Successories
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Successories is a producer and retailer of motivational office decorations, mostly featuring photographs paired with sentiments about motivation, teamwork, and perseverance. The word "Successories" itself is a registered trademark.
According to the official website, the company was begun in 1985, by Mac Anderson, as an extension of his hobby of collecting quotations and motivational writings. Their output initially included books of quotations, award plaques, and customized gifts. Soon they began producing the framed and captioned photographs for which they have become well-known. The company went public in 1990. The next year, the first of a series of "Successories" retail stores opened. The stores appeared in a number of malls across the United States although, in a somewhat ironic twist, several of them have since gone out of business.
As of July 2006, US Patent Office registers three live trademarks containing the word "Successories". Two of them belong to Successories, Inc., of Aurora, Illinois (subject of this article) covering motivational products; the remaining one to Mead Corporation for usage on calculators and electronic organizers. [1]
[edit] Parodies
Successories have been much parodied in popular culture. These parodies usually take the form of anti-motivational messages about failure or laziness, paired with appropriate images in a style reminiscent of Successories. An example are "Demotivators" from Despair, Inc..
The comic strip Dilbert, which began in 1989 and often ridicules management "motivational" strategies, arguably was already satirizing "Successories" before "Successories" was even well-known.
