TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020 B1NTECH ECONOMY MEDIA FINANCE
3 TECHNOLOGY
A nonprofit group seeking
equality for women in tech
has raised $11 million to help
its expansion.
3 TECHNOLOGYEven as antitrust clouds
gather, Facebook said it
would buy Kustomer, a
promising start-up.
8 SPORTSJustin Williams is hoping
to make the path for other
Black cyclists more open
than the one he faced.
Nikola, a start-up electric truck
company that had made a big
splash on Wall Street, announced
a broad alliance with General Mo-
tors in September that promised
to give the company critical tech-
nology, financial support and
credibility with investors.
But the news was quickly over-
taken by claims that Nikola had
exaggerated its capabilities, and
the firm’s founder quickly re-
signed. Investors were left to won-
der whether Nikola was indeed an
automotive innovator and
whether G.M. had made an em-
barrassing mistake in associating
with the start-up.
After weeks of talks, the two
companies announced Monday
that they would work together on
a much more limited basis than
what they proposed in September.
G.M. still intends to supply hy-drogen fuel cells to Nikola for use
in the heavy-duty trucks the start-
up is developing but has yet to
mass produce. But G.M. will no
longer make an electric pickup
truck for Nikola or take an 11 per-
cent stake in the company — once
valued at $2 billion.
“This is better than what it was
because it gets us back to what is
most important to both of us,
which is fuel cells,” Nikola’s chief
executive, Mark Russell, said in
an interview.
But news of the scaled-down
partnership prompted a sell-off in
Nikola’s stock. The stock closed
down by $7.52 a share, or 27 per-
cent, to $20.41.
The decline lowered Nikola’s
market value to less than $8 bil-
lion — about a quarter of the value
it had just after its market debut in
June. At one point, stock marketG.M. Scales Back Alliance
With Electric Truck Firm
By NEAL E. BOUDETTECONTINUED ON PAGE B3Are you “humaning”?
It’s hard to know. “Humaning” is not a word
meant to be used by real people in real conver-
sations. It’s just the latest of many ungainly
terms from the world of marketing, where lan-
guage is often twisted into new shapes with a
certain goal in mind: persuading you to buy
things.
“Humaning” was coined by Mondelez Inter-
national, the company that makes Oreo cook-
ies, Ritz crackers and Philadelphia cream
cheese, with the help of the Ogilvy advertising
agency. It set off a social-media backlash whenit entered the lexicon last month, shortly after
Mondelez declared that the word captured its
approach to marketing snack foods around the
world.
“Humaning is a unique, consumer-centric
approach to marketing that creates real, hu-
man connections with purpose, moving Mon-
delez beyond cautious, data-driven tactics,
and uncovering what unites us all,” the com-
pany announced in a news release. “We are no
longer marketing toconsumers, but creating
connections withhumans.”
Almost immediately, the coinage elicited a
particularly human reaction: ridicule. Critics
said “humaning” was yet another example ofmarketing lingo run amok, creative wordplay
disintegrating into gibberish.
Robert Sutton, a Stanford University profes-
sor, described it as “corporate jargon monox-
ide.” Bob Hoffman, an advertising industry
veteran behind the Ad Contrarian newsletter,
was also less than pleased by the linguistic in-
novation. “In any sober industry,” he wrote,
“the perpetrators of this nonsense would be
taken out back by grown-ups and beaten to a
pulp. Then they’d beat up on the pulp.” Gareth
Cartman, a novelist and client services direc-
tor at the British ad firm CLD, wrote on Twit-
ter: “Humaning. Someone must pay for this- Online content that captures someone’s attention enough
to stop them from scrolling.
“Amid the insanity of 2020, even potential proof of alien life
was barely thumb-stopping.”
phygital (adj)
thumb-stopping (adj)
- Three-letter acronym.
Ex: B4H (brands for humans), OOH (out of home), OTT (over the top).
“Why spell out an idea when you can express it in a TLA?”
TLA (noun)
- A mix of the physical and digital elements in a customer’s
experience of a brand.
“The future is phygital.”
The Strange Language
Of Modern Marketing
By TIFFANY HSU
and SAPNA MAHESHWARICONTINUED ON PAGE B6The 2020 edition of Black Friday
did not offer the usual scenes of
bustling stores and shoppers lined
up outside discount chains and
electronics retailers. Instead,
most people bought online, if they
bought at all.
Crowds at malls and city shop-
ping districts were relatively
sparse over the holiday weekend
in the face of rising coronavirus
cases and warnings from the Cen-
ters for Disease Control and Pre-
vention to avoid large groups. Ma-
jor chains closed on Thanksgiv-
ing, after years of being open that
day. And many Americans did
their shopping before the week-
end even began, drawn by sales
that began in October.
‘Bleak Friday’
As Shoppers
Stay Home
CONTINUED ON PAGE B4
By SAPNA MAHESHWARI
and MICHAEL CORKERYBitcoin is back. Again.
Nearly three years after it went
on a hair-bending rise and hit a
peak of $19,783, the price of a sin-
gle Bitcoin rose above that for the
first time on Monday, according to
the data and news provider Coin-
Desk. The cryptocurrency has
soared since March, after sinking
below $4,000 at the outset of the
coronavirus pandemic.
Bitcoin’s latest climb is different
from its last spike in 2017, which
was driven largely by investors in
Asia who had just learned about
cryptocurrencies. Back then, the
digital token soon lost momentum
as people questioned what it could
do other than allow for easy online
speculating and drug and ransom
payments.
While those questions remain,
Bitcoin is now being fueled by a
less speculative fever. Buyers —
led by American investors, includ-
ing companies and other tradi-Remember Bitcoin? It Just Hit a New High
Bitcoin has soared since March, and is increasingly seen as a desirable asset.PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY FRANCESCO CARTA/GETTY IMAGESBy NATHANIEL POPPERCONTINUED ON PAGE B6