Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Goldfish on the decline

Orange logo

Orange have lost their goldfish.

At least, they’ve eschewed the orange-coloured swimmers in their newest branch in Belfast’s Cornmarket Arthur Square.

I’ve mentioned it before, but Orange had a corporate fascination with feng shui - mainly a result of their former CEO Hans Snook who was once described as a “dotty, feng shui and colonic irrigation enthusiast”. As previously posted:

... did you realise that there are always a precise number of fish in the tank, one of them is always a different colour than the others, and there are spares out the back in a second tank in the store room!

Orange subscribe to feng shui. At a corporate level. Their shops and buildings are all audited by feng shui consultants (any volunteers for that job?!) to ensure they’re suitable for staff to work in. So lots of fish, plants (but not too many sharp-leaved ferns), energising coloured walls and no stairwells in energy-zapping locations.

It might sounds like corporate bunkum, but when France Telecom took over Orange, they looked at the feng shui policy, and decided that it was doing to harm and let it remain in place.

It looks like France Telecom has finally stripped the corporate eccentricity from their acquired Orange mobile business and no longer require gold fish to be present to be present to attract customers into to their stores, and to smooth out the purchase process. A disappointing

And a very different type of "orange" from these previous posts!

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