I was asked to come up with some ideas to help promote our company values across our subsidaries in Europe and the deadline was very tight. (Just co clarify this is not something I would normally do as part of my job).
I came up with the idea of having 1 poster for each value and an image to represent that value. (OK not rocket science, but like I said tight deadlines). I googled some images and found very neutral images (e.g. hands holding a sprouting plant, 2 rock climbers helping each other up a mountain, a piggy bank etc) and sent them onto the person leading the values promotion.
A couple of other people put the posters together, and yesterday the final version was put on my desk and I was asked to comment back asap.
On the leadership poster they had replaced the rock climbing image with a montage of great leaders. The wording was 'Who do you know who shows leadership at <company name>?" The first thing I noticed was that Stalin and Osama bin Laden were in this montage!!! So I said they definitely had to be removed and was told I was making extra work (!) as it was all one image. There were also a couple of other people in there that I didn't recognise and I asked who they were and was told one was an explorer.
Well the Stalin and Osama have been removed and the poster campaign has been sent out across our European branches. I took the poster home and my H told me that the 'explorer' is acutally the Unabomber who killed 3 people and injured 23 others in the 70s. He also noticed that General Pinochet is just showing behind Martin Luther King.
There's also someone else who looks a bit suspect - I am scared to find out who it might be.
Can't believe we have sent this out - it is so offensive. I have my head in my hands at the moment.
OK - well the posters are up around our office (the one I was talking about was the second in the series), but surprisingly no fallout yet.
Before it went up I told my manager where it had come from and she sent a strongly worded email to the manager in charge explaining why it shouldn't go up. I also raised my views too about the problems with it. However I was told 'it has gone out on email now so we can't change it'.
However an email was sent out from our Head Office in the US thanking those who "embodied our values by creating this innovative series of posters" and named and thanked 1) the manager who sent them out but didn't do any of the work, 2) the manager who asked me to do the work and wouldn't recall them and 3) the person who chose the image but not me (who thought of the idea, who found the other images, who corrected the grammar and spelling and who stopped it going out with fecking Starlin and Osama on it (ok so I missed the others).
I don't know whether to be pissed off that I haven't been publicly recognised (again! - this has happened before when I have helped this team with a project) or to be relieved that my name isn't associated with it.
Sigh.
