Commentary

Jive Creates Entertaining Video That Fails To Inform Users About The Company

It was roughly ten years ago that a crack team of bureaucrats and behavioral therapists declared me constitutionally unfit for office duty. Owing to a handful of sins against community - neglecting to lid my Beefaroni before reheating it, refusing to make small talk about the winter cold/spring pollen/summer heat/autumn pleasantness - I was blacklisted from employment at any venue that would place me within farting distance of other human beings. While I haven't entirely fallen into freelance disrepair - I equate pants, and the donning thereof, with dignity - it's been a lonely, if professionally satisfying and hyperproductive, last decade.

All that's to say: I have no idea what today's office looks, acts or smells like. For all I know, the office atmosphere could be in the midst of a practical and political renaissance, one in which room temperature is forever fixed at 70 degrees and workers refrain from interpreting Stu from personnel's shyness as iron-clad evidence of imminent layoffs. So please, view my comments on Jive's office-obliteration clip through that lens of blithe ignorance. I know not of what I speak. I'm an innocent.

The folks in the video, however, are jaded. They work in a faceless capacity at Faceless Corp., a maker of products so frivolous and dispensable that identifying them would only serve to render us comatose. So when their fax machines (??) start jamming and their filing cabinets start overflowing and their computers start blue-screen-of-death-ing, they lose their crap. In a rampage that will surely attract the attention of John Q. Law, they trash the office benign-white-person-style, toppling cubicle walls and upending piles of paperwork.

Once they're done, they hop on the elevator and lend their annihilatory flair to a contiguous floor. As the initial crew of destruction grows fivefold, the tone shifts, from frustration to anarchic, white-collar joy. Motivational posters, some embossed with the images of adorable baby kittens who have hurt exactly no one, are not spared.

Thank heavens for the presence of the big boss man - who, after viewing the carnage from his Venetian-blind-shielded corner office, heads into the fray. After his sort-of-imposing-if-you-fear-middle-aged-men-in-tailored-suits presence silences the office, he seizes a sledgehammer and, after a dramatic pause, wreaks some havoc of his own. Finally, four of the original mutineers pull minimalist desks together in the middle of the room, where they work on their minimalist laptops without having to endure the administrative and practical tyranny of pens and paper. A message appears on screen ("liberate the office the day you give them Jive"), and that's that.

Despite its obvious turn - it telegraphs the dickens out of Mr. Imposing Boss' decision to partake in the destruction - I find the clip entertaining enough. Really, you can never go too wrong with blowing stuff up. But I did have one question after watching it a third time: What or who is a Jive?

Is it some kind of laptop/paper shredder hybrid? Is it a genetically modified superpencil that captures data as it writes and beams it up into the cloud? I have no idea, other than what the clip tells me: That it will allow - nay, encourage - me to set fire to my office. A detail of this kind would appear to matter.

I can't lie: I'm hurt. It sure would've been keen for the company to let me in on the secret from the get-go, or at least treat me to a big reveal at the end of the clip. While further research reveals that Jive is "the world's most advanced social business platform" and one packed with "all the latest tools for collaboration and communication," I shouldn't have to figure this out on my own, or arrive at this conclusion via covert means.

So throw another one onto the pile of online videos that prize entertainment over information. It's getting kinda high and unwieldy.

2 comments about "Jive Creates Entertaining Video That Fails To Inform Users About The Company".
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  1. Joey Jodar from Heavy Inc., July 17, 2012 at 4:26 p.m.

    Monty Python covered this topic 30 years ago.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=errwLVgHpXY&feature=fvwrel

    Nothing new here or social.

  2. Mark Walker from aka Media Mark, July 17, 2012 at 6:08 p.m.

    It is an epidemic.

    Today I read a press release, generated by the CEO of a fairly high-profile industry association, that spoke all about the 2012 conference, keynote speaker, events and where to get information and register- but never said when and where it would be held. So I clicked the website link provided, and spent another 15 minutes looking for the info, registration and dates & location. I began to wonder if this was a private affair by invite only! Just imagine if I wasn't interested?!

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