I have never been able to get over the absolute personification of a company the way that Steve Jobs has come to personify Apple. This week’s “Steve was great, the products were not” type of press coverage proved it to me again. Steve Jobs is not Apple. There’s a glory in being that strong a brand within a brand, but there’s a danger too. If I had anything to do with IR, HR, or PR at Apple, I’d get some other people out in front of the press as well as the analyst/investor community.

Sept. 11 is an interesting discussion topic but will never be a symbol or event that advertisers will adopt. There’s too much emotion involved and too much marketing cynicism among consumers for anyone to touch it. Social media was built for this kind of a remembrance and the most  sincere memorials to the people lost and the innocence lost that day live online.

Business Week may go out of business. It may find some kind of way station on its way out of business, like a shot at being a monthly, or online only etc. but the real killer here is that the best minds in business once again couldn’t see their own business spinning out of control. And they couldn’t do anything about it. The more we know about publishing, the less we understand. For now.

Quote of the Week: From analytics guru and obvious “Shot at Love” closet-fan Tom Davenport on Harvard Business: “On the list of signals of imminent decline, there will be a special place on the list for OMGICU, TMZ, and their ilk. What could be more vapid than browsing and tweeting each other about the daily lives of the Tila Tequilas (I don't really know who she is either) of the world? What better bespeaks societal breakdown than our apparently endless fascination with the rich and famous? It's bad for the celebrities and bad for the rest of us.”