A company can inculcate a degree of sympathy or animosity simply by how they present themselves.
Modesty is a wonderful attribute, crowds love it. Everyone roots for the honest little guy and, at the same time, loves to see braggarts get their comeuppance. Posing as a world beater inevitably leads to cheering when one stumbles. How many folks are really sorry to read about Goliath losing to David? It doesn't matter if one is really a David if they paint themselves as being, or becoming, a Goliath.
Most of us like to see a poseur ("person who pretends to be what he or she is not") make a fool of themselves; it's a staple comedy ingredient. Pronouncing that bearings act like magnets or that aerodynamic drag goes up as the square of velocity proves to the masses that someone has been posing as what they aren't. Extremely ungrammatical press releases and investor statements further demonstate a lack of professionalism; this is especially true when juxtaposed with high falutin' business jargon. Pretending to be more than one is often works out in the short term and rarely does in the long.
Another self-inflicted injury regularly witnessed is the adamant refusal to acknowledge blatantly obvious failures. Everyone makes mistakes and most are willing to forgive those humbly admitting error, especially if part of a sincere effort to remedy matters. Refusing to admit error induces scorn and/or anger. Scorn because an honest refusal to admit error indicates highly delusional behavior and anger because the perpetrator clearly assums the audience to be too oblivous, or stupid, to tell the difference. A particularly egregious mode of accomplishing this would be repeating the same misrepresentations in the absence of proof that conditions have changed.
Any of this sound familiar?
