Corporate commands

Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

Alain Jourdier points to the fascinating Institute for Infinitely Small Things who are compiling a database of Corporate Commands. Snppet:

WHAT IS A CORPORATE COMMAND?

A Corporate Command is an instruction work, a call to action in the form of an imperative:

“Just Do It”

“Turn on the Future”

“Live without Limits”

“Tap into great taste”

“Think different”

“Ride the light”

“Live Like You Mean It”

It is the hypothesis of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things that these commands, largely and consciously ignored by a public over-saturated with advertisements, function at the scale of the infinitely small. Tiny events that do not disturb one’s consciousness or disrupt one’s identity as “free” agents, these commands seep under the surface of the individual and lay claim to the territory of the Deleuzian Virtual. Desire, memory, and future potentiality become territories for conquest and tactics for social and political control.

I tire of these slogans, but my own hunch is that they are far more exciting to those who invented them than they are influential over the rest of us.

I don’t know what the Deleuzian Virtual is and I’m not terribly curious. I do think that straplines of this kind, though calculated with great effort are a bit of a waste of everyone’s time.

Share Post

More Posts

Conversational leadership

David Gurteen tweeted this interesting article (pdf): Conversational Leadership: Thinking together for a change It makes a lot of sense to me pushing for a

Scaling or evolving?

This post really interests me: Innovation for Development: Scaling Up or Evolving? As they complete some pilot experiments in development work the authors recognise that

Jersey

I’ve just given a presentation on Beyond Branding in Jersey. It was fun to take ideas that have been percolating for months and give them

Badgers and the joy of complexity

Great article in today’s Independent. The government decided to take action to stop the spread of TB among cattle. They found that badgers were to

More on what is marketing…

Jennifer Rice continues our rolling dialogue about what marketing’s job is. I appreciate Jen for keeping a good thoughtful exploration going. David Foster at PhotonCourier

Chautauqua

I’ll be taking part in the Chautauqua online discussion of Beyond Branding, from 15th to 29th February. Fellow authors Denzil Meyers, Chris Macrae, Julie Anixter

Microsoft’s embarassing metadata

Found via Richard Gayle is Strike that Out Sam. This is a cheeky exploitation of the fact that Microsoft Word documents retain the fingerprints of

More Updates

Emotional debt

Releasing the hidden costs of pent up frustrations

Aliveness

Finding the aliveness below the surface of stuck

Johnnie Moore

Action, feelings and meaning

Bill Isaacs’ book Dialogue highlights some useful analysis by David Kantor. Kantor developed his thinking about family systems and took it into the organisational world. One of his most interesting

Johnnie Moore

On Your Knees!

I’m co-hosting a workshop in Finland on October 14th, alongside Simo Routarine and Viv McWaters. This will be part of the IAF Europe Conference in Helsinki. Here’s a bit of

Johnnie Moore

Open Sauce Surgery

James and I are running an Open Sauce Surgery on the morning of May 9th in London. This is for no more than five participants to learn about how to

Johnnie Moore

Improv in New York

The Applied Improv Network is hosting a free gathering in New York on May 21st. If you’re interested in improv this is a great opportunity to learn more and have