Coming next week
A few weeks ago, we talked about John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, and we said how much we admired him in these times of excessive CEO compensation at many companies. Mackey cut his salary to $1 per year and agreed to give gains from future stock options to charity. In addition, we praised Mackey for writing a blog on the Whole Foods web site in order to communicate with employees and investors. Now it appears that Mackey has been blogging on other web sites and not under his own name. Instead he has been using the log on—Rahodeb—an anagram of Deborah, his wife’s name. And get this-- he’s been blogging about how wonderful Whole Foods is—predicting that the company will hit $10 billion in sales by the end of the decade-- and at the same time he has been blasting the company’s competitors. On today’s show we talked a lot about new trends in online marketing and CEO blogs are clearly a good way to communicate informally with employees and investors—when they’re used appropriately. Here is some of what Rahodeb wrote on various financial message boards in the last few years. * While I’m not a Mackey groupie, I do admire what the man has accomplished. * I love the company and I’m in for the long haul. I shop at Whole Foods. I own a great deal of its stock. I’m aligned with the mission and values of the company. * Sunflower isn’t too impressive. These guys won’t hurt Whole Foods. Wait and see. Securities attorneys say it’s unclear whether Mackey broke the law. Apparently the legal issues focus on whether the statements were misleading or intended to manipulate the price of the stock. For example, Whole Foods would argue that the Yahoo message board is open to the public. I don’t care about the legal issues. Mackey thought what he did was humorous and apparently many people realized the true identity of Rahobeb. But I’m upset. John, you’ve gone too far. Blogging under a pseudonym about your company—and its competitors may be legal—but in my view, it’s clearly unethical. Remember Baby Rule # 28: A CEO who pretends to be someone else, might just pretend himself out of a job. The air must be very thin in the executive suite. What happens to these guys?