“Whole Foods is My Daughter, and I Literally Married My Daughter Off to the Richest Man in the World”--Use of Visual, Evocative Expression to Emphasize One’s Point

(Rewritten August 15, 2021) 

Here is a recent example of a highly effective communicator using a vivid, evocative expression while emphasizing something and thus making his assertion indelible—an example which, I hope, will inspire the rest of us into similarly imaginative analogies, especially when we are trying to break through the clutter.

• On being asking about his future plans, considering that he had been in his current position (CEO of the multinational supermarket chain Whole Foods, which he founded in 1980) for over 40 years, John Mackey saying on “The David Rubenstein Show”: “...I don’t have biological children; Whole Foods for me is the equivalent of a child. It’s now grown up, not a baby anymore... So, I always make this joke that Whole Foods is my daughter and I literally married my daughter off to the richest man in the world. And I just came along to make sure that the marriage settled in well...The time will come eventually for me to leave and it’s just not yet.” [As most readers will surmise, Mackey is referring to the 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon.] 

© Copyright 2021  V.J. Singal