Yes. But it's normal. People who weren't involved in the project, or don't know design, very commonly have strong negative reactions to a company they know rebranding. I don't know why.
Come next year you'll have either completely forgotten about this, or have no opinion at all.
If a company writes childish messages in a place where it is expected to read childish messages, I wouldn't use that to judge the rest of the organization.
I think they are actually trying to be slightly funny about this, maybe it’s not coming across because corporate. But read some of their statements again in a different intonation. I mean, “We prefer to call it the B. 1.617.2 variant since that is so much more simple to say and remember” can’t be taken literally.
No, but with their huge font, I feel like I'm being yelled at. "GET REAL OR I AM GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD." is how I read it. It was kind of like being punched in the face... and I think a tear may have formed in my eye.
Anyway, this company is pretty amazing. Before today, I had never heard of them. Now I think they are arrogant, out-of touch, egotistical losers. Any publicity is good publicity, I guess.
I'm kind of impressed that their PR guys are so incompetent. Their statement is so nakedly condescending, they might as well have straight-up said, "You guys are full of shit, but we'll stop just so you'll shut up about it."
"We are changing the shape of Shopify significantly today to pay unshared attention to our mission."
What a way to lead, and what an absolutely grotesque euphemism (not to mention a barbaricly tortuous use of English). Why do companies write like this? It's just awful.
I'm only half-joking when I suggest that if they'd taken this text and asked GPT-4 to rewrite it in a compassionate tone they'd have got a better result. (I say this having used GPT-4 quite regularly in recent weeks, although not for these kinds of purposes. It's quite impressive, along many axes, and I'm confident would have made a decent fist of this piece.)
EDIT: All right, I have to give some credit here. I've now had chance to read the full release and, whilst I don't love the RPG-esque references, I understand that this is fundamentally a piece of internal comms sent to a group of people who are probably used to discussing things in those terms (Lord, preserve us - not my bag). That aside, I thought a lot of the rest of the release was decent and the severance terms seem good, so I have to give props for that. I've left my first impression unedited because, if nothing else, it's an honest reaction to some quite poorly composed introductory remarks and on that basis certainly not entirely unfair.
I've seen that tweet before and I think it's a bit ridiculous to take a cheeky line from a marketing person to represent a perpetual promise by the company.
I don't think so because they're not talking about a marketing gimmick, but rather talking about an actual business strategy - I just found it distracting. They could have at least put it in quotation marks if they really meant to include it in their writing for some reason. I've withdrawn the criticism.
I understand they're trying to protect their reputation, but the tone of the post is really defensive and hand-wavy which really sucks the compassion out of it.
What a press release: the actual main message -- iPod touch is being discontinued -- has been weasel-worded out of the entire text, to the point that a non-native reader of English wouldn't even be able to decipher what it's trying to say.
I get that it's second nature for corporate marketing to try to dampen the message when they're taking something away, but this is on a whole new level.
"We rebranded and if you don't know about it you are just uneducated mongrel on the mercy of media"
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