Marketing Strategy
Enron - The Smartest Guy in the Room Enron was once the seventh largest company in the world, they were even featured in fortune magazine as America’s most innovative company for six years in a row from 1996 to 2001, but somehow they allowed their greed and arrogance to get the better of them. Though they have been successful for many years, it took very little time for them to go bankrupt. Enron’s demise is a result of implementing outrageously unethical and unrealistic strategies such as their “Mark to Market” strategy, and manipulating situations such as the California electricity crisis; just to name a few of the many unethical things that they engaged in. One of their most outrageous accounting strategies was their mark to market method. This strategy allowed them to forecast what earnings will be in the very distant future and treat those forecasted earnings as current profit. They practiced this despite the fact that those earnings may not be collected for many years, neither are they guaranteed. Enron appeared to be very profitable in the public’s eye and their stocks kept increasing in value, but in reality they were sinking deeper and deeper in debt. Enron managed to cook the books through their mark to market strategy. Enron went above and beyond when they manipulated the California electricity system. They took advantage of the state’s deregulated energy market and deliberately created blackouts and shortages in order to increase prices many times more than the current price. California was their way out when they needed profits. Enron’s unethical and outrageous behavior caught up with