I end up scrolling around the internet seeking, well, more internet. And some tiny thing strikes me and manipulates my mind. In this case, it was two tiny words: Seek Reinvention. Was this the internet trying to tell me something? Had some algorithm accessed my inner twistings and thought it could make money out of them by probing my lack of self-worth? I took the bait – this was YouTube, after all. Naturally, those two words – Seek Reinvention – led me to a tech company. More precisely, an ad for a tech company that claims to offer many very special things. But first, the ad itself. The deep essence: how awful it would be if you still had some old technologies in your new exciting world. Conceive the pain, shows the ad, of an old typewriter in a college lecture theater. Or a landline phone while you’re trying to walk and talk. Or having to pay at the grocery store with salt. Or is that sugar? Or could that be cocaine? And how about having to call 911 by carrier pigeon? I fear you’re getting the drift here. I fear you’re getting odd guttural murmurings too. I was as well. But I’m here as your personal investigator of the painful, the surreal and the oh-my-goodness-what-is-that. So I delved deeper. The sponsor of this ad is a company called Globant. I’d never heard of this company and Globant knows this already. This ad claims it’s “the company you probably don’t know.” It also claims that it’s “behind many of the digital transformations you do know.” Gosh and wow. I was forced to leap into the company’s website, where I found myself assaulted by a lot of fascinating information. I’d like to share some of it with you. Globant helps organizations “lead change through digital and cognitive transformation.” Wait, these people are going to transform my brain? Do I really want that? Isn’t it too late? What are they going to do to it? I had to Google “cognitive transformation.” The top result: “Cognitive transformation involves a turning point in a person’s life characterized by: (1) the recognition that coping with adversity resulted in new opportunities; and, (2) the reevaluation of the experience from one that was primarily traumatic or threatening to one that is growth-promoting.” They’re going to take my traumas and, instead of using them against me, use them for me? I didn’t feel comfortable, but I went back to Globant’s website. I happened upon this sentence: “As people and as brands, we are always growing, changing, evolving.” I am a person and a brand? Which am I more of? Does it matter? Are we all instantly branded, whether we like it or not? I then bumped into this promise: “We aim to boost a culture of self-mastery with endless possibilities.” Self-mastery? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But wait, this isn’t yet another one of those companies that tells you to be kind and wants to make the world a better place, is it? I found the kindness part quite quickly. On the home page, in fact. “Kindness is an essential part of our culture, putting people at the heart of what we do. Be Kind focuses on four key tenets: be kind to your peers, to humanity, to the planet and to yourself.” These people sound really, really kind, don’t they? As for making the world a better place, I got close very quickly: “We want to transform the world, one step at a time.” I fear Globant may need to take a lot of steps to achieve that one. Suddenly, I was enveloped in peculiar mesmeric tiredness. So I clicked on “Be Kind.” My bingo card of fear was complete: “We want to transform our reality and make the world a better place.” Ayayay. But I wasn’t done. I wanted to find out, at least a little, about the transformations Globant was responsible for. I reached for the website’s Success Stories. The first one? “To improve public access to the [London] Metropolitan Police, we helped build an online system to significantly reduce response times.” Do America’s airlines know about this? And was Globant really successful in cognitively transforming the police? How on earth did it do that? Is there any actual evidence? I’m emailing my friends in London this instant. I was now spent. I’d performed all this intense research in the hope of experiencing a cognitive transformation. It didn’t happen. I’m still the same and I didn’t really discover why Globant is so special. For all I know, it’s a very fine company that helped reinvent the wheel, the phone and even the thumbscrew. But if you claim you’re “a digitally native company focused on reinventing businesses through innovative technology solutions,” how inventive does that really make you sound?
