The screen flickers as five faces in small rectangles debate the merits of different customer acquisition strategies. Our group project for UCL’s Foundations of Management module is approaching its deadline—a comprehensive marketing proposal for Ambassador Bloomsbury Hotel, developed entirely in the strange virtual realm we now inhabit.
I’ve been assigned the marketing section, which should feel natural given my program, yet I find myself experiencing a peculiar form of cognitive dissonance. Part of my mind speaks fluently in KPIs, conversion rates, and engagement metrics. Another part—the one that wakes me at 3 AM with fragments of poetry—observes this business language with anthropological fascination.
There’s something almost theatrical about business terminology—the way it creates an illusion of certainty in an inherently uncertain world. “Strategic leveraging of assets” sounds far more reassuring than “making educated guesses about an unpredictable future.” Perhaps this is why I’m drawn to it and repelled by it in equal measure.
Working on this hotel project during a pandemic when tourism has effectively ceased feels particularly surreal. We analyze historical data and project future trends as if the world hasn’t fundamentally changed. I can’t help wondering if this is delusion or optimism. Perhaps the distinction doesn’t matter.
During one late-night session working on the project, I found myself writing a satirical piece about hotel bureaucracy instead of the assigned marketing analysis. I share it here as evidence of my wandering mind:
Interdepartmental Memo: On the Strategic Implementation of Pillow Plumping
To: All Departmental Heads
From: Assistant to the Deputy Manager of Guest Experience Enhancement
Subject: Synergistic Approach to Pillow Presentation ParadigmsFollowing extensive consultation with key stakeholders, we hereby announce the formation of a cross-functional pillow optimization task force to address suboptimal plumping metrics observed in Q2.
Research indicates that precisely angled pillows increase guest satisfaction by an estimated 0.37%, representing significant ROI potential when aligned with our five-year strategic vision.
All staff are required to attend a mandatory three-hour pillow alignment workshop, where they will be empowered with the tools to leverage synergistic pillow presentation opportunities within their respective verticals.
Remember: Your pillow is your promise.
This corporate parody led me to revisit an early satirical poem I wrote during my first year at UCL:
Office Flora and Fauna
The Marketing Manager migrates between meetings,
Plumage of power suits, mating call of buzzwords.
The Intern, camouflaged beside the coffee machine,
Mimics the behaviors of the dominant species.In the open-plan ecosystem, territorial displays
Manifest through strategic desk trinket placement.
The Finance Department, carnivorous and patient,
Waits to pounce on unsubstantiated expense claims.Evolution favors those who adapt to fluorescent lighting,
Who develop immunity to passive-aggressive emails.
The fittest survive by appearing perpetually busy,
While conserving energy for vital LinkedIn updates.
My teammates laughed when I shared these pieces, but their amusement carried a note of recognition—the uncomfortable acknowledgment that we’re being trained to participate in systems we simultaneously critique.
I don’t think the answer is rejecting business thinking entirely. There’s elegance in a well-crafted strategy, poetry in the perfect market analysis. But perhaps the most valuable skill is maintaining the ability to step outside the framework, to see the arbitrary nature of our constructs, to remember that spreadsheets and metrics are merely imperfect attempts to impose order on a fundamentally unruly reality.
As our project nears completion, I find myself wondering if this tension between creative and analytical thinking is not a problem to solve but a paradox to embrace. Maybe the most interesting perspectives emerge precisely at this uncomfortable intersection.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” (Lovecraft’s words come to mind whenever I toggle between marketing spreadsheets and poetry drafts)