WHEN it is senior management, you expect them to lead. Like a shining beacon, throwing light on the company path for the gung-ho team to follow.

What you definitely don't want is a boss to lead you in a song-and-dance - not at the annual office party, much less in a corporate video, even if it's for internal consumption only.

No surprises on Planet iPod-MySpace-YouTube.

Video grabs of burgeoning office-pool talent will make the rounds outside, always to slap-happy laughter, razor-sharp criticism, down-right insult, rare grudging praise.

Two such clips getting hits - and causing riotous laughter and inviting vitriolic netments (aiyah, comments on the Net lah) - are the MDA one from our Media Development Authority and the CPA one from Hongkong's Institute of Accountants.

Coincidentally, both are rap-style - and there's the rub.

A rap video will not make you look hip. It will just confirm your need to appear relevant.

Besides vacillating between rock and rap, who're you trying to reach? Eminem, OutKast, Snoop Dogg?

To be fair, the MDA one deserves four stars each for Effort and Production, but just a bare twinkle for its four-minute forced performance.

Listen, even if you guys are in the entertainment industry, your business is not to entertain us.

Oh sure, it humanises senior management, to show and tell that they do have a sense of humour about themselves after all.

But to the outsider, the in-house actors could come across as smug.

Annual report cards about the year's accomplishments have to carry a substantive message, not be a message delivered in rhyme - and what un-rhythmic lines too!

You'd have thought the attempted rap lyrics best belong to an NDP song.

'Stay focused', 'Public licensees'; kiss the Grammy goodbye, bro. Taxpayers want substance, not style.

The Hongkong one has a title 'Tute in da House', put out by the Hongkong Institute of Certified Public Accountants trying to prove number crunchers are not boring and bland. They did wear shades.

It took me two viewings to get that 'Tute' was their idea of 'Institute' in hip-hop. Cham lor, like that.

So, what's next?

MDA's Man Shu Sum, who gave a tap-worthy account of himself, should be loaned to the HKICPA for a movie spoof for next year's video grab.