The next time you’re sitting through a company-wide meeting, half-listening to a leader drone on about updates or product launches (and hoping they don’t announce layoffs or budget cuts), remember this: at least they’re not rapping.
That’s what happened at Canva Create, a summit held in Los Angeles last week, in honor of Canva, a graphic design company known for helping non-designers produce good-enough flyers to advertise a yard sale or middle school talent show. In LA, Melanie Perkins, co-founder of the $40bn Australian brand, spoke to attendees about “brand-building, maintaining a strong company culture and scaling operations”, per Variety. (Something she knows a lot about: Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, who also spoke at the summit, is an investor and board member of the platform.)
After run-of-the-mill talks and discussions, the team decided to put on a show. Two presenters – and a cast of backup breakdancers, all of whom were most certainly regretting their respective life paths in the moment – performed a “rap battle” that they used to describe updates the tech company has made to the design app.
Sample bars included: “You can redesign your work / Canva got that glow up / We redesign errything / From the floor up.” On the topic of AI, which is known to steal art from actual human workers, one performer dropped: “We don’t train on your work without your permission / Safe and securrrrrr if that’s what you’re wishing.”
I will never understand why these corporations spend big bucks on this cringe. I've been to one such event and I was shocked. What's worse is that long-serving people said you had to act as if you were enjoying it or else you'd hear from your manager afterwards. Imagine a bunch of middle-aged men at a sales conference shaking their hips and pretending to enjoy a cheesy rap battle. What an utterly soul crushing, suicidal-thought-inducing experience. I can't tell if senior management actually believes that this sort of corporate cringe is inspiring, or if they do it purposely to crush your soul and make you into a servile automaton. Are they out of touch or is it an Orwellian power move?
My money is on Orwellian power move...