Animals have long been used as mascots for our favorite brands and sports teams. Why? Because animals transcend different cultures and languages—and, simply put, people just love them. One of those most beloved and memorable (albeit sometimes annoying) animal mascots is the Aflac duck, whose story began in an unlikely place.
“Our advertising agency was in Central Park sitting on a bench. And they heard ducks and they noticed it sounded like Aflac,” the insurance giant’s CEO Dan Amos told Fortune. “And so the quack, quack, Aflac became the idea. And that’s how we got in.”
And with that, the Aflac duck campaign debuted in 2000 with the television commercial “Park Bench,” according to company history. New York City–based ad agency Kaplan Thaler Group pitched the idea that doubled the company’s business in three years.
Park Bench success
Amos, at the time of the commercial launch, was actually reluctant to run with the idea because he thought it was making light of the company’s name. This was also right around the time other insurance giants like Geico had started running funny and lighthearted animal-related ads. The Geico gecko first made its appearance in 1997, according to its company history.
“We took a big chance making fun of our name, because you’re not just doing it, you’re actually making fun of your name,” Amos told Yahoo Financein 2021. “And yet, it forever changed our life.”
Indeed, Aflac shares were worth about $28 million ($11.78 per share at 2,388,800 shares), but today company shares are worth about $220 million at $114.34 per share (as of Nov. 14)—making the Aflac duck a nearly $200 million success. Last year, the company had $18.9 billion in revenue.
The “Park Bench” commercial popularized Aflac’s brand and led to a pop-culture moment obsessed with the obnoxious yet lovable duck. In fact, between 2000 and 2014, Aflac’s brand recognition soared from 11% to 94%, making it one of the most well-known companies in the world, according to Aflac history. Plus, the “Park Bench” commercial became so popular that a short animated film from 2022 was named after it and followed a family dealing with sickle-cell disease. But the Aflac duck was there to help the family through the recovery.
While the Aflac duck was a cash cow for the business, he doesn’t make any money himself, Amos told Fortune.
“Well, he’s king of the place, but he doesn’t have a salary,” Amos said. “And that’s about it.” But if it’s any consolation, the Aflac duck was inducted into the Advertising Walk of Fame in 2004 and the PR News Public Relations Hall of Fame in 2011, the same year he first appeared in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, according to Aflac company history.
“The surveys showed us that he was wonderful,” Amos said. “And people enjoyed him, and he’s continued to be [wonderful].”
Amos as a leader
With such a big return to investors, it’s no surprise Amos’s most admired Fortune 500 CEO is Warren Buffett.
“He’s the most tenured CEO and he’s given fabulous returns to the shareholders,” Amos said. Like Buffett, Amos has a long tenure at his company. He’s been CEO of Aflac for 36 years. And at age 74, Amos is now the fifth-longest-serving CEO of any Fortune 500 company. Buffett, at 95 years old, has the longest tenure.
“I’ve seen a lot, and I think when you work with a good organization, you have to stay with them,” Amos said. “And Aflac has been a great place to work.”
A version of this story appeared on Fortune.com on March 26, 2024.
The spots gave it away. Just like a human fingerprint, the rosette pattern on each jaguar is unique so researchers knew they had a new animal on their hands after reviewing images captured by a remote camera in southern Arizona.
The University of Arizona Wild Cat Research and Conservation Center says it’s the fifth big cat over the last 15 years to be spotted in the area after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The animal was captured by the camera as it visited a watering hole in November, its distinctive spots setting it apart from previous sightings.
“We’re very excited. It signifies this edge population of jaguars continues to come here because they’re finding what they need,” Susan Malusa, director of the center’s jaguar and ocelot project, said during an interview Thursday.
The team is now working to collect scat samples to conduct genetic analysis and determine the sex and other details about the new jaguar, including what it likes to eat. The menu can include everything from skunks and javelina to small deer.
As an indicator species, Malusa said the continued presence of big cats in the region suggests a healthy landscape but that climate change and border barriers can threaten migratory corridors. She explained that warming temperatures and significant drought increase the urgency to ensure connectivity for jaguars with their historic range in Arizona.
More than 99% of the jaguar’s range is found in Central and South America, and the few male jaguars that have been spotted in the U.S. are believed to have dispersed from core populations in Mexico, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Officials have said that jaguar breeding in the U.S. has not been documented in more than 100 years.
Federal biologists have listed primary threats to the endangered species as habitat loss and fragmentation along with the animals being targeted for trophies and illegal trade.
The Fish and Wildlife Service issued a final rule in 2024, revising the habitat set aside for jaguars in response to a legal challenge. The area was reduced to about 1,000 square miles (2,590 square kilometers) in Arizona’s Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties.
Recent detection data supports findings that a jaguar appears every few years, Malusa said, with movement often tied to the availability of water. When food and water are plentiful, there’s less movement.
In the case of Jaguar #5, she said it was remarkable that the cat kept returning to the area over a 10-day period. Otherwise, she described the animals as quite elusive.
“That’s the message — that this species is recovering,” Malusa said. “We want people to know that and that we still do have a chance to get it right and keep these corridors open.”
MacKenzie Scott has arguably been the biggest name in philanthropy this year—and has nonstop been making major gifts to organizations focused on education, DEI, disaster recovery, and many other causes.
This week alone, several higher education institutions announced major gifts from the billionaire philanthropist and ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—donations totaling well over $100 million. In true Scott fashion, many of these donations are the largest single donations these schools have ever received.
The donations announced this week include:
$50 million to California State University-East Bay
$50 million to Lehman College (part of the City University of New York system)
$38 million to Texas A&M University-Kingsville
$17 million to Seminole State College
All four institutions are public, access-oriented colleges that enroll large shares of low‑income, first‑generation, and racially diverse students and function as minority‑serving institutions or similar engines of social mobility. They fit MacKenzie Scott’s broader pattern of directing large, unrestricted gifts to colleges that serve “chronically underserved” communities rather than already wealthy, highly selective universities.
Scott, who is worth about $40 billion and has donated over $20 billion in the past five years, has doubled down this year on causes that the Trump administration has cut deeply, such as education, DEI, and disaster recovery.
“As higher education, in general, works to find its way in an uncertain environment, this gift is a major source of encouragement that we are on the right path,” Lehman College President Fernando Delgado said in a statement.
Scott also made one of the largest donations in HBCU Howard University’s 158-year history with an $80 million gift earlier this fall, and a $60 million donation to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy after Trump administration’s cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—an organization Americans rely on for help during and after hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, and floods.
“All sectors of society—public, private, and social—share responsibility for helping communities thrive after a disaster,” CDP president and CEO Patricia McIlreavy previously told Fortune. “Philanthropy plays a critical role in providing communities with resources to rebuild stronger, but it cannot—and should not—replace government and its essential responsibilities.”
Trust-based philanthropy
Scott accumulated the vast majority of her wealth from her 2019 divorce from Bezos, but is dedicated to giving away most of her fortune. She’s considered a unique philanthropist in today’s environment because her gifts are typically unrestricted, meaning the organizations can use the funding however they choose.
“She practices trust-based philanthropy,” Anne Marie Dougherty, CEO of the Bob Woodruff Foundation previously told Fortune. Scott has donated $15 million to the veteran-focused nonprofit organization in 2022, and made a subsequent $20 million donation this fall.
Scott is also considered one of the most generous philanthropists, and credits acts of kindness for inspiring her to give back.
“It was the local dentist who offered me free dental work when he saw me securing a broken tooth with denture glue in college,” Scott wrote of her inspiration for philanthropy in an Oct. 15 essay published to her Yield Giving site. “It was the college roommate who found me crying, and acted on her urge to loan me a thousand dollars to keep me from having to drop out in my sophomore year.”
Netflix’s agreement to buy Warner Bros. in a $72 billion deal marks a seismic shift in Hollywood, handing the streaming giant control of iconic franchises such as Batman and Harry Potter and triggering an immediate backlash from theater owners and the jilted Ellison family behind Paramount. The bombshell transaction, struck after a bidding war that ensued after David Ellison’sunsolicited bids several months ago, positions Netflix ever more at the center of the Southern California entertainment business that the Northern California company disrupted so famously decades ago.
The deal will see Netflix acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s film and TV studios and its streaming operations, including HBO Max, in a deal with an equity value of roughly $72 billion, or about $27.75 per share in cash and stock, valuing Warner Bros. at $82.7 billion. The agreement followed a heated auction in which Netflix’s bid edged out offers from Paramount Skydance and Comcast, both of which had pushed to keep the storied Warner assets in more traditional hands.
Two days before Netflix won the bidding, Paramount hinted at its fury with a strongly worded letter to WBD CEO David Zaslav, arguing the process was “tainted” and Warner Bros. was favoring a single bidder: Netflix. Paramount called it a “myopic process with a predetermined outcome that favors a single bidder,” Bloomberg reported, although Netflix’s bid is understood to be the highest of the three.
Another angry group is theater owners, who have famously warred with Netflix for years over the big red streamer’s reluctance, even refusal to follow traditional theatrical-release practices. Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has adamantly defended Netflix’s streaming-forward distribution, saying it’s what consumers really want. At the Time 100 event in April of this year, Sarandos called theatrical release “an outmoded idea for most people” and said Netflix was “saving Hollywood” by giving people what they want: streaming at home.
Cinema United, the trade association which represents over 30,000 movie screens in the U.S. and 26,000 internationally, immediately announced its opposition to Netflix acquiring a legacy Hollywood studio. The organization’s chief, Michael O’Leary, said it “poses an unprecedented threat to the global exhibition business” as Netflix’s states business model simply does not support theatrical exhibition. He urged regulators to look closely at the acquisition.
Deadline reported that other producers are warning of “the death of Hollywood” as a result of this deal. Several days earlier, Bank of America Research’s analysts had surveyed the landscape and concluded that as a defensive move, Netflix would be “killing three birds with one stone,” as its ownership of Warner Bros’ would be a daunting blow to Paramount and Comcast, while taking the Warner legacy studio out of the running. The bank calculated that a combined Netflix and Warner Bros. would comprise roughly 21% of total streaming time—still shy of YouTube’s 28% hold on the market, but far greater than Paramount’s 5% and Comcast’s 4%.
What’s known and what’s still at play
As part of the deal, Netflix will retain the studio that controls the superheroes of DC, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and HBO’s prestige brands. Other details on what will happen to the standalone streaming service HBO Max were scant, with the companies saying only that Netflix will “maintain” Warner Bros. current operations. The companies expect the transaction to close after regulatory review, with Netflix projecting billions in annual cost savings by the third year after completion.
The deal will not include all of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to the press release announcing the acquisition, which said the previously announced plans to separate WBD’s cable operations will be completed before the Netflix deal, in the third quarter of 2026. The newly separated publicly traded company holding the Global Networks division will be called Discovery Global, and will include CNN, TNT Sports in the U.S., as well as Discovery, free-to-air channels across Europe, plus digital products such as Discovery+ and Bleacher Report.
On a conference call with reporters Friday morning, Sarandos said Netflix is “highly confident in the regulatory process,” calling the deal pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-worker, pro-creator and pro-growth. He said Netflix planned to work closely with regulators and was running “full speed” ahead toward getting all regulatory approvals. He added that Netflix executives were “tired” after “an incredibly rigorous and competitive process.” Alluding to Netflix’s traditional resistance to big M&A, Sarandos added that “we don’t do many of these, but we were deep in this one.”
Influential entertainment journalist Matt Belloni of Puck previewed the likely deal on Bill Simmons’ podcast on Spotify’s Ringer network (which recently struck a deal to bring some video podcasts to Netflix), and they speculated about potential problems inside Netflix that brought the deal to a head. In conversation about how defensive the move is, Belloni said Netflix is “doing this for a reason” and may have reached a “stress point” because it hasn’t been getting traction with its own moviemaking efforts after 10 years of trying. (Netflix has also been agonizingly close to an elusive Best Picture Oscar, with close calls on Roma and Emilia Perez, the latter of which was derailed in a bizarre social-media controversy.) Belloni also acknowledged the criticism that Netflix has struggled to create its own franchises, also after years of trying.
Sarandos highlighted Netflix’s homegrown franchises while announcing the deal, arguing that Netflix’s ” culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game” will now combine with Warner’s deep library including classics Casablanca and Citizen Kane, even Friends.
The biggest losers in the bidding war may be David Ellison and his father, Oracle co‑founder (and long-time Republican donor)Larry Ellison, whose Paramount‑Skydance empire had been widely seen as a front‑runner to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. David Ellison, has since reportedly been pleading his case around Washington, meeting Trump administration officials as allies float antitrust and national‑interest concerns about giving Netflix control of such a critical studio.
While Netflix has tried to calm regulators by arguing that a combined Netflix–HBO Max bundle would increase competition with Disney and others, the Ellisons and their supporters are signaling they will continue to press for tougher scrutiny or even intervention. Large M&A has made a big comeback in 2025 as the Trump administration has been notably friendlier to big deals than the deep freeze of the Biden administration, making this deal an acid test for just how true that is when a company with deep ties to the White House gets jilted.
[Disclosure: The author worked internally at Netflix from June 2024 through July 2025.]
Politics8 years ago