Uber scandal, Google employees want data protections and how marketers spend their ad money
Also: New York City’s sanitation department uses Sarah McLachlan to beg for help.
New York City’s Department of Sanitation took to TikTok last week to ask New Yorkers to move their cars on street-cleaning days.
@nycsanitation Full ASP is back today! Please move your car so we can keep streets clean, safe & healthy. Link in bio. Thanks #sarahmclachan for the inspo💚 #dsny #fyp
The video, set to “Angel,” by Sarah McLachlan, is a black-and-white plea for car-owning city dwellers to respect the newly reinstated twice-weekly street cleaning policy. Sanitation workers star in the video and cite the abundance of trash on NYC streets as the reason for the soulful PSA, parodying the well-known ASPCA ads.
Jessica Tisch, commissioner of the NYCDS, sits in a garbage truck in the video.
“Will you move your car? Every day, litter gets on the streets of our city and it’s crying out to be cleaned up,” she says.
The video is a good example of how to address a an important but maybe not-so-interesting topic in a light-hearted way.
Here are today’s other top stories:
‘Violence guarantees success,’ former Uber CEO told top execs
“Violence guarantees success,” former Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick wrote in a message to the company’s top executives.
The group was discussing the potential for violence at a protest by taxi drivers in France, in which some execs expressed hesitation at sending Uber drivers to the protest.
The revelation is just one of many findings from an investigation by The Guardian and other news outlets into the rideshare company’s questionable actions over the past few years.
From The Guardian:
A leaked trove of confidential files has revealed the inside story of how the tech giant Uber flouted laws, duped police, exploited violence against drivers and secretly lobbied governments during its aggressive global expansion.
The unprecedented leak to the Guardian of more than 124,000 documents – known as the Uber files – lays bare the ethically questionable practices that fuelled the company’s transformation into one of Silicon Valley’s most famous exports.
Spokespeople for Kalanick and Uber addressed the “violence” allegation, among other things:
Kalanick’s spokesperson questioned the authenticity of some documents. She said Kalanick “never suggested that Uber should take advantage of violence at the expense of driver safety” and any suggestion that he was involved in such activity would be “completely false”.
Uber’s spokesperson also acknowledged past mistakes in the company’s treatment of drivers but said no one, including Kalanick, wanted violence against Uber drivers. “There is much our former CEO said nearly a decade ago that we would certainly not condone today,” she said. “But one thing we do know and feel strongly about is that no one at Uber has ever been happy about violence against a driver.”
Kalanick resigned in 2017 after claims that the company culture allowed for sexual harassment and discrimination.
Why it matters: Uber’s statement leans heavily on the fact that Kalanick left the company in disgrace in 2017, expressing that the company would not “condone” his previous actions now. However, the statement doesn’t completely throw Kalanick under the bus; the spokesperson’s assertion that “no one at Uber has ever been happy about violence against a driver” directly contradicts Kalanick’s leaked messages to execs.
MEASURED THOUGHTS
A new report from Gartner Research reveals where CMOs are putting their dollars when it comes to digital spending.
A survey of 400 CMOs found that the most popular paid channels are social advertising (10.1%), search advertising (9.8%) and digital display advertising (9.3%), followed by digital video advertising (8.8%).
As for unpaid channels, CMOs rely most heavily on SEO (8.5%), followed by email marketing and content and messaging, both sitting at 7.8%.
Marketing and advertising pros, how does your digital spending and advertising strategy stack up?
Read more from the Gartner report here.
Google employees want more from the company in protecting abortion-seekers
A new report from NPR sees Google employees asking for more from their company in terms of protecting abortion-seekers who use the search engine and other Google products.
Some experts have said it’s a possibility that authorities in states that have criminalized abortion could use search terms to bring cases against people who seek abortion care.
While Google released a statement earlier this month committing to protect user data concerning health issues, Google workers have said this promise doesn’t go far enough.
From NPR:
“They’re really looking for these short, punchy press releases that get this breathless, ‘Wow, Google is doing such good things,’ or ‘Alphabet is doing such good things,’ coverage in the tech media, but then really aren’t actually substantial,” said Ashok Chandwaney, a Google software engineer who is part of the Alphabet Workers’ Union. (Alphabet is Google’s parent company.)
Chandwaney wants Google to vow to figure out all the ways law enforcement can potentially gather data on abortion-seekers from the company.
“And then make it so that the data that could get people charged, or fined, or thrown in jail, or whatever, for seeking out healthcare, is not a thing that the company has to give to law enforcement,” he said.
Why it matters: Companies should take note of employees that speak out asking for action on the part of the organization. While criticism can sting, if it’s a legitimate complaint or request, it can be an opportunity to make a positive move for employer branding. Reach out to the employee(s) who are making the complaints and try to work together, publicly, on finding a solution.
Thanks for the insight.
Unfolding global inflation, the effects of COVID-19, the looming food crisis, rising energy prices, falling indices – times ahead in which only efficient players usually survive. Operationally profitable, the ones people need. Uber, in my view, will not survive the impending crisis. I am a skeptic, of course, and you may think I am exaggerating.
Good post