Ah, multinational corporations – they’re just like us! They have their own hopes and dreams and quietly simmering psychopathic tendencies. Or, in some cases, the simmering is not done so quietly. John Ashton, the UK’s former climate change envoy has just accused Shell and its oil and gas counterparts of basically being the Patrick Bateman of international business. In an open letter to Shell’s chief executive, Ashton wrote: “You and your peers cannot complain if society increasingly comes to see in your behaviour the characteristic marks of the professional narcissist, paranoiac, and psychopath.” Well, I mean, wake up and smell the fossil fuel! Shell burns stuff for a living. Its raison d’etre has always pretty much been to set the world on fire, and not in a good way. It’s named after the hard, calcareous, outer covering of a mollusc. It rhymes with “hell.” All in all, it’s not the sort of highly profitable, global conglomerate you would naturally be BFFs with. But, then again, does that really matter?
Whatever you may think of Shell, or billion-dollar, multinational corporations in general, Ashton’s choice of descriptors brings up an interesting question as to how we should characterise and critique companies. Namely, should we be applying human attributes to abstract enterprises? And should we judge corporations by the same standards that we judge people? When it comes to how we classify companies, bigger tends to be badder. Multinational corporations have a hard time seeming naturally warm and cuddly. They’re more usually described as “faceless” or “soulless”; as “machines” or “behemoths.” They’re fundamentally unhuman, in other words – they’re corporate bodies missing a soul. That is, unless the marketers do their jobs right.
Brands, you see, are basically manmade souls. They’re manufactured in advertising agencies and transplanted on to corporations to make them seem more approachable, more human. Meanwhile, logos and brand ambassadors give abstract entities recognisable “faces” and carefully crafted messaging about heritage gives nationless multinationals a sort of childhood. Marketing people talk about a brand’s “DNA”, about its “identity” and its “personality” and its “values.” And they take these things very seriously because strong brand values often translate into profitable shareholder value. I say this from somewhat bitter experience, having once sat through a five-hour discussion about whether a brand of bland lager was best personified by an Italian millennial called Marco or a Canadian millennial called Matt. Now, that may seem trivial to you, but I was assured it was of unspeakable importance to the global beer economy.
Much of advertising is really anthropomorphising. The process of turning an abstract entity into something resembling a human being; something a consumer can engage with, and have an emotional relationship with. Ideally that should be a good relationship, of course. Nobody really sets out to become the “Mugabe of beers” or the “Margaret Thatcher of fast-moving consumer goods.” They just want to be a nice Canadian millennial called Matt, whose charming personality means you don’t mind giving him a few extra bucks now and then. They want to be your Facebook friend and send you Snapchats and banter with you on Twitter. They want to engage with you across an array of online and offline channels in a way that feels really natural and human, and not at all not like a multinational corporation blatantly advertising to a target demographic, you know?
Some brands do this really well. Innocent, the popular purveyor of smoothies, juices and veg pots, is a classic example of an enormous corporation that seems natural and human-ish. All of Innocent’s messaging is in a distinctive (and now much-aped) brand of corporate cutespeak. They are also very attached to lower case, which makes you think they must intrinsically eschew capitalism, even though they’re over 90% owned by Coca-Cola.
In one sense, thinking about brands in human terms – whether that be “charming” or “psychopathic” – can be helpful. It lifts the corporate veil and holds abstract entities up to a palpable standard of behaviour. It makes brands more accountable. They are not just machines designed to maximise profit; they must have morals. Or, at least, they must be seen to have morals. But whether we’re describing brands as “cute” or “psychopathic”, it’s worth ultimately remembering that they’re not even vaguely human. And they’re certainly never your friend.