Evil companies and smily clip art

July 15, 2005 3:33 PM

Has anyone noticed a link between a megacorp's poor customer service and tons of "smily happy people" clip art on their ads and websites? I've been noticing a strong connection, to the extent that it's a warning flag for me not to do business with them. Am I imagining it or do they all do this?
posted by shannymara to media & arts (8 comments total)

Do people combat bad publicity with ads targeted at reversing a specific negative (in this case, a reputation for poor customer service)?

People do.
posted by cali at 3:59 PM on July 15, 2005

Have you ever worked at a megacorp? Part of the job description is to be a smiley, bubbly person and all interactions with people within the company and with externals like vendors and customers must be pleasant as well. No cursing, no "confrontations", no direct aggressive behavior of any kind.

I personally don't understand the passive aggressiveness (except for unemployment payment reasons; if they don't "fire you", they don't pay unemployment, so they passive-aggressively force you to quit instead). But this is par for the course for any major, or even decently sized company.

The media associated with these companies only reflects the culture they seek to cultivate.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 4:01 PM on July 15, 2005

The purpose of advertising is to convince you that something that you don't believe is actually true. Occassionally it aims to inform, but that's rare. Think about it, why do they advertise having great customer service? Because no one thinks they do. If everyone thought that, they wouldn't need to tell you. Unfortunately most of what they advertise is false or at least questionable.
posted by blue_beetle at 4:01 PM on July 15, 2005

You mean stock art, right, not clip art?
posted by Mo Nickels at 5:26 PM on July 15, 2005

Could just be that using stock photos of smiling people is easy but also fairly ineffective, reflecting incompetency on one department's part, and poor customer service reflects another department's incompetency, so it's all just part of a great big incompetency package that goes from the top level on down.
posted by dagnyscott at 6:40 PM on July 15, 2005

I like that theory... perhaps it is indeed a reflection of the corporate culture.
posted by rolypolyman at 9:53 PM on July 15, 2005

Remember, your call is very important to them...
posted by Ken McE at 3:56 PM on July 16, 2005

From a communication design perspective, having "people" on your site is definitely something that would be recommended. Browsing a few major names show it's a principle that is well-followed.

Unfortunately, for smaller companies, they and/or their agencies often get the concept, but lack in execution.

Compare your local business television advertising, for example, with national brand advertising on the same channel. Most of the time you'll see the same concepts, but the quality of execution in the local ad may leave viewers a bit skeptical about the business' reliability.

Definitely, a good quality analog for the Web and print is taking lots of stock and/or generic photos that reflect that "connect with the customer" concept and plastering them all over the place. The ads for smaller companies in technology magazines are good examples of this -- I've seen the same painful stock images used in ads for different companies more than a few times.

Do those people staring back at you reflect the company's customer service? One can probably argue that a company wouldn't invest much effort into customer service if their idea of a professional customer-facing site is one sloppily plastered with irrelevant smiling people photos. After all, their site itself is one element of their whole customer service package.

However, from a megacorp perspective, the sites I linked above do a pretty competent job at integrating the pictures, and are certainly more engaging (and probably reflective of company culture) than Sun's, for example.
posted by VulcanMike at 10:32 PM on July 16, 2005