The PR, Marketing & Sales department is a place of enthusiasm and geniality—some of which is even genuine. They take their duty seriously, but with a smile. If R&D stopped innovating, if Facilities left the offices in ruins, the brave men and women of PR, Marketing & Sales would be there, in the post-business wasteland, flogging bent pins and scraps of ancient paperwork from atop their withered stationary cupboard kiosk.
At heart, PR, Marketing & Sales just wants everyone to get along—on the Company's terms. If only everyone else understood how wonderful the paper towel dispenser dispenser was, they'd understand why you want to put one in every home in America! And when the public baulk at a few scattered incidents of uncontrollable exponential self-replication, you'll be there, getting them to see the upside, and drying their tears with a thousand complementary tissues.
The staff of PR, Marketing & Sales are like ambassadors for the Company. In crude terms, they make sure people want to buy stuff, and then they sell stuff. But beyond this, they are the face and the vanguard of the Company, paving the way for the Company's inevitable victory in all markets, seizing control of hearts, minds, and wallets via direct and indirect means.
Employees of the department mingle with the rich and famous, sell things to the rich and famous, bribe the rich and famous, deceive the rich and famous, and occasionally kidnap and impersonate the rich and famous. At the other end of the scale, they also infiltrate and guide the consuming masses. The elite Invisible Hand unit are tasked with maximising the utility surplus of all market transactions by any means necessary, leading the market to a ruthlessly efficient equilibrium.
Between Company assignments, employees augment the Company's coffers by contracting their skills out to up-and-coming media stars and the tourism departments of rogue states.
Do you want to make the world a better, happier place? Do you hate it when people just don't see eye to eye? Do you want to make sure that both you and the Company become and remain stinkin' rich? Come and work in PR, Marketing & Sales, and put the “social engineering” back into “social skills!”
To Succeed!™ in the department, the corest of competencies is Networking, as everything boils down to talking with, befriending, convincing and deceiving people. Any amount of actual Productivity is frowned upon.
The PR division also values candidates skilled at Bureaucracy, to help cover up any unexpected or undesirable consequences of the Company's activities.
As the Sales division is often tasked with sprawling, long-term projects to secure or create a market, Leadership among the team is valued to make sure efforts are focussed and co-ordinated. Similarly, Sales agents often go undercover in the real world, where they must subtly direct the mood and actions of the masses towards the Company's products.
When all else fails (and, ideally, before), the PR & Sales department relies heavily on skilled Win-Win Gurus to provide them with a synergistic edge over the competition.
Jake pioneered the ever-popular “Casual Weekdays” scheme in Building 3, and adhering to it is the only thing he could ever be described as doing strictly. He has his secretaries make each other tea, so they don't feel left out. His charm is so disarming that he is rumoured to have accidentally brokered the FY66 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact when he wandered into the conference chamber looking for the bathroom.
It is, in fact, impossible to write a bad word about Jake. Indeed, if one were to try, one would be overcome by an acute sense of nausea and foreboding. This well-documented effect may be linked to his unrivalled mastery of Win-Win Synergy, but anyone who tries to sit down and make the connection is similarly overwhelmed with the belief that they should instead be out enjoying themselves.
Gina was one of the first and, to many fans, the greatest of corporate-sponsored superstars. Her band, Gina Star and the Company Men, dominated the charts for the better part of the decade, switching genres and inventing new ones so fast that it was simply impossible to tire of her. Subsequently, she spent time as one of the company's most radiant faces, appearing on advertising all over the world and mingling with the rich and famous in the Company's name. Her recent appointment to a managerial role is shrouded in rumours of ill health.
Bittermann claims to have “solved emotions” via the careful application of logarithm tables, and records the outcome of all social interactions and events in his “Friendbook”, a hefty tome he carries with him at all times. Though he refuses to share the details of his formulae, the Company values him for his uncanny ability to sell exactly the right thing to exactly the right person.