€2¾bn Sustainability Sell

Disclaimer: I’ve got quite a bit of time for this outfit, having got to know how many of its talented salespeople operate in the latter half of the last decade.

Working recently on a completely unrelated project, I came across their sustainability ambitions. And tremendous they are too.

When bought by Canon last year, their market shaping industrial printing revenues approached three billion euros.

So how do the downloads freely available from their websites reflect this stature? Here’s slide three of 25 from their sustainability presentation;

I haven’t picked the worst offender either.

The whole thing reminded me of the €1¼bn Corporate Overview debacle I came across a couple of months back. I’m sure as well meaning (even more so perhaps given the green angles) yet still falling short of the required mark.

With the resources at hand, and HQ talent probably commensurate with that I’ve met in the UK, it is amazing that all that’s been produced here is no more than you’d have got in 1996.

It doesn’t take much imagination or application to create something inspiring and original. All without reliance on a standard template, dodgy background colours, clip art style photos, even the logo ridiculously and needlessly taking up so much space on each slide.

These guys have such a strong story to tell, I’m a touch upset they’ve lost the audience with this staging.

Again, if your standard presentations feel like this one, what are you doing to change it? At least it can be kind of comforting to know that multi-billion organisations are making these types of mistakes today.