At the end of my first month, I attended Fortune magazine's extravagant party in honor of "cool companies." Thanks to our ubiquitous media coverage, Kibu made the cut. I worked the room and spouted buzzwords from our press releases (Fresh! Knowledgeable! Uninhibited! Empowering!). Then I drove home and stayed up until 3 a.m. editing pieces on conditioning mascaras, seamless bras and why hair gel is better than pomade. Something had to change.
Month 2: Silicon Valley, 90210
Apparently, our CEO needed a change, too. At the next all-hands meeting, she announced that, in the interest of preventing burnout, she was heading to a beach in Hawaii. By coincidence, our co-founder was already in Hawaii, as was our Face of Fashion. At a later all-hands we were treated to photos of the three perched on stools at a hotel's beachfront bar.
With our bosses bronzing, certain things about the company culture became clear to me for the first time. I noticed that everyone at Kibu looked the same (tight Lycra tops, wedgy sandals, perfect bodies), acted the same (kiss-kiss, rah-rah enthusiasm), spoke the same ("Rockin'!" "Right on!" "LOVE it!"), and had the same interests (weddings and engagements, the perfect G-string). They all sported lavender toenail polish and got regular massages, waxes and facials. They dutifully coaxed any unseemly frizzy hair into glossy, straight tresses like Jennifer Aniston's. Everyone looked like they'd just stepped off the set of Beverly Hills 90210 or Dawson's Creek. I, on the other hand, worked 80-hour weeks, broke out in stress acne, stopped exercising and let my curly hair air-dry as I returned an onslaught of calls on the way to work each morning.
Eerily, Kibu started to resemble the world of its target audience. In high school, you were either cool or you were not. At Kibu, there were also two cliques, composed of those who tried to be responsible and keep the business on track ("the studious kids," a minority that included Lisa, a savvy VP who came aboard when I did), and those who just wanted to rebel and have fun ("the popular kids," which included pretty much everybody else).
But if there's one thing I learned from high school, it was that if you wanted to exert any power, you had to be in the popular crowd. There was only one thing to do: I called an emergency meeting with the Face of Hair. The effects of the flat Iron, a hair-straightening device that allowed me to look like the rest of my Kibu kin, were instantaneous. The Faces complimented me on my sleek locks. They asked me to join them for lunch, slipped me eye shadow samples and confided their boyfriend problems. When I started dating someone new, the Face of Relationships gave me a "highly recommended" instructional video that had been circulating in the office: An Intimate Guide to Male Genital Massage. Most important though, the Faces actually showed up for most of their story meetings, appreciated my suggestions and turned in their work pretty close to deadline. I was beginning to think that there might be hope for Kibu after all.
Until, that is, the CEO returned from Hawaii. Although the Faces were doing their best, Kibu still needed a major overhaul. Engineering reported that interactivity (message boards and chat) was months away. Production said that the redesign had been delayed again. On any given day our target audience might fluctuate between ages 13 and 17. And no one could decide what Kibu's place was in the Internet Economy: Was it a community, a destination, a portal, a multimedia enterprise or a digital lifestyle brand?
When Lisa and I raised these issues with our CEO, her response was to label us as "negative." If there was one thing she couldn't abide, it was people who weren't "team players." Kibu had to be a place of fun and happiness, and that took priority. In particular, she said, research showed that teen girls thought our Face of Guys was "delicious" and I should therefore let him do whatever he wanted. I asked if she felt comfortable letting him advise our audience that it's OK for a guy in an exclusive relationship to kiss another girl, because according to him, that's not really cheating. "Let him do whatever he wants," she repeated. In fact, she declared, I should let all of the Faces do exactly what they want. "It's in the interest of the culture."
Because our culture also espoused "totally open communication," word got out quickly that the Faces had free reign, and that their editor had been told to take a backseat. By the end of the day, I'd been kicked out of the 90210 beach house, being transformed again from golden-girl Kelly to an outcast. I should have remembered that when you were in the popular crowd, having an alternative opinion was tantamount to heresy.
That night I went home and, instead of editing, I watched the male genital massage video with my boyfriend. When the narrator kept referring to a 10-foot high replica of the male genital organ as a "magic wand," I remarked to my boyfriend that unless Kibu's management did a reality check - and fast - it would take a real magic wand to make the company viable.
