Marketing

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Not to be confused with sales, marketing are the people who — very much against every instinct they have ever had — are obliged to make the electronic posters in the lifts look nice, curate the firm’s LinkedIn presence and generally keep the firm’s advertising and public persona resembling, in every dimension, that of every other financial services firm in the developed world. This is because every one of them, in every single firm, is under strict instructions to be more like Goldman.

Marketers will toy with excellent ideas like behavioural economics — might even get some budget allocated to try them out — but won’t ultimately have the institutional gravitas to persuade anyone else stick with it — see also plain English — and will eventually find their precious initiatives junked, while the CEO will continue to talk publicly like some speak-and-spell who has been reprogrammed by a malevolent management consultant.