Re: Mental Models by Org type? LO3171

jack hirschfeld (jack@his.com)
Sat, 14 Oct 1995 11:28:15 -0400

Replying to LO3148 --

Andrew Moreno, responding to comments about Belasco's Flight of the
Buffalo:

>The impression I get is that investors want to think that they are unique
>and part of some elite club. When Merrill Lynch used a herd of buffalo
>in their advertisements, a lot of their investors objected to being
>portrayed as one of "the masses."
>
>Organizational mental models can be identified through company
>advertisements.

Andrew, I believe advertisements are meant to persuade potential
customers, and they project images based on the advertiser's mental model
of the customer, or on an assumed mental model owned by the customer.

Merrill Lynch, of course, did not use "a herd of buffalo", but a herd of
stampeding bulls, to represent their slogan that they are "bullish on
America". No matter what image investors may have of themeselves, the
language of Wall Street uses "bull" and "bear" to represent herding
behavior as often or even more often than simply to identify trends...

--
Jack Hirschfeld         With the clear undertanding that
jack@his.com            this kind of thing can happen, shall we dance?