On his ascent to the No. 3 position in the world's largest media company, Robert W. Pittman earned the nickname "Bob Pitchman," the best marketer of his time.
But as Pittman resigned his post at on Thursday under pressure from the company's board, it appeared that he had fallen victim to his own sales pitch. Once seen as a master manager who could serve as the bridge between the old media and the new, Pittman came to personify the failures of the AOL-Time Warner merger.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
In part, that was because he was the executive charged with selling the notion of synergy as profit, both inside and outside the company. With his trademark blend of self-confidence and statistics, Pittman insisted to Wall Street, investors and employees that the company could meet revenue projections viewed as unrealistic by many analysts. Their skepticism turned out to be justified.
Some executives of the old Time Warner saw Pittman as brash and hubristic. His credibility as the manager most responsible for building America Online into a mainstream consumer brand was undermined as the online service -- promoted as the growth engine of the merger -- instead faltered and dragged the company's share price down.
Although Pittman began his career at Warner Amex Satellite and rejoined Time Warner in the early 1990s, he was largely seen in New York as an outsider trying to impose the cowboy culture of the Internet industry on a venerable media company, even as the dot-com economy was beginning to be seen as hollow and corrupt.
Even at AOL headquarters in Dulles, Virginia, where Pittman was long viewed as a hero, the stock ticker perpetually open on many computer screens served as a deeply demoralizing force in the face of what some saw as his political maneuvering to gain power in the company.
But whatever Pittman's personal or diplomatic flaws, friends and colleagues said on Thursday that his downfall may have been his belief in his own message.
"Bob is a true believer," said Henry Silverman, the chief executive of Cendant, who hired Pittman to save Century 21, the real estate company, in 1995. "I think he really believed what he was saying. It just didn't turn out to be right."
In an interview on Thursday, Pittman was careful to avoid saying directly that he had been made a scapegoat. Still, he noted that his job as chief operating officer was to carry out the strategy set by Stephen Case, the company's chairman, and Richard Parsons, its chief executive.
"The promises were not my job," Pittman said. "I was the operations guy. My job was once someone made the promise to make it happen."
Pittman's inability to make it happen came from a combination of the difficult economic climate, a weak strategy and his own weaknesses as a manager, analysts said on Thursday.
The son of a Methodist minister from Mississippi, Pittman built his career in startups and turnarounds, where a certain religious zeal came in handy. After helping start MTV in the 1980s, he went on to boost the flagging business of the Six Flags theme parks, and then to revive Century 21.
In 1996, Pittman joined America Online, where he oversaw its transition from an obscure technology firm to an enormous online service that everyone's mom could understand.
The dense bureaucracy and scale of AOL Time Warner was a sharp contrast to the previous organizations he served, and some analysts said it simply may not have been the kind of environment where Pittman could thrive.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day