The Corporatorium: We Are Happy (Episode 13)
“Churl! You—are—late!” Terry announced as I stepped off the
elevator.
Now you may have noticed by now that I am almost always
late. Normally any statement of the
obvious does not warrant my attention, but coming from Terry who was too keen,
too creatively sarcastic to use the obvious as a conversational gambit, I
turned around and raised an eyebrow.
“For?”
“The Lizzie Borden webcast?” he stated more question than
answer, raising an eyebrow to match mine.
“Shit! Why aren’t
you on it?”
He pointed to the discreet earplug jammed into his head and
mouthed, “I am. Your battleaxes are
logged in from the conference room.” Then he shouted at my hastily retreating back, “It’s just starting. Technical difficulties, you know, caused a
delay.” I could feel the eye roll.
I pushed into the room and no one looked up, damning
testimony to the accepted fact of my habitual lateness. Lizzie Borden’s voice boomed from the
speakerphone. Nigel pushed a chair out
for me. The Cerberus looked at me,
disapproval at the ready, then looked at TWO for guidance. As she was studiously ignoring my late
entrance, they did likewise and folded up their collective frowns, though I’m
sure somewhere another black mark was
entered on my permanent record.
“We are pleased to inform you that The Corporation is
rolling out a new brand campaign,” Lizzie Borden began. “As you probably know, a Brand is a distinctive identity that differentiates a relevant,
enduring and credible promise of value associated with an organization and
indicates the source of that promise. The promise must, of course, be tangible
and predictably manifested in an organization’s business behavior and, ultimately,
in its client relationships and
services.
“What you may not
know, is that a successful brand can enhance the perception of value of that
organization’s product or services. In
fact, studies show that a brand name can command a premium of up to 19 percent
over a less well-known or respected
brand. That directly translates into a
19% increase in revenue!
“Our brand is what will define us and what will be our
differentiator in the marketplace. The
core essence of our brand consists of consistently exhibiting to our clients a
set of behaviors, what we’re calling our ‘brand
behaviors’.”
Pressing the mute button, TWO asked incredulously, “So
there’s going to be a new brand except instead of a new logo or a color our
brand is going to be a set of behaviors?”
“Well, that’s just stupid!
Why can’t they just change our logo?” Ivy blurted.
“A logo,” Diana, sighing, intoned, “Is not a brand
TWO glared at her.
“I’m just saying…”
My first encounter with “branding” had occurred years
earlier when I worked at a well-established “white shoe” law firm whose name
was well known but whose image was a bit outdated, much like the attorneys
themselves. The firm had a tendency to refer to itself as, well…”the firm,”
which I found both affected and annoying. In an effort to reinvent the firm,
from a marketing perspective, it was decided that the brand would be
“spit-polished.” The lynchpin of the new brand was a color, which would come to
be known as “Firm Blue.”
Firm Blue. The lead
on the creative team, an aging but still buxom, still blonde, bombshell in the
Marilyn Monroe mold, had convinced the managing partners, a trio of aging but
still vital, respected but degenerate, lotharios, that this particular shade of
“blue” had been shown in focus groups to lead to a perception of “higher
value.” Thus ,using that color would
allow the firm to charge more for its services, while clients would be left
with the feeling that whatever the cost, “it was worth it.” A win-win for everyone. Well except me who had the poor judgment to
point out that “firm blue” wasn’t actually blue.
I was told in no uncertain terms that firm blue was indeed
blue. “Well surely,” I countered. “It’s
the gayest of blues. In fact, it’s a
blue so gay it’s lavender.” And that is
how I found myself working in the Corporatorium. I saw my time here less as time spent in hell
than as time spent in purgatory until I could repent or be forgiven for
pointing out the emperor was not so smartly dressed as he thought but was in
fact quite naked and really my dear if he was going to debut that new look
don’t you think he might have hit the gym the teeniest bit harder in
preparation?
Remembering all of this now, I kept my own council about our
new brand.
Resignedly, TWO unmuted the call as Lizzie Borden, picking
up steam, continued, “Our brand behaviors are as follows: We are happy—we meet our clients with a smile
and a positive attitude assuring them by our quiet confidence of a positive
outcome.”
“Oh brother!” Ivy said, disgustedly, too loudly.
TWO slapped a finger to her lips and stabbed at the mute
button.
Chagrined, Ivy
clapped her palm over her mouth.
The other two Cerberus shook their heads in dismay. “Tsk. Tsk.”
“We are good stewards,”
Lizzie Borden continued blithely, “We treat our clients as we treat ourselves. Our clients’ problems and challenges become our problems and challenges. We are as careful with our clients’ money as
we are with our own.
“We are committed—We
provide clients with creative and responsive solutions that meet their unique
needs. We’re committed to delivering services and solutions that will best
ensure their success.
“We have a passion for
excellence—we strive to exceed client expectations one hundred percent of
the time.”
She stopped abruptly, and then collecting herself,
continued. “Our new brand is just the public manifestation of our intent to
build a culture through which we will adopt and internalize these behaviors so they become the bedrock of our
corporation’s future state!”
Diana, Nigel and I were a bit dazed at this point because
we’d recently gone through a bruising global rebranding with a major client
whose parent company was far removed—both in distance, being located in
Switzerland, and in reality, obviously inhabiting the alternate universe their
brand seemed to portray—from their U.S.-based subsidiary.
A stunningly ill-conceived brand, the brand palette
consisted of the colors red, black and a yellowish-green so that everything we
produced for them looked like a wound. The brand-approved photo library
consisted of “people in motion” meaning the photos were all blurred as if the
photographer hadn’t known how to focus.
And every person was blonde, impossibly tall and thin doing what only
blonde, impossibly tall, thin people did –skiing, playing cricket, lunching at
cafes at the foot of impossibly photogenic snow-capped mountains with other
blonde, impossibly tall and thin people.
The fact that these photos were not at all representative of the actual
employee population bothered no one but us and the company’s U.S.-based HR
department.
Clearly, our own leadership team was not at all disturbed by
the fact that none of these brand behaviors were currently exhibited, nor were
they likely to be convincingly exhibited any time soon.
“Originally, our director of global HR was going to co-host
this webcast but we have decided to schedule a separate webcast for tomorrow
during which he will explain how our new performance enhancement methodology
will support and reinforce our new brand going forward. This affects every employee so please make
every effort to attend. Thank you for
your time today.”
As usual no questions were allowed and she rang off at which
point all eyes turned to TWO who shrugged, uttered a singular, “Indeed,” and
rose to her feet. The Cerberus quickly
rose as well and forming a phalanx they left the room.
Missed Episode 12, The Brett Factor? Read it here.
Read the entire series from the beginning here.
Final Episode of Season One, Wednesday, August 24.
Read the entire series from the beginning here.
Final Episode of Season One, Wednesday, August 24.
Copyright © 2016 Larry Benjamin
D I S C L A I M E R
The characters and events described in this blog post exist only in its pages and the author's imagination.
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