EFL
For every motivational platitude that creates a bad attitude and every corporate catch phrase that instills employee rage, there may be a new customer for a company called Despair. Dallas-based Despair Inc. has built a business in a line of products it bills as demotivational. Despair sells calendars, posters, coffee mugs and a variety of office paraphernalia emblazoned with images that are meant to inspire but are undercut with messages that are deflating. "A lot of people find motivational products demeaning," said E.L. Kersten, the founder of Despair. "We are the brand for the cynics, pessimists and the chronically unsuccessful." For the "teamwork" entry on the demotivational 2004 calendar, there is a picture of a rolling snowball with the phrase: "A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction."
How could they miss the parallel with the PLA?
"Ambition" depicts a bear waiting for a salmon that has completed an arduous upstream swim to spawn, accompanied by the phrase: "The journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very, very badly."
This one has Kadaffy written all over it.
The company promises to give customers a brand new sense of buyer’s remorse and help them to unleash the power of the Gulf States mediocrity. It offers advice to managers that the best way to resolve morale problems is to execute fire all the unhappy people.
| "Take your frowny face and get the hell out!" |
And the message has started to catch on, Kersten says. Kersten started the business in 1998 with a couple of friends in 1998 and Despair has blossomed into a company with $4 million in annual sales. A speaker with a major firm that produces motivational seminars said slogans that promote the ideas of cynics can be destructive. "It takes a lot of work to motivate people, but only one sourpuss to turn an office into a bunch of sourpusses," he said, asking to remain anonymous. Perhaps, Kersten would enjoy sitting down and discussing the value of demotivational products with the folks trying to inspire through catch phrases. After all, he thinks a meeting shows "that none of us is as dumb as all of us."
Note: I thought their products were funnier before I noticed that one of my employees was sporting one of their tee-shirts. |