Filed under: Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Cannes, Colleagues, Communication Strategy, Content, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Egovertising, Experience, Fake Attitude, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Point Of View, Professionalism, Relationships, Resonance, Respect, Standards, Toxic Positivity | Tags: om
Obviously I have a soft spot for Google.
From cynic to Colenso, they’ve been a constant in my professional as well as personal life.
They are intimately involved in so much of what I do every single day and I appreciate the possibilities they have enabled me to embrace because of them existing.
I know … that sounds unbelievably gushing doesn’t it.
That doesn’t mean there’s not stuff that drives me nuts …
From the way some of their products work [Google Slides, I’m looking at you] through to the passive behaviour they are increasingly showing in the face of challenges that their smarts/money/tech could fundamentally change for the benefit of millions – if not billions – of people. However even with all that, it pales into comparison to this:
What. The. Hell?
Not only is it an absolutely terrible attempt to make a terrible pun, I still don’t know what ‘the new way to cloud’ is. Or means. Or why I should give a second of attention to it.
For a company so full of smart people, how can this happen?
Seriously, this sort of work does the absolute opposite of what Google want.
It makes people question how smart the company is.
It makes people ask if Google know how to talk to people.
It makes people wonder if Google know how to make tech that understands our needs.
It makes people ask if this is the sort of organisation we should trust to shape our future.
Sure, it’s just a random billboard … but for a brand that once represented humanities hope for ensuring technology enabled and empowered a better, brighter, more equal future for all, this work feels more like a politician pretending to smile while they’re busy oppressing us.
I know this isn’t the case, but bloody hell, it’s rubbish.
Which leads me to this.
I don’t know who is behind it. I don’t know if it’s an agency or an internal group. But I have to believe this was made because senior people mandated it or influenced it. Either directly, or indirectly. Which serves as a really good reminder about the dangers of corporate structures.
As Martin, Paula and I said in our Cannes talk, toxic positivity is ruining brands and people.
The idea that ‘team’ is now interpreted as blind complicity and conformity is insane.
But it’s happening. We all see it or have experienced it.
Worse, there’s an underlying attitude that the only way to get ahead is manage up. What I mean is that rather than do the right thing for your audience, you do the right thing by your boss. Doesn’t matter if it makes no sense. Doesn’t matter if it actively confuses the people it is actually designed to communicate to. As long as it hits the ‘cues’ your boss likes, you’re good.
As I wrote recently, toxic positivity is leading to the systematic destruction of knowledge and experience. Great ideas and people are literally being moved out of organisations to be replaced by conformists and pleasers.
Yes, company culture is important.
It has an incredible power to achieve great things.
But here’s the thing too many companies just don’t seem to get.
If you’re mandating it, you don’t have it.
Because real company culture is born from the people within the company. Yes, the people at the top shape and influence it – often through beliefs and a way to look at the world – but the moment you try to dictate or define it, you lose it.
But here’s the thing …
Even when a company gives you something to believe in, they know the real key is to give every employee the power to feel they can be themselves. That they trust them to want to make things better, rather than break things apart.
Which is why they encourage debate.
They value different opinions and ideas.
Because as long as it’s not in a self-serving, divisive manner … it’s almost the ultimate demonstration you want to help make things better.
There are a lot of companies who get this.
There’s sadly far more who don’t.
And everyone loses because of it. Because if companies stopped thinking of company culture in-terms of efficiency and optimisation – and more about standards and quality control – we would all get to better places faster.
Or at the very least, less ads that say everything by saying absolutely nothing.