Business Masala: Reinventing corporate image

improve the corporate image who cares about the profitability
improve the corporate image who cares about the profitability

Carlos is a great guy.

He’s got an infectious sense of humor and as one of the more senior accountants in his company, he’s also pretty smart. He’s well regarded by his co-workers and he’s pretty much universally popular – at least as far as he knows!

When speaking to him, he’ll also tell you two other things about himself and his employer:

  • accountancy is never likely to be regarded by anyone as a sexy business, apart perhaps from accountants themselves;
  • whatever else people say about him in a positive way, nobody could accuse him of being particularly good-looking.

In terms of that latter point, he readily points out that he’s middle aged, he’s carrying a few pounds of “excess baggage” and his face is asymmetrical. If you’re wondering what relevance that is to 21st century corporate business, don’t worry, we’ll come back to it later.

Of course, neither of the above two points affect either his company’s ability to do a great job or indeed his.

The corporate image bug

He says his employer (providing accounting services) has always been a sort of comfortable mid-niche business with an equally comfortable culture within it. It operated from modest premises, kept its costs low and achieved good success based on the quality of services it provided to medium-sized client companies.

Profits were healthy and everything was pretty satisfactory for all concerned.

However, following a retirement, the company recruited a new CEO. This guy’s apparently a zealot for what he calls “ corporate image ” and for reasons that nobody understands, decided to lead a personal crusade to fundamentally change the public image and target marketplace of the company.

Spearheading his plans was a move from their long-established premises into several floors of the traditional glass-n-steel skyscraper downtown.

Convenient as the new place was, for specialist bagels, Carlos and a few others did what you’d expect them to do as accountants – they pointed out that the cost benefit position arising from the move wasn’t apparently obvious. In fact, several raised concerns at just what the increased cost base, arising as a result of the move, might do to profitability.

They were politely listened to and then equally politely ignored.

Mirror, mirror on the wall…..

Sometime later, driven no doubt by the too late realization that costs were rising without any corresponding increase in income, the CEO decided to launch a new publicity campaign to improve the corporate image.

Many employees were stunned that the CEO had come up with a second idea at all.

The central plank of his new initiative was a glossy corporate image type brochure. You know the sort of thing, a front-cover with lots of young attractive men and women in designer clothes, standing outside an ultra-modern building.

They’ll usually be looking down intently at a folder. One of them will be pointing at it with a serious expression on their face, presumably to help the others work out just what a folder is. In the background there’ll be a couple of Porsches or BMW’s parked for good effect.

Carlos and his co-workers, as you might imagine, were slightly skeptical but decided that this sort of nonsense is now part of the modern business world so there was no point in objecting.

However, that didn’t last for long.

The image consultants the CEO was paying a fortune to for the production of the brochure, decided that a few shots inside the real office with real people might be a good idea. Revolutionary stuff that and no doubt well worth their six-figure fee.

Cue lots of resigned moaning from the personnel in the company but they dutifully agreed to make a special effort to look smart on a given day and to tidy things up a bit for the shots.

The photographers and specialists came in and went around posing groups of people in different locations and snapping them apparently as they worked.
Tedious as it was, nobody really objected too much – right up until the time the first drafts of the brochure were produced.

When scanning through it, people around the company realized pretty quickly that the photos appeared to portray something closer to a kindergarten than an accountancy firm.

Any shots that had been taken with the older and let’s politely say, less camera-attractive people in them, had clearly been discarded.
It was hard to spot anyone in the photographs that appeared to be over about 25.

Even more concerning was the fact that several shots of ‘the working office’ seemed to contain strangers that nobody knew. They were presumably actors that had been brought in out of hours for their looks and expensive clothing.

What really upset Carlos though was that there was one photograph of a group that he was sure he had been part of but the image appeared to have been edited and he’d been removed. Just to be sure, he checked in a mirror and confirmed he hadn’t become invisible recently without noticing.

See, I said we would get back to that issue of his personal image and how he might be seen as being less than photogenic.

Epilogue

It would be nice to conclude with a story of an epic rebellion by the employees and that the CEO saw wisdom and relented.

Sadly, the reality is rather different.

Upset as many people were by these events, times are tough and they decided to shut up and put up with it.

The brochure went out and as everybody with any sense had predicted, it quickly sank without trace along with the deranged sales drive ideas that had spawned it. It made no impact whatsoever in the marketplace.

In fact, the company is struggling badly now due to the fact that the premises costs have spiraled out of control and they have been unable to make any inroads into what might be termed the ‘downtown corporate market’.

At one time, business believed in substance over style. Looks like those days are long gone and might never come back unless someone, somewhere, does something about it.

 

Mani Masood

A seasoned professional in IT, Cybersecurity, and Applied AI, with a distinguished career spanning over 20+ years. Mr. Masood is highly regarded for his contributions to the field, holding esteemed affiliations with notable organizations such as the New York Academy of Sciences and the IEEE – Computer and Information Theory Society. His career and contributions underscores his commitment to advancing research and development in technology.

Mani Masood

A seasoned professional in IT, Cybersecurity, and Applied AI, with a distinguished career spanning...