Pet Peeve: that certain companies get elevated as the case histories for one positive thing or another. Maybe they got mentioned in a Tom Peters book ten years ago (the rest of us forgetting and/or going into our own denial that he has been revealed as having fudged some of his research...) Or did something positive once (i.e. how this or that company handled some PR crisis in a forthright manner, again some years back.) Then the same stories and company names get recycled over and over again. New articles come out talking about who's doing such a good job, patching together anecdotes and unattributed references in new variation of old, unquestioned themes.
Familiar names hinged to stories about ethics, product quality, exemplars of crisis management and so on should come with a warning label attached: What have you done for us lately? And even better: Isn’t there somebody else out there who’s doing things right, too?
Carol Orsborn