Best Company Ever, Chapter 10

Has it really been a year?

The last time we wrote a Best Company Ever column was dated 3/20/06 (which means it was actually written right about a year ago – we shun calendars in the YAB Office.) Some might infer that our void of business forethought has aligned itself with the fact that I’m no longer spending three nights a week in business school. Others might assume that it’s a recurring feature that had been long forgotten, much like the Superhero series of 2004-2005. The real reason? The Best Company Ever has had to endure some fierce industry competition from archrivals Really Good Company and Occasionally Stellar Corp. We saw those market challenges coming, and felt it was best to hold the cards close to the vest for awhile.

But now we come back to the public fold after a long year of silence. If there was only a way to catch you as to our financial performance, key products and services, and long-term strategic decisions, we’d be sure to give it to you. A lot can happen over the course of a year in a company, especially one whose operation is so full of awesomenesss, and we just want to share our successes with you, our consumer, stockholder, and friend.

Hold on – phone’s ringing…
Hello?...Oh, really? It’s done? …
Well, that changes everything …
no, you don’t get a raise.

Thanks. Like I was saying, we DO have a method to impart all that stuff we said earlier.

It’s the BCE Annual Report.

An annual report is designed to distribute value information concerning a firm’s current standing in the marketplace. Annual reports are often sent out to stockholders, and stockholders then use them to 1) prop up wobbly table legs and 2) collect dust. Why? Because they’re boring, that’s why. It’s 30 pages of public relations fluff followed by very tiny numbers that don’t do a whole lot to shed light on the firm’s core competencies. There are probably some pictures of the demographically-diverse workforce doing their jobs in cutting edge office facilities, and if you’re lucky, maybe even an official statement of financial audit compliance. Man, what a page turner.

Yawn.

Here’s why the Best Company Ever Annual Report will have you turning its pages so fast you’ll need to ice your fingers. First off, our Annual Report is SHINY. Very shiny. In our experience, the easiest way to be distracted while reading is with the passing of a shiny object within your peripheral vision. Whether it be the reflection of a window on a passing bus or the glint from the sun bouncing off your watch face, you have no choice but to be pulled from whatever it is your trying to read. However, if we make the entire annual report shiny, well then, you have no choice but to read the thing cover-to-cover. We expect to make print the page numbers in aluminum and emboss all chapter headings using that marker you used to sign yearbooks with.

Our Message from the CEO – nay, make than CAO – will also be quite the attention grabber. Rather than a carefully-worded, succinct, three-paragraph note of blind optimism coupled with a 12-year old picture of the firm’s Number 1, we’re going all out – with a hologram. You want commerce to come to life? How about a 10-inch representation of me coming right off the page, R2-D2 style? And what the hell- I’ll deliver my address with a British accent. That always makes things sound more impressive.

Thanks to a technology that the BCE has developed, we will also embed YouTube videos within the pages of the performance review section. That’s right. You press your finger on the page number, and the video box in the middle of the page shows you something awesome, that we will take complete credit for. Like this.

When it comes to the numbers, we understand that you probably don’t remember a whole lot from that 8 AM accounting course you took in college. There’s a lot of numbers on that balance sheet and income statement, and we don’t expect you to understand what’s good and what’s bad. Therefore, each number will be printed in a specialty ink that corresponds to how good or bad the number is. Annual gross income of eleventy billion dollars? That’ll be bright green. The 275k write-off for the failed Monkey Xbox Initiative? A deep red. That will make everything 1) clearer and 2) prettier.

Oh, and that $2.5 million dollar figure at the bottom listed as “Cost of Annual Report?”

A well-deserved bright green.