Framed motivational posters hung in many American offices in the 1980s and 1990s. Many came from Successories, the company of the Chicago-area entrepreneur Mac Anderson. Its customers included many Fortune 500 firms, schools and athletic organizations.
Despair, Inc., founded in 1998 and now based in Austin, Texas, sells parodies called Demotivators. They copied the look of the originals. One reads: “Meetings. None of us is as dumb as all of us.”