Ford Motor Company’s Global Marketing Director Anne Belec and Auto Designer Camilo Pardo announced that they were leaving the company. Both were associated with the automaker for about 24 years and did not cite any particular reason for their departures. Anne Belec’s career consisted of a three-year long period as the President and CEO of Volvo, North America. Pardo, best known for his work in designing Ford GT, started his career at Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan studios, before spending time in Ford design studios in Cologne, Germany, and Turin, Italy. According to Advertising Age, Belec wrote in an email to her co-workers that she doesn’t know what the future holds for her but remarked that the future ''possibilities are exciting.'' It has been rumored that Ford was forced to work out an early retirement package due to the company’s economic troubles.
Burger King Deactivates Apps after Facebook Intervention
Burger King said last week that pressure from Facebook has caused it to pull off a unique application that gave its members a Whopper for every 10 Facebook friends they dumped. The campaign was named as the ''Whopper Sacrifice'' campaign and helped the application users earn a free burger by publicly deleting 10 of their friends on Facebook. According to inside sources, Facebook lost more than 233,000 friendships between its users. A spokesperson revealed that Facebook felt that the Burger King application was working against their company motto of ''connecting people.'' They even suggested changes such as not alerting people that they'd been sacrificed and wanted it to be disabled. Burger King terminated the campaign rather than making the changes as it felt there was a ''difference in philosophies.'' Burger King was lately offering people the use of what they call an Angry-Gram, which sends people animated angry, screaming Whoppers; but stressed that they are intended to be ''humorous'' and not ''to harass.''
Yahoo! Appoints New CEO; Microsoft-Yahoo Deal on the Table Again
Yahoo! Inc. announced Ms. Carol Bartz as the company’s new CEO, who succeeds Co-Founder Jerry Yang. Yahoo! announced that it is paying its new chief executive an annual salary of $1 million and linking her overall pay package tightly to her ability to revive the struggling online portal’s share price. Bartz is to receive equity grants valued at $18 million and an annual bonus worth $4 million. Bartz, former executive chairwoman at Autodesk Inc., took the reins from Jerry Yang, who said in November that he planned to resign. The new employment agreement is for four years, Yahoo! said. Meanwhile, reports confirm that Microsoft’s CEO Steven Ballmer met with Roy Bostock, Yahoo!’s chairman recently. Analysts speculate the meeting to be the starting point of a new deal between the two companies.
