The Whole True and Nothing But the True

“The New Look of Public Relations,” New York Times business section, April 29:

Fleishman-Hillard, which was founded in 1946 as Fleishman, Hillard & Associates, will rebrand itself this week as FleishmanHillard, with elements that include a new logo and a new slogan, “The power of true” — no relation, presumably, to “Truth well told,” the slogan of McCann Erickson Worldwide, or “Truth and design,” the slogan of MediaVest.

Well, obviously there’s no relation! Those other guys still use nouns as nouns; FleishmanHillard taps the zeitgeist by nounifying an adjective. (See Xfinity’s “The Future of Awesome,” ULTA’s “Welcome to Fabulous,” and others.)

Note, too, the evolution of the agency’s name, from the sober, legalistic “Fleishman, Hillard & Associates” to the crisply hyphenated “Fleishman-Hillard” to today’s smashedtogether FleishmanHillard. Because who has time for spaces and punctuation? Certainly not a global communications agency.

More on the new slogan from the Times story:

“ ‘True’ is the central concept we’re rebranding on, to deliver on our promises to be the trusted adviser to guide you through the maze of choices,” said Dave Senay, president and chief executive at FleishmanHillard in St. Louis, which since 1997 has been part of the Diversified Agency Services unit of the Omnicom Group, the second-largest agency holding company after WPP.

And on the rebranding:

Mr. Senay said rough patches are likely in the transition. Referring to the employees who have worked on public relations assignments at the agency, he said, “about a third are turned on by” the new vision, “about a third will go along with it and about a third will not get it.”

 

Comments

[Steve]

So if 2/3 of your employees are not "fully engaged" (to use business-speak) or "turned on" by your major corporate change, maybe, just maybe, you haven't done something right. Such as, oh, I dunno, communicated effectively? (At the very least; on the other hand, perhaps the change isn't quite as great as the guys & gals in the corner offices think it is.)

[Anthony Shore]

Two thoughts:

McCann's "Truth well told" still takes the cake. I love its logo:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/McCann_Erickson_Truth_Well_Told.gif

I'm enjoying the various shift in meanings when adjectives are nominalized (rather, nounified):
Speak true to power
Beauty is true
I swear to tell the true and nothing but the true
The true hurts
The true shall set you free
True is stranger than fiction

And, the most telling:
You can't handle the true

[rootlesscosmo]

The one-third/one-third/one-third line strikes me as an exquisitely cruel way of putting all the employees in a state of maximal anxiety. Put in forty unpaid extra hours a week? Flatter the boss? Snitch on fellow-employees' real or concocted misdeeds? Why, sure--anything to avoid being grouped with the two-thirds marked for elimination as clueless or insufficiently enthusiastic. Feh.

[Heydave]

This must be how nature protects us. Much like poisonous mushrooms are often brightly colored to warn us away, a company that makes such imperious declarations of their own smugness speaks volumes to me.