Nov 24, 2020
Corporate Daddy Bracket Challenge: Round 1 Roundup
Previously on Battlestar Galactica…
Reminder
In our previous article, we talked about our dreary vision of the future where corporations capture the majority of the populace into brand-fiefdoms. In this shitshow of an inevitability, we tried to find a silver lining. That silver lining is that we can have some fun picking now, so we don’t have to make any in-the-moment decisions about which brand will gain our fealty. So, we mashed up one of the funnest forms of picking things — a 16 seed single elimination tournament — with the Fortune top 16 businesses for 2020. Fun!
The First Round
There’ll be four rounds to determine our corporate daddy. This article will be covering the first round. There’s a multitude of things we’ll look at in each match-up, but the following top our list as must-haves for our new daddy:
Business segment — it’s important to be aware of your daddy’s wheel-house. Hopefully, there’ll be a little bit of a cool factor there. It’s hard to take your corp daddy seriously if they’re a stink-bomb manufacturer — even if they’re somehow making eleventy buhgillion dollars a year.
Income — Money is power, and in this shit-topian future, you’re going to want a powerful daddy to avoid being a casualty in a “merger/acquisition”.
Current customer base / employees — These folks are likely going to be your fellow tribespeople. It’s important to make sure they aren’t insufferable assholes.
Gut feels/intangibles — A lot of this comes down to preference, but you want a daddy that makes you FEEL something. Their branding, their sassy twitter, how many times they’ve had to testify about how they definitely didn’t know that that one thing causes cancer despite overwhelming evidence that suggests that they did know, etc… How does our daddy make us feel. If we’re going to be the blood that this machine runs on, we’d rather be sacrificed to a business that moves us.
The Bracket
Here’s a reminder of the bracket and seed standings.
Round 1
Round 1 Matchup 1: (1) Walmart vs (16) Cardinal Health
Winner: Walmart
Summary: Walmart is responsible for our robust straight-to-DVD movie collection with their “buy one bucket of DVDs, get a pallet free” deals. However, the clientele is what gave us pause here. There’s a few websites dedicated entirely to photographing them in their natural habitat. Cardinal Health put up a good fight. They’ve been accused of participating in the opioid crisis in the USA (along with several other businesses in this bracket challenge) — so they know how to sneak around other businesses and oversight commissions.
Round 1 Matchup 2: (8) McKesson vs (9) AT&T
Winner: McKesson
Summary: (Alleged) Opioid crisis participant #2 and a company that strives to provide the least amount of cell phone service while still being able to legally call themselves a cell phone service provider. This was actually a really easy decision here since we’d actually like a corporate daddy who can PROVIDE for us. Even if what they provide is ALLEGED loose scrutiny of the distribution of a highly addictive substance that is currently plaguing the good ol’ US of A.
Round 1 Matchup 3: (4) Apple vs (13) Cigna
Winner: Apple
Summary: Apple cleanly wins this one. This is Apple’s wheel house. Apple is all about jailing it’s users in an ecosystem, and normally, that would be frowned upon. However, that’s from the before time in the long long ago. Now in the corp daddy world, this actually plays to our advantage. If we’re going to be locked down to a single corporate daddy, we might as well side with one that’s been doing it forever.
Round 1 Matchup 4: (5) CVS Health vs (12) Ford Motor Company
Winner: Ford
Summary: While we appreciate the merits of CVS Health, most of which we have enjoyed out of a last ditch effort to ward off a hangover, there’s just no magic there. You know what is magic? THE NEW FORD BRONCO.
As long as Ford is handing these out to their constituents, and not some bullshit festiva, we’re all in on Ford.
Round 1 Matchup 5: (1) Amazon vs (15) Chevron
Winner: Amazon
Summary: Sigh. Amazon is like Cobra Kai of this group. Do we want to bow to Overlord Bezos, have all our heads shaved, and slave away in a hot distribution center while moonlighting in underground fight clubs with the robots from the warehouse (powered by AWS)? No. But are we going to side with shitty-old Chevron when we have the choice to have free amazon prime?
Round 1 Matchup 6: (7) UnitedHealth Group vs (10) AmeriSource Bergen
Winner: UnitedHealth Group
Summary: This decision came down to how many corporate daddys we wanted that were ALLEGEDLY complicit in the opioid crisis. It may also have come down to us attempting to read all the bullshit UHG has pulled and needing a doctorate in forensic accounting, and that was just us trying to get through the first paragraph. All we know is that the SEC gets mentioned a lot. So, for the sake of keeping things fresh, we went with UHG.
Round 1 Matchup 7: (3) Exxon Mobil vs (14) Costco
Winner: Costco
Summary: A single Costco could support a community of people RIGHT NOW. Exxon can barely go 30 days without spilling liquid-dinosaur somewhere it shouldn’t be. This was an easy choice. Plus, we’ve already got a Costco membership. Also, we think that 800 rolls of toilet paper is really going to accent that Ford Bronco well in the high speed chases.
Round 1 Matchup 7: (6) Berkshire Hathaway vs (11) Alphabet (aka Google)
Winner: Google
Summary: This was a tough choice, but it ultimately came down to us realizing that BH is basically just a shuffleboard with money on it. Corp Daddy Warren Buffet slides the money here and there and somehow that generates more money. It might be what all the cool kids are doing now, but we need something more. Plus, no one calls making rich people richer “Berkshire Hathawy-ing it”. Or do they? We don’t know. Maybe you should GOOGLE it. Besides, Google already knows EVERYTHING about you. When was the last time BH checked in on you? There’s just no creepy sense of caring with BH.
The New Bracket
Here’s the updated bracket. We’ve got some interesting matchups brewing in the second round of our quest to pick our future corporate daddy.
Conclusion
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of us yelling into the void. We hope you’ll tune-in next time to catch round 2 of our Corporate Daddy Challenge.
XOXO
