Catharine P. Taylor left Adweek a few months ago but she is still churning out the ad news of the day, now on a Blogger site called Adverganza. In her latest offering she scolds Whole Foods Market CEO, John Mackey, for posting anonymously on chat boards about his company. She calls his actions “a crime against his brand.”
According to the New York Times story, Mackey used the pseudonym Rahodeb — a variation of Deborah, his wife’s name — to write more than 1,100 entries on Yahoo Finance’s bulletin board over a seven-year period, championing his company’s stock and occasionally blasting a rival, Wild Oats Markets.
Mr. Mackey’s alias surfaced in a footnote in a 40-page court document filed on June 6 by lawyers for the Federal Trade Commission, which is trying to block Whole Foods’ acquisition of Wild Oats on the ground that it would limit competition among natural and organic groceries.
