or the company in the present. We based our exploration on stories that are out there and are very much dependent on the validity of 3rd party research. Our promise is that we will cite every thing we base our ideas on and will stand by our opinions as just that, the perspectives of two outsiders peering in through a cloudy window with love, curiosity, and care. To be clear, this paragraph is mostly to ward off any suit happy lawyers that are waiting to pounce when we get a little too close to a sore spot or one of those aforementioned skeletons.

The Outsider’s Guide is not a “how to manual” for careers or job searches.

So, we departed from our inspiration sources in one very important way, the Outsider’s Guide was never intended to be your go to tool to find a job or kickstart your career. It isn’t comprehensive and it isn’t directly written to help you “land a job.” It was intended to make you smile and make two core points that can help you over the long term. First, no two companies are alike. Working at Nike is not the same as working at Amazon and for sure nothing like life at Disney. So, as you search, it is important to peer into a few different companies to get a flavor of how different they really are. Second, there is no perfect company. They are all flawed and fascinating. No matter where you go, if you can hold that perspective, you can join Mark and I as we continue to look on with amazement and awe.

The

Outsider’s

Guide is served best with a good beverage and a little time.

So, where does that leave us? Well, if the content in the Outsider’s Guide was represented in a Microsoft Word shaped pie chart, it would be 42% pure entertainment, 33% helpful information, 15% often indulgent color commentary, 5% career guide, 3% new age life coaching, 1% amateur poetry, and 1% 80s nostalgia.

SpoilerAlert!!! Whatyouwillfind in the pages and where

you will be at the end

The pre-ramble is just about complete, but we didn’t want to let you loose in the guide without a sketch of the adventure ahead.

To start, each of the profiles will have a similar structure, but no promise of comparative insights. Every profile will begin with some basic demographic information–headquarter location, number of employees, revenue, market cap, mission/vision/ values, category, products, current CEO, etc. Then, we will provide you with a narrative profile of about 800-1500 words. It is meant to be pithy, witty, and wise, but if we are aiming low, it will at least give you an overall feeling of who this company is at its core. Think of this narrative as the company’s Tinder Biography if Tinder had an app for companies and Mark and I were given the opportunity to craft their bios. File this under never going to happen.

Once you swipe past the narrative, get to enjoy the hot cakes, I mean “hot takes”, or the tastiest of little morsels of goodness and quirk that intrigued Mark and I as we read and talked about the company. The purpose of these is to highlight the elements that we saw as truly unique and somehow informative of the larger soul, purpose, or raison d’etre of the company. And, sometimes these hot takes were simply stories that made us laugh or “things that made us go hmm.” Other times, they felt new to us and so we assumed they would also be new

to many of you. We end each profile with a perspective on two key questions: who might thrive there now and where does the company go from here? We found both of these questions were super fun to explore, offered some net new information for you the reader, and created a little forward momentum by peering into the future just a bit.

You will move through the profiles based on categories versus sequencing them alphabetically. Why, you ask? Well, it was mostly because we thought it could be cool to compare and contrast companies in similar spaces as you compare across categories. Landing the point that no companies are alike and all are fascinating when you can compare Nike to Lululemon and Target to Walmart.

Lastly, we will spend a bit of time walking you through our process–how we conducted research and the sources and structures we used. This is both important to validate the depth of our research (so you can trust we didn’t make this stuff up) and to provide you a structure by which you could assess additional companies on your own as you move through your career. Given we spend 13.5 years of our adult live’s at work, it is amongst the biggest commitments we will make. Yet, we often do deeper research on our next toaster oven than we do on our next company.

OK, with all of that in mind let’s rock & roll.

Nike, Inc.

COMPANY NAME: NIKE, INC.

INDUSTRY: Footwear & apparel

HEADQUARTERS LOCATION:

Beaverton, Oregon

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 83,700

OFFICE LOCATIONS (VISUAL):

Beaverton, Shanghai, Hilversum, Boston (Converse), and NYC

HYBRID/F2F/REMOTE: HYBRID TOP PRODUCTS/SERVICES: Air Jordan, Air Force,

PLACE ON THE TOP BRAND LISTS: #9

PLACE ON THE TOP PLACES TO WORK LISTS: #17 (Most Admired Company List)

Used to be, sports was just a thing you did or didn’t do. It didn’t define you the way it does today.

Then along came Nike.

Partially hidden behind a grass-covered berm in Beaverton, Oregon is a modern-day Valhalla for athletes–a fortress of champions and championships fortified by sweat, optimism, last second shots, heroes and heroines, grit, determination, competition, and the now ubiquitous swoosh. To title Nike a mere company is to sell it short. Nike is a dynasty in the vein of Coach K’s Duke Blue Devils or Pete Sampras’s first serve. Nike is the pure pursuit of winning and has inspired all of us to believe that “if you have a body, you are an athlete” (even if we know that isn’t totally true.)

From the very beginning, there was innovation in the form of a waffle iron, a will to win in the act of Knight mailing his business plan to a Japanese shoe company expecting to strike a deal, and the pursuit of any small advantage shown by Bill Bowerman’s ethos of tweeking and tinkering his way to championships at the University of Oregon. Any action by Nike always had a certain flare–from the Orange VW vans that sold shoes in orange boxes to the band of EKINs and their backward shoosh tattoos that bound the apostles for product since nearly the beginning to the optimism inherent in the belief that “everything you need is already inside”.

Sure, the corporate world is inundated with bad sports metaphors and cliches. But at Nike, the language of sport is neither metaphorical nor cliche. To work at Nike is to join a TEAM, a team that COMPETES and usually WINS. One of the most foundational documents in Nike lore is Rob Strasser’s Principles, and you don’t have to look past Principle #2 to get the Nike vibe: We are on offense. All the time. Or Principle #4: This is as much about battle as it is about business. To know Nike is to move beyond the mythology of its history and awe created by their line up of dominant athletes and champions. Nike is a brand that begs us to do what social psychologists call BIRG-ing, or basking in reflected glory. You see, to wear the swoosh on your foot or don the coveted black badge around your neck is to take a step closer to the Gods. But, when in the company of champions, there is an inherent worry that someday the dynasty will naturally end. But, what is inspiring about Nike is that even with that knowledge, they refuse to throw in the towel. Instead, they shift sports, change tach, and ultimately ignore convention.

Case in point, in 1998, Nike was suffering from negative press as both a brand and a company. In a New York Times exclusive with Phil, he noted that they were debating sunsetting the swoosh (can you imagine?), in perhaps some attempt to get back to basics and let the shoe, not the logo, speak for the company. Interestingly, in that same article, Phil and his team were parodying the criticism, hanging anti-Nike cartoons all over the walls and filling their annual report with consumers’ hate mail. Nike is a complex and complicated mix of the hubris to believe they will always prevail with just enough humility to pivot, shift strategy, or go for broke when they are on the verge of losing. Again, say hello to the mindset of a champion.

If Jordan were a building, Tiger Woods was a conference center, or Pre Fontaine was a museum exhibit, they would be the epitome of Nike–bold, larger than life, and oh so beautiful. Oh wait, that is exactly what they are. Nike names its buildings after its legends and every VP in the company has a solo parking spot that is named after a Nike athlete, a practice that has bit them in shoelaces a time or two as great athletes aren’t always great people. Dig a little into the headlines of recent years and you’ll find the story of a company in deep self-reflection. Remember those jocks in high school and college? How it always seemed like the more they won, the more certain behaviors got excused? Well, as in high school, so, to, in life. And after years of internal complaints, Nike has finally begun to address some of the supposed toxic aspects of a culture that glorifies winning above all else. When your brand is that beautiful and your revenue growth is the shape of the EKIN’s backward swoosh tattoo (up and to the right), it is hard to grow and mature as a leader. Success doesn’t often make us more humble or keep the burn in the belly to believe we don’t yet know everything or aren’t yet at our peak performance.

And, like all great champions, in a moment of adversity, when the game is on the line, they shine. Betting on Nike to win again is as sure of a bet as any. Nike sees itself as Bringing innovation and inspiration to every athlete. (And if you have a body, you’re an athlete.) Unofficially, Nike really values creativity. If there’s a tension within the Nike soul it’s (and again we regress to high school) the tension that exists between the jock and the art school kid. Nike is a company that gives design not just a seat at the table but the throne at the head of it. OG Nike shoe designer Mark Parker has been the most successful CEO other than Phil Knight himself, and has only recently stepped into a chairman role. They are people like Mark who are passionate about art, design, and street culture, particularly the sneakerhead street culture that reveres Nike and its products.

If you are looking to join Nike, get in the gym and get your fit ready as crossing the berm is something pretty special no matter how many times you do it. You feel the history, the possibility, and the dayto-day truth that image is everything. The swoosh, athletes, clean lines, and winning are viscerally inescapable. In just a few steps, you can move from awe, to respect, to fear that you might be the employee to double fault, shoot an air ball, shank the penalty kick, or fail to qualify. You are competing for your self-worth from day 1, and, if you are smart, doing it in the hottest pair of Jordan 1’s you can get your hands on.

In the end, Nike is the kind of place that ambitious, beautiful, ex-athletes go to conquer the world. You will either love it or hate it there. But, no matter what happens, you won’t ever stop wearing the shoes.

“it’s gotta be the shoes.”

Cuz,

Dr. Dre’s Culture Hot Take: The BIRG-ing (Basking In Reflected Glory)

There is an area of social psychology research called “BIRG-ing” or Basking In Reflected Glory that can help us understand the essence of Nike. BIRG-ing refers to the tendency for humans to align themselves to successful teams, individuals, or groups to share in the feeling of achievement, winning, or glory.

It is why we wear our team gear after a win or openly share our affiliations with prominent groups or rising stars. Nike as both a company and a brand is built on BIRG-ing, just ask any aspiring grade school basketball player who slips into his first pair of Air Jordan’s and hits the court. The benefit of BIRG-ing for Nike is that it creates the ultimate employer brand or product marketing, a way for mere mortals to viscerally connect to the intoxicating drug of a champion. The drawback is that it creates unreal expectations, a bar that is impossible to reach, and potentially a moment when the shine goes away or the champion is past her prime when we seek new heroes wearing different shoes.

Dr. Dre’s Culture Hot Take: The berm as metaphor

Culture is conveyed and can be understood through principles (values), practices (ways of working), platforms (technology), and place (buildings and spaces). One of the most intriguing aspects of space at Nike is the infamous “beaverton berm”. If you visited the Nike campus before 2017, the berm hid almost all of the Nike campus from sight, both metaphorically and physically. The berm represented a hypothetical barrier from the outside world and with it an air of mystery around Nike and it’s process. However, in 2017, the campus renovation departed from the previous architecture and built giant, sleek, modern towers that pushed far above the berm anointing Nike as not only visible, but bigger and more far-reaching. What does this tell us about culture, only that it is a different era for Nike, one where they can no longer hide or act as the upstart rebel. Nike has become the Roman Empire of sneakers, decadent and well adorned.

Dr. Dre’s Culture Hot Take: The magic of the maxims

“Serve Athletes* Create The Future Of Sport * Be On The Offense Always * Do The Right Thing * Win As A Team”. These are the Nike Maxims, the values that supposedly guide the company. Now, every company has a set of values and often they are more espoused than lived. Case in point, in a recent research study of company culture by MIT and Culture 500, researchers found that often there is as little as a zero correlation between the espoused values of a company (what the company and its leaders say they value) versus the felt experience of the employees (what the people working at the company experience every day). So, does Nike value these things, well that is mostly hard to tell from the outside. However, of all Nike’s revised Maxims (circa 2018), the most evergreen depiction of the culture is captured as “Be On the Offense, Always”. This value has been a part of the company since the beginning and when Nike is backed in a corner–like in the 1990’s with the child labor scandal, the 2018 pay equity issues, and even the recent 2024 announcement of lay-offs–Nike hits hard. The company realigns itself, finds another gear, and displays the champion mentality that made it great in the first place. It doesn’t wait around or use “hope” as a strategy, it digs in, pivots, and seemingly always comes out of these moments better, stronger, faster, and more ready to win than ever before. “Be On the Offense, Always” is the battle cry of a culture that won’t back down, especially when the livelihood of the swoosh is on the line.

Mark’s Brand Hot Take: Nike culture vs Adidas culture

Big mature consumer categories are as well known for their famous battle grounds as beaches of Normandy. There were the cola wars, the long-distance wars, the burger wars and thanks to Nike and adidas there were the sneaker wars. Like those other wars, the sneaker wars were settled long ago - Nike won. But it’s still interesting to examine what makes direct competitors selling basically the same products, look and act so differently. I’ve had the pleasure of working extensively on both sneaker brands (Nike from the early 2000’s through the mid 2010’s and adidas from 2017 until now).

Both companies have compelling strengths that keep them successful year after year, but when seen through the outsider’s perspective there are some pretty fundamental differences as well. The one I’m most fascinated by is the tension between sport and fashion. Are sneakers for playing sports or are they for looking cool? At Nike, the f-word was always, well, an f-word. Even as sneaker culture took off, and helped Nike stay on trend, Nike’s strategy was to reap the benefits of this secondary market while never losing focus on the athlete. Meanwhile, adidas, barely hanging on to a distant second place, saw sneaker culture as a huge opportunity to find daylight outside Nike’s considerable shadow. It helped that the adidas brand already had substantial credibility in culture, particularly hiphop, thanks to Run-DMC’s ode to the adidas Superstars in their track My Adidas. So one of the first things I noticed when I started working with adidas, was that fashion was no longer a four letter word.

With the unique privilege of peeking inside these two adversaries, their opposing relationship with fashion is immediately palpable. I’d argue it even defines the work life inside the two organizations - Nike is singularly focused on winning, sometimes at the cost of a more compassionate management style, while adidas has a kinder, gentler approach where employees seem happier, even as the brand struggles to keep up with their fierce competitor. Am I reading too much into it when I see one company as the fiercely competitive jock and the other as the artsy theater kid? Maybe. Maybe not.

Mark’s Brand Hot Take: Greatest advertiser ever?

In the ad world, Nike is the GOAT. With all due respect to apple, Volkswagen and maybe one or two others, Nike has set the bar for creative advertising and has been the envy of marketers around the world since the 80’s. Sure athletes had been selling products in commercials well before Nike came along. Joe Namath was a legit advertising superstar in the 70’s. And the long running “tastes great/lessing filling” campaign for Miller Lite featured a recurring cast of ex-athletes. But Nike elevated sports marketing beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Nike elevated the athlete beyond mere spokesperson to a godlike figure. And it’s interesting to note, in an industry where literally everything gets tested and focus-grouped to death, Nike, the undisputed king of great advertising, never got on the research bandwagon. Chalk it up to the hubris of the champion, perhaps. Of course, even Nike openly acknowledges that their marketing prowess didn’t just happen inside the burm. Their long standing partnership with Portland agency Wieden+Kennedy (full disclosure: my former employer) is legendary in the business. From founder Dan Wieden finding inspiration from a convicted killer’s last words (Just Do It) to discovering a recent film school grad by the name of Spike Lee, the Nike/WK partnership has yielded the Beatles Revolution, Spike & Mike, I Am Tiger Woods, The Lebrons and so much more.

Mark’s Brand Hot Take: The athlete as an archetype

You hear a lot about archetypes in marketing. Tweedy strategy types will often quote Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, and archetypes have become a powerful tool in modern brand building. There are 12 commonly used archetypes in branding with evocative names like the caregiver, the hero and the sage. While Nike probably falls into the “hero” category, I’d argue Nike has created its own archetype, a testament to the company’s brand-building prowess. The athlete is different from the hero, in that the athlete is on a more inward-facing journey. Nike isn’t rescuing anyone from anything. Like the competitive runners who founded the company, the Nike athlete is on a personal hero’s journey, where the journey itself is the reward. Sure, Nike products help athletes compete, but the Nike brand isn’t there to save the day, rather it’s there to win its own race, speaking to its consumers athlete to athlete. Game recognizing game.

Who might thrive at Nike?

This one is easy–an ex-athlete who is in their late 20’s (or at least looks like they are), is hip, competitive, resilient, willing to do anything for the brand, and is at their heart optimistic. If you go, you must be ready to meet the untarnishable image of Nike with a strong personal image or brand. You need to stand out, be a great communicator, be able to create beautiful decks or amazing products, and be willing to be both inspired and inspiring. Oh, but not least, look like you can run a mile in sub four minutes, but be willing to sit at a desk for as long as it takes. Life at Nike is full on, wear comfortable shoes (and make sure they aren’t adidas).

Where is Nike heading in the next 10 years?

Tricky question. From a market standpoint, there are some headwinds for Nike including more players in the market (Ons and LuluLemon, for instance), changing beliefs about consumption and brands, and shifting trends in global sports participation and health. And, betting against Nike is like betting against Brazil in the World Cup or Federer on a tennis court. They may both lose a few matches or have an off year or two, but somehow, someway they will find a way to win. Winning is in Nike’s blood as it is all the company has ever done. So, Nike might look and feel different in the future, but my guess is we haven’t seen the end of this dynasty quite yet.

Coca-Cola

COMPANY NAME: The Coca-Cola Company

INDUSTRY: Beverages

HEADQUARTERS LOCATION:

Atlanta, GA

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 82,000

HYBRID/F2F/REMOTE: Hybrid.

And that’s OK by The Coca-Cola Company.

Dr. Dre’s Culture Hot Take: The motivational power of an enemy

I have long been fascinated by the galvanizing force of having an enemy, someone to compete against. We see this on the geo-political landscape (hello Cold War), in other industries (Adidas’s mission for a bit there was simply “beat Nike”), and on the sports fields around the world (Bird versus Magic, Duke versus North Carolina, The Yankees versus the Red Socks). Motivation is rooted in a fundamental truth, that if we can paint the current state as more dangerous than any potential future, we will be moved to take a step forward. It is a cure to fear and inertia.

In a time when the world was waking up to the potential dangers of sugary drinks, Coke and Pepsi did something spectacular, they begged us to choose sides, to do taste tests, and to focus our attention and who will win versus the possibility that both are potentially bad for us. And, having an enemy helped both companies to focus and drive to higher levels of innovation and productivity.

Dr. Dre’s Culture Hot Take: Selling happiness + Why we make poor decisions

I am fascinated by what motivates us to buy anything–a box of cereal, a company where we will work, a new car, or our favorite beverage at a local 7-11. So, what does Coca-Cola sell? Well, it isn’t a super delicious, mostly bad for you set of beverages, it is happiness. It is the idea that if we twist off the cap of a Coca-Cola, we will feel better. And, as someone who has reached for a Coke more than a few times in my life, that first fizzy sip does conjure up some good time vibes and a dopamine hit of excitement. However, happiness might be a stretch. Humans are a sucker for feeling good and that pursuit wired into our brains often clouds our decision making. How? Well, when we are motivated to make a decision (like making a choice that will allow us to feel more happiness), we will often pay attention to information that confirms our decision and ignore disconfirming data. Thus, we will buy Coca-Cola and its promise of happiness and ignore the fact that sugary water is unhealthy, calories in that bottle have no nutritional value, and long-term happiness doesn’t lie in a drink. As my mom always told me, “everything in moderation” and “happiness doesn’t lie in dessert, a bottle, or a get-rich-quick scheme.”

Dr. Dre’s Culture Hot Take: Create real magic + Reinvention as

a strategy

Ok, so I am playing in Mark’s sandbox with this one, but I couldn’t help myself. Recently, Coca-Cola, maybe the greatest marketer on Earth, has leaned into the AI craze and created a website where we all can create the next ad. Why do I love this? Yes, it is super cool to become the Chief Marketing Officer for one of the biggest brands on earth, if even for a second. But, more importantly, it underscores one of the values that has always impressed me about Coca-Cola, they thrive on reinvention–reinvention of their formula (hi New Coke), their campaigns, their brand portfolio, and even their relationships with bottlers (they now have an investment fund that provides the capital needed to keep those businesses modernizing in return for a stake in them). This site shows their willingness to move with the trends and the zeitgeist. This is what has kept CocaCola at the forefront of our consciousness and as one of the most consistently strong companies over the last 150+ years.

Mark’s Brand Hot Take: Brand stewardship

In a culture that rewards novelty, how do you manage a brand that can never change? How do you innovate with a product where slightly tweaking the formula just once, turned into the most famous cautionary tale in corporate history?

Just do nothing, right? Maybe managing the Coca-Cola brand is a pretty cushy feet-up bon-bon eating job! Nope. Stewarding an iconic American brand presents its own unique set of challenges. There’s a lot of pressure not to fuck it up.

But it’s also a job where creativity thrives. Because creativity actually benefits from barriers. When you can’t just do any old thing, it forces you to be thoughtful. As in, “get creative.” One of my favorite examples from the Coke playbook was the massively successful “Share a Coke” campaign. The campaign was a brilliant solution to a typical iconic brand problem: You need to create buzz and “new news” but you really shouldn’t change your core product. What do you do?

You change the container instead. The idea for “Share A Coke” was to put common first names on the classic red cans, and suggest consumers buy them to share with friends with that first name. Suddenly a Coca-Cola was new again: still the same delicious soda, but conceptually something different: a small gift with the intimacy of your friend’s name printed right there on the package.

Mark’s Brand Hot Take: An advertising legend

“I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company.”

There is no single line that sums up the purpose or ethos of a company better than this little nugget from the 1971 iconic ad campaign originally conceived up by Bill Backer (not Don Draper as the finale of Mad Men would have us think.)

In the fading days of the Vietnam War while grounded in an airport in Ireland, Backer sat in front of a bottle of coke and penned the bones of this jingle. When asked about the moment, he said “...the basic idea: to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be — a liquid refresher — but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes.”

Mark’s Brand Hot Take: From movies to mini-marts to McDonald’s

“No Coke, Pepsi.”

That’s a catchphrase uttered by John Belushi playing a short-order cook in an earlyyears episode of Saturday Night Live.

And if you walk into any restaurant in America from the smallest burger joint, to the Golden Arches, you’re gonna get that type of response, only more often than not it will be reversed: No Pepsi. Coke.

Partnerships are a huge business at Coca-Cola, where thousands of people work to ensure the SNL skit had it backwards in as many establishments as possible. Successful negotiations with major franchise operations like McDonalds and AMC theaters are fundamental to Coke’s success. As is the shelf-space they can own (while elbowing out the other guy) in Mini-marts like 7-11. Partnerships are the third link in the system mentioned earlier, a final lap in Coke’s brilliant distribution scheme for world domination.

Who might thrive at Coca-Cola?

Much like Disney, Coca-Cola’s brand was a magnet for talent. CocaCola hasn’t simply leveraged its brand to attract talent, it has become a dominant force in the war for talent by being a mecca for career development and advancement. Where other companies simply leverage their campus and their products to reel in the best and brightest, CocaCola has thought hard about how to create an environment where talent can learn and grow and progress. Coca-Cola has recently been named the best company for career development by the American Opportunity Index that measures the ability to progress careers inside a company. What does this mean for you? Well, if you are career-focused, want to live in the south,, look good in the color red, love pounding soft drinks, have a passion for advertising or marketing, and don’t mind being associated with the worst plastic’s polluter in the world (Coca-Cola produces 3 million tons of plastic packaging a year), then pack your bags and head down to Atlanta, Coca-Cola might just be the place for you.

Where is CocaCola heading in the next 10 years?

The future of Coca-Cola will prove the ultimate test of value for it’s three jewels. The system has an environmental impact that cannot be ignored. The formula is responsible for all sorts of dietary issues. That leaves the brand. Can something that’s so ingrained ever disappear? The future for Coke depends on it. Coke will be carried into the future on the shoulders of its myths, legends and meaning as it rapidly adapts to the pressures of environmental and health concerns going forward.

Amazon

COMPANY NAME: AMAZON (originally called Cadabra)

INDUSTRY: E-commerce; retail

HEADQUARTERS LOCATION: 440 Terry Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109. Note: The infamous HQ2 opened in 2023 (1800 S Bell St, Arlington, VA 22202)

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES:

In 1997, three years after its founding, Amazon had 614 employees. Now, that number has reached 1,684,853 as of 2023.

OFFICE LOCATIONS:

US Headquarters: Seattle, Arlington, Nashville 65+ corporate offices worldwide 175+ Fulfillment Centers

HYBRID/F2F/REMOTE:

Hybrid. Mandated 3+ days in the office for 250,000 corporate staff. Amazon has taken a firm stance on the return to the office, going as far as to say promotions will be held back if employees do not comply.

TOP PRODUCTS/SERVICES:

Originally a bookseller now a full tilt e-commerce/big box retailer (without the box).

The Amazon story begins with one ambitious hedge fund manager and a mindboggling stat.

The year was 1994. And long before he morphed into the notorious tight black t-shirt wearer and perennial contender for world’s richest man we know now, Jeff Bezos was just another financial analyst tracking the startling 2300% growth rate of the internet.

Bezos didn’t much care what business he started, he just knew an opportunity when he saw one. So he took a deep-dive into the product categories with the largest selections, figuring these would be the ones best suited to exploit the nascent internet’s “just in time” supply chain potential, and “everywhere and nowhere” virtual storefronts. He landed on books but it was opportunism, not a passion for Shakespeare or Steinbeck, that led Bezos to his date with destiny.

Fast forward 20 years and, what started as a fledgling online bookstore operating (ironically) out of a Seattle Barnes & Noble cafe, has transcended the very meaning of retail. Amazon is more than a store. It’s the store. A verb in the modern lexicon where to Amazon something means to buy it.

Sure, Amazon has over 1,500,000 employees and XX locations in XX countries, but there are bigger and more global companies. Probably the most defining feature of Amazon, when placed in the context of other fascinating, global companies, is the sheer size of the operation. Just try and get your head around the 300 million unique products Amazon sells. In the early years, employees would ring a bell every time a product was sold. Now Amazon fulfills 18 orders EVERY SECOND.

Speaking of speed, Amazon once delivered an online order to a customer’s home in 23 minutes! (It was an easy-bake oven, delivered to an apartment in Manhattan). If Henry Ford gave us manufacturing automation, Jeff Bezos has given us corporate optimization at scale. And today’s Amazon is an absolute beast.

It is important to note that Amazon is the tale of two companies - Amazon the tech and wall street darling of the Pacific Northwest, and Amazon the fulfillment behemoth of, well, everywhere.

At Amazon corporate HQ you can learn, grow, be challenged and work alongside great minds in retail, merchandising and technology, make good money and find out what you are made of. Amazon corporate culture is one of ambition, so you should be ambitious as well. To work at Amazon HQ is to become a congregant in the church of optimization and market opportunism. Non-believers are literally encouraged to seek employment elsewhere. The “Pay to Quit” program launched in 2014, is the prototypical Amazonian policy, offering employees cold hard cash just to quit if they are disgruntled (ie not optimal). The catchthose employees are assured they will never be offered a job at Amazon again.

Pretty hard core if you think about it.

But for those who buy in, employment at Amazon is an education in the art, science and religion of modern business operations. Where e-commerce and “just in time” supply chain are sacred texts, and Day 1 mentality is the holy spirit - where you operate like a start-up even when you’re 25 years old.

Oh, and as for life at the thousands of warehouses and fulfillments centers around the world? If half the reports are to be believed, you can anticipate a life more akin to basic training with better pay and benefits.

To a couple of Gen Xers like us, Amazon is a bit like Pac-man - gobbling up market share like dots in the maze And then, every so often, swallowing a few dying or dead big box retailers whole, the ghosts after they’ve turned blue. Relentless. Opportunistic. Hungry.

Sound exhausting? Maybe Amazon isn’t for you. But for those who want to challenge themselves in the crucible of modern commerce, Amazon is where it’s at, baby.

Welcome to the jungle

Dr. Dre’s Culture Hot Take: Amazon’s origin story

I found myself drawn into the origin story of Amazon. Amazon was not the original name of the company. Bezos had a lawyer, who might have been hard of hearing, to thank for the name. The company was originally named Cadabra, Inc. until said lawyer misheard the name and pronounced it as “cadaver”. Death, dying, or any relation to a slow decay was not what Bezos was looking for in a name.

All he knew was that he wanted a name that popped to the top of an alphabetized list and embodied the kind of expansive growth he envisions. He tried on a number of names from Awake.com to Browse.com to bookmall.com. He chose Amazon because he wanted an “a” name and he liked that it was the biggest river in the world.

This is a story of grandiose ambition from the start.

Interestingly, one of his original names still links to the amazon website and tells a lot of his Bezo’s ethos of competitiveness, drive, striving, ambition, and winning at all costs (or by lowering them). That website address? Relentless.com. Of all the website addresses he bought back then, this one stayed linked to Amazon.com. Hmm. Humans all have an aspect of our personality that remains mostly hidden but does drive us and compel us forward, for good or bad. In my circles, it is referred to as a person’s shadowside. Though we all have one, I will bet that few of us have made ours into a hot link. It has me thinking, what would mine be?

Dr. Dre’s Culture Hot Take: Amazon’s values

Next on my list are Amazon’s espoused values. As with any company, there are values that are espoused or communicated and there are those that are lived in the experience every day. The former emanate from aspiration and a good comms team and the latter are simply in the fabric of how the founder thinks, behaves, and makes decisions.

Amazon’s formal “principles” are pretty run of the mill: customer obsession rather than competitor focus (interesting), passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Kind of vanilla if you ask me, though the customer obsession value lives and breathes in the fabric.

Interestingly, Amazon also has 16 leadership principles that range from the greatest hits of leadership (bias for action or deliver results) to a repeat of company principles (customer obsession) to some quirky and peculiar principles (Leaders Are Right, A Lot and Have a Backbone). Leaders are right, a lot. Interesting. If this isn’t a nod to hierarchy and position power, I don’t know what is. My favorite though is Have a Backbone. First, I wonder what was behind calling that out explicitly. What wasn’t happening? Second, I wonder how you train people, some cross between Survivor and a senior seminar?

Dr. Dre’s Culture Hot Take: Amazon meetings

One of my favorite rituals at Amazon has to do with the way work gets done and it lies in how ideas are socialized. Amazon has two WOW’s that are telling of their sensibilities about work. The first is the Six-Page narrative, a way to write up your idea that forces the writer into full sentences and well constructed ideas but doesn’t suffer from drowning in data and research. The second practice dove-tails from the first, the first 10-15 minutes of a meeting are meant to ensure everyone reads the brief and fully understands it before jumping into a conversation.

My take on this is that Amazon is protecting themselves from two failures of most teams. The first failure is the failure of the “partially conceived idea” where a lot of time is spent on an idea that hasn’t been vetted before time/energy is put into it. The Second failure is the failure of “identity” where everyone walks into the meeting with a piece of information but not the whole brief. Asking everyone to read at the beginning ensures that all team members arrive “at the starting line” for the conversation. Both of these practices ensure efficient decision making and can allow a team to find the best idea.

Mark’s Brand Hot Take: An experiment in capitalism

The only way I can get my head around the scale and audaciousness of Amazon is to think of it as a grand experiment. In my mind, Amazon is a monster. A science experiment. And Jeff Bezos is its Dr. Frankenstein.

You see the firm’s experimental nature in all the sacred cows of business it has slaughtered along the way:

Make a profit? Amazon didn’t turn a profit for nine years. Category Specialization? Amazon is in all the categories. Employee retention? Amazon pays employees to quit. Advertising? Not only did Amazon not advertise at all in its first decade of growth, it has played a leading role, along with Google and Facebook, in upending the entire advertising ecosystem.

What other operational conventions will mad corporate scientists in Seattle tinker with next?

No one has disrupted the conventions of American business quite like Amazon. They are the ultimate disrupter. And disruption works. Amazon is arguably the greatest business success story since the East India Company.

Mark’s Brand Hot Take: Ubiquity

Most branding experts would tell you that “top-of-mind consideration” is the holy grail. The goal is to be (at minimum) thought of. But it’s pretty clear, Amazon doesn’t seem to give a shit what the experts say.*

Amazon is the ultimate anti-brand. What does it stand for? What does it stand against? Impossible to answer. It has no famous slogan, no celebrity endorser. It has no brick-and-mortar stores to drive by, no jingle to worm its way into our ears and no award-winning logo designs for people to wear on hats and t-shirts. Amazon is everywhere but it’s also nowhere - out of sight and therefore out of mind. And that seems to be working for Amazon. Apparently there is an even greater holy grail to quest in business than brand love: and that’s brand ubiquity. To embed yourself so deeply in the fabric of modern life, that you are both as vital and as invisible as water is to fish. The only real physical evidence of amazon in our daily lives, is the omnipresent blue delivery trucks and vans, seemingly everywhere and yet utterly ignorable unless you’re stuck behind one that’s doubleparked on your narrow neighborhood street. They’re like unmarked police cars: only noticeable if you’re forced to take notice.

*I can confirm from personal experience, having presented advertising concepts to Jeff Bezos himself in the early 2000’s.

Mark’s Brand Hot Take: Relentlessness

Branding is all about simplicity: distilling large complex organizations like Amazon down to their purest, most authentic and therefore most memorable essence. And a brand that can be distilled down to a single word, is one that knows exactly who and what it is. For Amazon? I’d argue that word is Relentless.

Take Amazon Prime as just one example. It demonstrates a level of competitive relentlessness that comes wrapped in an offer too good for any consumer to refuse.

Here’s the pitch:

Amazon launches a major hollywood studio. Buys one of the most famous pieces of intellectual property in history (The Lord of the Rings). Turns it into the most expensive TV franchise in history. Why? Just so it can give it all away as a freebie extra when customers sign up for the yearly free-delivery subscription. All that money and effort spent just to keep you from restocking your toilet paper at the local Wal-Mart.

How the hell does anyone compete with that? Game. Set. Match.

Want another example of why relentless is a perfect word to describe Amazon? See Dr. Dre’s hot take on the Amazon’s origin story.

Who might thrive at Amazon?

Who would thrive here? It takes thick skin to make life at Amazon work. You need to love retail and more importantly e-commerce. You need to be driven, highly competitive, quick on your feet, and able to balance pace and precision with ingenuity. You are young at heart if not just plain young. And, you want to make a name for yourself, find your edges, peer deeply into your potential, and gauge your true level of resilience. You are naturally curious and capable around technology and probably grew up in a city so hustle is in your blood. You like the PNW, because if you succeed at Amazon, someday you are most likely going to live there.

If you swing over to the employee review sites, some of the obvious realities to that overall feel are long hours and great pay, questionable work/ life balance and great people, tremendous benefits and potentially poor managers. Amazon is a place where the spoils go to the conquerors and the warriors. It is a place where hard work and tenacity are met with great pay and amazing benefits.

Where does Amazon go from here?

If the story of Amazon tells us anything, it tells us the future is damn hard to predict. Asking where Amazon goes next is sort of like asking what gift to buy for the person who has everything. There are just no more worlds left to conquer. But as we’ve already discussed, Amazon has never really been about WHAT it sells, it’s been about HOW it sells. So what gets our minds racing into the future is the thought of Amazon leveling up its operational prowess on the anabolic steroids of artificial intelligence. To paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi, Amazon in the age of AI may well become more powerful than we can possibly imagine. With that in mind, the worry with any company of significant size and scale is that “growth puts pressure on culture.” At some point the special sauce in the company gets diluted to a point where it is a shadow of its old self. It is not clear whether Amazon has hit this point, nor if it ever will, but it is important to consider it as you think about joining up. Is Amazon the yester-year reminiscing high school quarterback or the e-commerce version of Tay-tay Swift? Only time will tell (and only Amazon will likely sell us the watch to tell that time).