Marie Kondo pulls off a brand pivot (and we should have seen it coming): Wednesday Wake-Up Call

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Konmari.com
In retrospect, it seems inevitable this would happen: Marie Kondo taught us to throw stuff out, and now she wants us to buy more stuff. From her, obviously. 

Kondo opened an online shop this week, which seems like the logical thing for famous people to do in 2019, with celebrities from Rihanna to Ryan Reynolds capitalizing on their names to sell merch. (And frankly, wouldn’t you?) Still, some people are perplexed by Kondo’s new messaging. “I'm having a hard time with the changing @MarieKondo brand values,” someone tweeted. Another tweet: “Good thing I've decluttered my house Marie Kondo style, because now I can take advantage of her online shop and fill it up with needed things like 4kHz Chakra tuning forks and computer brushes.” (The tuning fork is $50, and the computer brush is $35. Whatever a computer brush is.) 

The konmari.com shopping site inspired hot takes—“Kondo has been trolling us all this ENTIRE TIME”—and also a tweet that seems to be a poem:

“Marie Kondo has an online store

and it does not sell

a trashcan.”

Although konmari.com is definitely the place to go if you'd drop $180 on a cheese knife. 

Dreamforce dispatches
Here’s something Salesforce wants you to take away from Dreamforce, its annual mega-conference in San Francisco: “Salesforce is overhauling its customer management platform with a slew of new and old products that collectively will be known as ‘Salesforce Customer 360 Truth,’” Ad Age’s George P. Slefo reports. 

Here’s something Salesforce would probably rather everyone forget: During a keynote, founder Marc Benioff was heckled over the company’s contract with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He gave the person 30 seconds to speak (without a mic) while a countdown clock displayed on massive screens. Then the heckler was asked to leave. Read more from Slefo here. 

Beverages get juiced
In the latest article to roll out online from Ad Age’s print issue on innovation, E.J. Schultz reports on how beverage marketers and brewers are trying to keep things fresh. Take a new product called Movo from MillerCoors. Schultz writes: 

“Movo, which is made from wine, sparkling water and juice, is indicative of the shifting priorities of the nation’s largest beverage companies, which are rushing new products to market at a faster clip than ever before in hopes of remaining relevant to fickle drinkers. The new motto seems to be innovate or die.”

A Coke is classic, but sometimes you want something lighter and more fun—like, say, a caffeinated sparkling water spiked with citrus and green tea. And yup, Coca-Cola Co. will start making one soon.

Just briefly: 
Juul: “The attorneys general of New York and California announced lawsuits against Juul this week, alleging that the company deliberately marketed and sold vaping products to young people—and helped create a public health crisis in the process,” The New York Times reports. 

Beer buy: “New Belgium, the Colorado-based maker of Fat Tire, is set to become part of Japanese brewer Kirin,” Ad Age’s E.J. Schultz reports.

‘Trump Fatigue’: “Nielsen commercial data for this season suggests that Trump Fatigue has effectively neutralized whatever benefits were to be had in aggressively lampooning the president” on late-night TV, Ad Age’s Anthony Crupi writes.

Facebook political ads: Rob Leathern, Facebook's outspoken director of business integrity, talked to Ad Age’s Garett Sloane about political ads on the platform. “I want to make sure people understand that if they see a bad ad or see something that shouldn’t be there, we take that seriously,” he says, in an Ad Age subscriber exclusive. “I also know that we make mistakes.”

Quote of the day: Social platforms “have gotten themselves into what seems to me to be a very difficult business position. They are effectively trying to become kind of moral arbiters for the world,” technologist Stephen Wolfram tells Ad Age’s Garett Sloane. Read the full interview. 

Movie trailer of the day: There’s a new trailer out for “Cats,” the Broadway-hit-turned-movie, and we can’t look away. Because as Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco writes, “A nasty, star-studded cat fight suddenly feels about right for 2019.” Watch it here. 

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