Lands' End: Ready for the Big City?
Lands' End is a Wisconsin-based direct marketer -- or, in the firm's preferred language, "direct merchant" -- of clothing and accessories, via catalogs and a World Wide Web site, vigorously advertised recently as "the website that fits you." Lands' End has one of the more distinctive corporate cultures in American business, a culture characterized by a folksy, Midwestern style, very much in the spirit of Garrison Keillor's NPR radio show, "Prairie Home Companion." It comes as no surprise, in fact, that Lands' End identifies itself with Keillor's show, going as far as to carry program listings on its website. The challenge facing Lands' End is whether this small-town culture can meet the big-city challenges of the contemporary global marketplace.
A corporate culture is inherent in any organization. As soon as two or more people come together in a continuing way, a culture takes shape out of their predispositions and ways of interacting with one another. Few firms, however, are as overt in making their corporate culture part of their image as Lands' End. From its catalog, which contains magazine-like articles as well as promotional and product information, to its web site, which also contains an online mini-magazine as well as listings for Keillor's radio show, Lands' End puts exceptional effort into projecting its corporate culture as part of its public image. At this point an obvious caveat must be stated. It is anything but unusual for a company to project a homey or folksy "family" image of itself, as a matter of deliberate public-image marketing strategy. A public image of this sort needs have no connection whatsoever with the actual culture of the company, a culture that is expressed for the most part internally. Indeed, it must be acknowledged that only someone who has lived within an organization for some time, as a member or at least as a sort of anthropologist, can really ...