Covering business celebrities
Adecade ago, the format for TV business interviews used to be as drab as the topics they covered. The set involved a dull gray background with only the red necktie of the interviewee adding color to the palette. The two talking heads cover such topics as GDP and the cost of lost productivity in the traffic snarls. Now, business interviews have switched gears and taken a page from glossy magazines and their soft coverage of celebrities who are famous for being famous.
Have CEOs and tycoons now become celebrities to merit the glam treatment?
It may have been the annual listing of top taxpayers that turned wealth (or those who pay taxes on it) into a celebrity game, even when some names invite a reaction of “who’s he.” There are still of course the really wealthy who prefer to be below the radar and enjoy their wealth in relative seclusion, to be discovered later (or named in a public list) as even more taxable.
Still, CEOs are getting more widely known, sometimes by their three or four initials. Non-business fans may just be looking for jobs or temporary partners in the journey through life. Anyway, wealth that endows prestige can sometimes be hard to validate for accuracy, even rounded off to the nearest 10-million. How much of it is actually borrowed? How much debt is past due?
Sheer size of a business empire elevates its emperor. With our dependence on perceptions, corporate metrics like revenues, market cap, profits, or employment are disregarded and anyway too hard to follow. It’s enough for a company to be described as among the biggest for its CEO to be accorded celebrity status when introduced to strangers — he is the owner of the tire vulcanizing chain, “U Blew It.”
One metric for fame seems to be visual ubiquity. A business with many branches in different parts of the country qualifies. Thus, the owner of a food chain, motel network, or a line of apparel featured in big billboards can be more famous than an investment banker or the CEO of a publicly listed tech company.
Maybe because business achievements like tripling of shareholder value are too abstract for the usual celebrity hounds to appreciate, it’s what the CEO can buy, whether more companies or private jets, that seems to impress.
So, interviews of CEOs now tend to be softer and shot on location: the plush offices, the executive gym, and the helipad are juxtaposed with towering buildings under construction and the ride to the site with the interview inside the van being taped — how did you find this property?
Hobbies need to be unusual (read, not for the average viewer) for the CEO to play the celebrity game. This is not limited to collecting antique cars or holding triathlon events for fund-raising. Causes and advocacies are becoming important too. Prevention of child abuse, protecting an endangered species (old employees), promoting safe sex, and cleaning up rivers are causes that define the CEO. It’s best when these are also cinematic as background for more questions — what legacy would you like to leave?
The business scenarios of the executive conducting a meeting (at the head of a table and doing hand signals as his minions take notes) or signing papers and gazing out the window have nothing to do with success in business. He may occasionally mention his cost-cutting, talent hunt openness (my office is always open… though I’m not always there), and the introduction of a paperless culture — except in toilets.
Of course there are news segments, especially in business channels, that do away with the lifestyle questions and jump right into numbers — your cash flow has been shrinking in the last three quarters, will you still maintain your dividend rate?
The CEO doing the zumba in the gym works well for the female subject. Will the weightlifting bend and jerk be next?
The “day-in-the-life” portrait of the CEO now favored in TV interviews goes for the soft side of business. The interviewer walks and talks with the CEO near the office swimming pool. Even highly leveraged companies with declining returns can project well in this gauzy approach.
Businessmen should be celebrated by employees, suppliers, creditors, investors, and customers. Being a good and profitable company deserves to raise the CEO to celebrity status with his stakeholders. But gaudy assets like planes, cars, and plush offices seem to have a higher mass appeal, along with what the boss does outside the office.
But these trimmings are not often what the company needs to survive and prosper.
Since business achievements like tripling of shareholder value are too abstract for the usual celebrity hounds to appreciate, it’s what the CEO can buy, whether more companies or private jets, that seems to impress.