BrandSnark: Good Week/Bad Week for the Big Brands

Green Week: Sara Lee & Thomas’ English Muffins The parent company of those two venerable American delicacies – Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo – announced it will begin purchasing wind-energy credits to offset its carbon footprint and plans to use renewable energy for its entire U.S. operations by 2020. Going green never tasted so good.

Bad Week: Tesla Continued Model 3 production delays and (yet) another autopilot crash fatality have raised concerns about the company’s ability to raise new capital and contributed to Telsa shares dropping 5 percent earlier this week. Shocking.

Worse Week: Saks and Lord & Taylor – As if things weren’t bad enough for the world’s retail chains, Saks and Lord & Taylor parent Hudson’s Bay Company announced that as many as 5 million customers were impacted by a recent data breach in which hackers stole credit data. According to the company, the breach affects only in-store – and not online – purchases. The real news here: there are still 5 million people who actually shop in-store.