Seeking Alpha delivers one of the best bargains in the communications business.
Complete the registration form, and hear Seeking Alpha’s equivalent of “open sesame” – free access to thousands of transcripts discussing the financial performance of public companies.
In spite of scripting that would impress the World Wrestling Federation, weird “storytelling” can still surface in these transcripts.
So it was at a recent shareholder’s meeting when a CEO kicked off the proceedings with a laser focus on … the new tagline.
Oh kaaaaaay.
Here’s the line of enlightenment:
“We’ve adopted a new tagline and the new tagline is that we’re a company that is bringing invention to market. We used to call ourselves a company of inventors and we still are but we’re focusing far more on bringing invention to market believing that’s an important step for creating shareholder value.”
That’s rich.
I must have missed the memo that anointed the tagline as all-powerful.
Did Nike not do it until the arrival of “just do it?”
Did KFC change the recipe so the chicken was “finger lickin’ good?”
Did The New York Times previously publish some news that wasn’t fit to print?
Look, every company in the free world – and most in the un-free world – wants to be known as innovative. But changing the company narrative from inventors to invention doesn’t exactly strike me as a radical departure.
I’ve taken the liberty of projecting how the CEO might have continued his soliloquy on the topic:
We used to say we were a company of inventors.
No more.
Now we’re going to say we bring inventions to the market.
Don’t worry.
We still have inventors.
You can’t have inventions without inventors (cue the chuckle).
It’s more a matter of what we say.
Actually, we don’t really say much about inventors or inventions.
Because if you’re saying, then you’re not doing.
We’re doers.
Which explains why we don’t say.
I know I’m saying right now, and I just said I don’t say.
You might find this confusing.
Back to the tagline, which proves we care more about the inventions than the inventors.
Don’t get me wrong. Of course we care about the inventors.
They’re good people with families, hobbies and bad teeth.
We just don’t care about them as much as the actual inventions.
This is what our McKinsey consultant calls being customer-centric.
And we have become more customer-centric.
Customers don’t care about people. They care about the inventions.
Very proud of this enormous step in shifting our strategic direction.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Actually, you can, and I did.
For recreational purposes only.