Corporate Mythology is not just focused on individuals though it is also a method for exemplifying a company’s work and also their strategies. We see these every day in the form of logos and tag lines. Very common examples are BMW’s “The ultimate driving machine”, Intel’s “Sponsors of tomorrow”, and so on. They are phrases intended to bring a certain thought to your mind when you hear the name. You can see a direct correlation with standard mythology in that when thunder was heard Thor was the cause. The name of Thor was meant to evoke thoughts of power, might and the warrior. So in the mythologies created they want their company and product names to inspire certain feelings and thoughts when they read or heard.

But as in any standard mythology there are evils in the world. These are often deeds done by malicious gods or goddesses or the opposing forces of evil that represent the struggle for the mortal soul (such as the Norse gods against the giants. In corporate mythology (as in standard) it is the job of the marketing and PR people to take these tails and weave them into a form that present the company in the best light in much the same way that the priests and shaman did long before. They are tasked with presenting the “world” in a way that “Fits”.

Let me give you an example of this. There is a story that claims that during the creation of the iPhone Steve Jobs decided to change from a plastic screen to a glass screen with only months to go before the launch of the product. He did not want people that would buy the phone to have to deal with the scratches that he saw all over his prototype (from being kept in his pocket). Apple contacted Foxconn and was able to pull off a miracle and make the change with time to spare.

Now this story covers some very bad PR that Apple had at the time. Many in the US were very upset that Apple moved all of their manufacturing overseas and closed down not only their production plants, but many of their warehouses in the move (the eventually closed all warehouses). The new “myth” was created to show how this move actually benefited the consumer and was a good thing in spite of the loss of jobs and other fallout from the event. Thus a myth that Apple cares about its customers was born on the back of bad PR.

The building of a corporate mythology is not limited to Apple though. There are mythologies for almost every company out there. Take Microsoft for example and the quotes and actions attributed to Bill Gates. How many remember the quote about 640K of memory? Well it might surprise you but he never said it. At least not in the way it was later used. He stated that there was no reason to increase the system memory above 640K as the programs that use this space do not need it. They did create a driver that would allow DOS (Disk Operating System) to execute programs in extended memory. The limitation was also a hardware one that existed on early IBM compatible PCs. However it is often used to show that Bill Gates is not open to change and lacked foresight.

Again there are dozens of them for and against the same corporations. The problem is that many consumers believe the myths or take them at face value. You simply cannot do that for any company in this day. I was watching a commercial the other day for a Toyota truck (it was an old one that still plays at times) where they drove the truck up a spiraling ramp and then lit the ramp on fire to show how well the truck engine could handle the heat. Now, here is the problem with this, it is doubtful that the flames (even as close as they were) had any impact on the temperature of the truck, but it makes people think that it does. If the flames were close and hot enough to increase the temp of the truck they would have also damaged the pain, tires, trim, windows and more. The commercial was not faked, but the fact of the matter is that it was also not “real”. The end result of the commercial was that people may believe that a certain brand of Toyota truck can survive direct or close contact with flames for extended periods of time.

Now while we would contend that creating the corporate “image” or mythology is vital to competition it becomes a problem in that people tend to remember what they want (and not the whole message). At times I have wondered if this is not intentional. One of my all-time favorite myths goes involves AMD and Intel. This one has its roots way back in the early days of the 8086 CPUs. At the time AMD was actually manufacturing Intel CPUs on license, but also wanted to make their own design (which they later did as you all know). Well many years later (around the time when the K6-2 and 3 were out) the fact that AMD made CPUs for Intel morphed into the myth that AMD CPUs were Intel CPUs that did not meet Intel’s QA or speed requirements. I was told this one by multiple sales people, customers etc. Sometimes it had the added myth that AMD was forced to remove the math co-processor from them by Intel before they could be sold as an AMD branded CPU (which was again combining more items into the same myth). This myth was not started by Intel, but we can tell you that none of the Intel people we knew discouraged it either, although if you asked directly they always admitted none of it was true. This type of myth is the same as the one I have often heard that OSX cannot get viruses or malware (which is up there with the claim that Firefox or Chrome is more secure than IE or Safari… They are all insecure.). However, these types of myths are ones the companies in question (Google, Mozilla and Apple) perpetuate in their marketing campaigns which sort of makes them worse.


You can see how corporations work to create a mythology around themselves (and relating to the completion). They are intended to idolize their own leadership and products while vilifying the competition. So as you check out new products or companies look for them to develop myths and legends. It is a vital item to competition in the high-speed tech market. Unfortunately it is also one that can end up being very harmful to the consumer.

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