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How far can you push commercialization?
I was recently at a private company event (not my company, I was invited, along with others, because we have a close association to that company). The event itself wasn’t notable, but there was one thing that really bothered me, before the event actually started, there was the usual phase when everyone is munching on the snacks and mingling. The food was some sort of green cupcakes with inspirational messages on them: “think positive”, “fitting the world to you”, etc.
All in all, I found that somewhat strange, but I didn’t really care, but I was talking with a few friends when a woman walked up to us and started handing out coupons for some free demo courses using a whole new technique, etc. I was quite taken aback. I am used to stuff like that on conferences floors, where you have booth babes doing stuff like that, but that was a private meeting of less than fifty people, and I couldn’t understand what was going on.
It helped that the woman kept dropping the same phrases that appeared on the cupcakes. That was later confirmed at the beginning of the meeting, where the presenter stood up and started by thanking the sponsors for bringing the food, etc.
Looking back at this, I am both appalled, amazed and utterly unsurprised (you can be both at the same time, it seems). That company actually sold sponsorship for an internal, private, meeting. I don’t really know what was the point, if they were trying to save money on the food or they were actually making money out of this, but that behavior really bother me.
I am absolutely for commercialization, if only because the bank would otherwise object, but I was utterly stunned by how crass it was.
What is next? Hiring employees for the express purpose of watching commercials while the company is getting paid for that?
More to the point, there is some expectation about how such functions are going to be, and stunts like that are leaving very bad impression.
Comments
Ayende, have you come across Dan Ariely's stuff on behavioural economics? If not, I think you might enjoy it / find it useful, esp with some of your posts about pricing experiments. But he has a chapter on mixing social and market norms that chimes with what you talk about above: excerpt here - danariely.com/.../excerpted-from-chapter-4-%E2%...
In survey after survey, one of the number one complains that employees have is that they don't feel engaged within their company, meaning that they don't feel they really know what's going on.
To combat this, companies to a variety of things, like send out blast emails to update them, but this rarely works because it feels more like one way communication. Another way is by having social events, but those tend to cost money, and in today's economic climate it might not be the most fiscally responsible thing to do.
(As a complete aside, I worked at a company where we laid off ten people because we were losing money, then the next day we had a company outing which included all sorts of "team building" exercises, a massive catered lunch, then after a full dinner with an open bar for the rest of the 80 employees. Let's just say, that left a pretty bad taste in everyone's mouth)
So given the choice of not having these social events vs. having it but having some cute girl in a skirt handing out free demo coupons, I'd wager that most employees would take the latter, not the former. I would be shocked if the private company who invited you to the even was actually making money on this event,.
I work at a public community college. In the yearly "state of the college"-type meeting for faculty and staff, we have a representative from a well-known online "university" essentially trying to sell us graduate degrees. It's an annoying waste of time, but we get a discounted tuition rate in exchange for tolerating the interruption.
This reminds me of when commercials first started being shown at the cinema. Everyone was against it and called it crass and tasteless. Then after a year or so nobody complained anymore and it was just another aspect of commercialism.
You'll be the same after around the 10th or so time you see it Oren. It'll be as normal to you as commercial Christmas.
I think the last line of your post sums it up, perfectly: "there is some expectation about how such functions are going to be".
The problem isn't the commercialization. We've become aclimated to it and know how to deal with it. It's when it's a commercial in sheep's clothing that it really hits us hard (probably because our guard is down).
The world economy is grinding to a halt. Expect to see even stranger things in the future.
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