strategic drift Archives - Wakeman Consulting Group

The Bud Light Effect: A Warning to the Next CEO of Brown-Forman

August 25, 2026
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Welcome to your new job. What a challenge. What an opportunity. You are the steward of some of the world’s greatest liquor brands: Jack Daniel’s, Old Forester, and Chambord, to name just three. But your appointment comes at a moment of serious peril for the company. Brown-Forman’s stock is down 60% in the last five […]

August 24, 2026
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On September 9, 2025, the Australian Football League announced 1,363,437 members. 14 AFL clubs broke membership records. The Melbourne Demons…not one of them. Four years after winning the 2021 premiership, the Demons were 15th in membership with 58,500 members. Collingwood: 112,491. Carlton: 100,743. Richmond: 92,531. Geelong: 92,379. Hawthorn: 87,204. Same stadium. 58,500 is nearly 7,000 fewer members […]

The Three Stages of Extraction: How We Built a “Buyer Beware” Economy

The Wall Street Journal reports that Polymarket staged fake wins on copycat websites. Creators filmed themselves celebrating fabricated payouts…$100,00 here, a lucky break there. Just a day in the life of a winner. The real market: running on a public blockchain, showed those same bets would have lost. Across 1,105 videos, roughly $1.9M in bets were shown. […]

The World Cup: A Global Game of Chicken

The World Cup is two weeks away. Thursday brought a few interesting stories: This is what a game of chicken looks like. A structural standoff where the people with tickets thought they’d be able to get football fans to pay anything to see “the biggest World Cup ever.” All they had to do was wait. […]

Who’s Guarding the Game?

College Football Playoff expansion rumors are flowing. 24 teams, baby. More is better. MORE! The SEC meets next week in Destin. This is a topic that will certainly be on the table. The Big Ten wants it. The ACC wants it. The Big 12 wants it. Greg Sankey…doesn’t. He’s set a line at 16. Sankey […]

Vanity Fair Used to Be a Party…

I’ve been a Vanity Fair fan for years. A long-time subscriber. I read Dana Brown’s book on the Graydon Carter era in one sitting. I have a fondness for the magazine and the things it represents: glamour, intelligence, Hollywood. I’m not someone throwing rocks at an easy target. I’m a fan who wants to know […]

The Opposite of Extraction

The extraction model has a shelf life. I wrote about it this week. You can read all about how the World Cup is the point at which the extraction model in sports may have broken down. I’ve covered it here. The pricing that assumes infinite elasticity. The buyer treated as a mark. The number must […]