Everything Changes

Richard Tatarski is no guiltier than most of us. It’s tough being a kid and perhaps the toughest part is fitting in with the crowd that you would most like to fit in with. My beloved friend and business partner will, with a little prodding, recall for us the whimsical days when he was (in his words) a skater punk. He had a skater mullet and wore skater shirts. I don’t know if he had the requisite footwear or Vision Street Wear, but I am sure that footwear and all other accompaniments fit nicely into the “sk8 or die” brand.

Chicks don’t dig skaters - or at least the type of girls that Richard likes don’t. They wanted a man who wore Z. Cavariccis when Richard was wearing some sort of shorts made by Powell Peralta. The girls wanted a guy who could dance like MC Hammer and properly wear a bolo. While he had some good friends with this crowd, this was not Tatarski one bit, but we all know that fitting in has its dues. The times, they were a-changing, and Tatarski needed to get with it. He needed a costume change.

Abrupt costume changes are important moments for their stark admittance that we are social creatures in need of the security of the pack and the ample fodder to be consumed in the lunchroom, along with corn dogs and Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches. There have been more spectacular costume changes than Richard’s. Our friend Mike went from Lonsdale skinhead in all his 18-hole combat boots and Fred Perry shirt glory to a chinos-and-sweater man literally overnight. The best conversion I’ve ever seen was a different Mike who was the person who finally gave up trying to fit in with the preppies and resorted to a punk rock metamorphosis. This person entered the chrysalis with a seemingly benign accessory (like a wallet chain) and emerged with a spiked Mohawk and a dog collar.

Richard was the reverse. One day he went home a skater. The next day: enter casual Richard. He traded his Corrosion of Conformity shirts for cardigans and drawstrings for those cute little braider belts that, when properly tied, makes an interesting knot that points at the ground. Richard claims he can still achieve this knot although we have yet to locate a properly braided belt on which he can demonstrate.

Richard is candid about his costume change and for a good reason. He made the change in response to real social forces and did, if for only a while, achieve the intended result. Looking back, Richard will tell you he would have preferred to just be himself (which even today is more skater than preppy). However, the reality on the grounds of Duluth Middle School was that the right style got noticed and if you didn’t have that style, you might consider a change.

Today, Richard’s style includes BMW fanatic. Our office regularly receives deliveries of Richard’s Bavarian auto parts and the work day is occasionally accented with the offer to ride in his vintage 2002tii sedan that will make you smell like exhaust. Richard lives the BMW brand. He participates in the discussion groups online about proper tunings and restoration techniques. He can have a lengthy discussion with you about how the handling characteristics found in his 1973 2002tii OR his grey market 1980 525i can be sensed all these years later in a new M5. He went with me to visit Jim Nelems at the Marketing Workshop, not because Jim is a trusted and excellent partner of some consultation projects, but because it was a chance to see Jim’s cherry 635i, M5 or custom M7.

When BMW made a costume change, Richard was crestfallen. He called me and I consoled him, but as time continued we ended up making each other feel worse as we cursed the impending prospect of the ultimate driving machine becoming the ultimate idea machine. Advertising patriarch Pat Fallon would love Richard. In fact, Richard thought Pat and company had him in mind when they developed BMW films, a genius concept that included several short films shot by top directors in which the Bimmer plays a central, but not gratuitous, lead role. We watched the films over and over, salivating over the M5’s cornering in a spot shot by Guy Richie in which his wife (Madonna) wets herself, partially from the fear/exhilaration that only a few hundred horsepower planted and glued to a rail handling can provide.

And then there was a few weeks ago. Richard called me to say he had seen a print ad pitching the Bimmer as some sort of cure for the seven year itch. Now those of you who read me with any regularity know I am not a bit shy about letting my copy shy on the blue side. But this is my car you’re talking about: my 525i which I buffed to a gleaming shine and moisturized the seats with special seat sun tan oil. Don’t mess with my car and don’t ever reference it when discussing a social disease.

For those who don’t know, BMW has undergone perhaps the most watched costume change up until Britney Spears went bald. A feisty little marketing team decided to poke and tease Pat Fallon by calling his work into account, and old Pat responded but opting out of the selection process, ending an era of reinvention, intense distillation and focus of the brand efforts and the profitable sale of many, many, many cars.

But you know how it goes. The new kid comes in and all of a sudden everything that was done is now has-been and if there is little turning around to be done, they’re going to finally get things turned around. I have seen enough of these situations that I feel a little nostalgic just writing about it.

Brands make costume changes. They changes positions and logos and advertising messages. They change for the business’s sake and they change for the sake of changing. They evolve from their past and they forget the past and seem bent on repeating failures. And then repeating failures again. It’s as if one day being the coolest of the skater punks is not good enough and the brand begs mom to take it to the mall to get some topsiders.

The thing about a costume change is that you really have to go all in if you want any chance of success. You can’t be a skin-prep or a skater-jock. It needs to be a whole and holistic change. No easing into it or partial commitment. Jump halfway across a ditch and guess where you’ll end up? Also, there is always the risk that a new peer group will reject you like an organ with the wrong blood type. And then where do you go?

This is an important question for brands. At what point is a costume change necessary, poised for success, required for survival? I wish I had a quick answer, but I don’t. I only have a few suggestions and remember, they are deduced from the fact that Richard Tatarski one day decided to stop wearing shirts with skulls and crossbones on them and instead wear pants that cinch at the waist and cuffs while ballooning at the leg and have the label prominently displayed on the zipper. In other words, my advice or not, change your costume at your own risk.

Before you wear MC hammer pants, make sure MC Hammer pants are really cool.

Hammer pants were a practical joke played on a generation of American youth. The pants looked like giant tribal dresses and because Hammer always wore them shirtless (or perhaps with a small leather vest), no kid from the suburbs was ever going to pull off that look. Instead, most kids looked like a homeless genie with a mullet.

Yet, despite this, how many companies make huge amounts of noise to announce that they are transforming themselves into a brand that seems dated before the ink of the business cards is dry? AT&T is my favorite new example of a company in MC Hammer pants. With its futurist manifesto commercials of bespectacled tech CEOs doing yoga with a cheesy faux-emo theme song, AT&T brings back all the fun memories of the dotcom era, except now you can’t get rich off it. I don’t know that I have ever seen a company that is in business today seem to wish so badly that it was still 1995. Their image is a tour d’flop of everything that’s wrong with yesteryear communication conglomerates. Their insistence to dissolve the brand of Cingular (a solid and inspired brand) and revert to AT&T (a brand synonymous with the worst service and the least concern about customers) is just another example of people aspiring to a heyday that is, like the pants, way out of style. Oh, but they put “the new” in front of AT&T. Yeah, that’ll work.

Why not just love yourself?

I had one particular client who went out on a limb and was rewarded for it. We approached with a gutsy concept, and the client’s courage turned into a wildly successful and award-winning radio campaign. I hate to brag, but we put the pants on a few big agencies with this campaign and at least three other restaurants copied us with blatant rip-offs.

And then, out of the blue, the client wanted a change. Not because sales were down. Not because customers had complained. Not because of old content (we were producing at least two new spots a month). No, it was just change for the sake of change. It was that casual.

Some times change is good. And sometimes change is just change. When Richard decided to change, he had a goal in mind. After all, you don’t subject yourself to the possible merciless taunting of 13-year-olds without a strong motivator. But I have seen and met a few who think change is progress, even if the result is progress towards nothing more than acquisition or bankruptcy. Smart businesses should have a goal and then audit all proposed activities related to a change in the brand. That which furthers a needed change should be kept and that which does not should find a spot next the bolos and Hammer pants at the dump.

Car seat in an IROC.

The opposite of change is what I like to call the car seat in an IROC theorem. On special occasions, Maura and I will venture up to the drug store to get something that doesn’t warrant a trip to the grocery store. The drug store is next to the dollar store, bowling ally and at least one liquor store, thereby elevating the chances that we’ll see someone loading their kids in the back of an IROC-Z. You just know this was their high school car and they probably still have cassette tapes sandwiched between the Kicker subwoofer and the six pack of Zima.

Sometimes you need a change and just don’t know it. This need for change is not limited to just a logo or website. Marketers should be thinking about how the brand applies to the ever-changing consumer and update pitches and messages accordingly.

Perhaps no one should eat more on this message than the folks at Chick-fil-a. The cows were funny at the start, and those of us who have followed the campaign have oooooed and ahhhed with each silly cow antic. But imagine you didn’t have any background on the campaign. Imagine you never saw the effort materialized and evolve, and instead your only introduction is to one group of animals attempting to dodge their impending slaughter by suggesting the slaughter and consumption of another. Don’t you just love it?

Ch-ch-changes.

No situation is better for knowing when, why and how to change than to have a constant ear and eye to the customer. I believe that customers love brands and want a brand to stay relevant to them as they make their way through life. Brands and managers are wise to listen, make relevant and grow with the consumer and their changing wants, needs and desires. A responsive brand commands loyalty and therefore better opportunity for success. Truly, that’s what it comes down to: increasing the opportunity to find success. That’s what we’re in business for. That’s what we plan for, that’s what we pursue.

And that never changes.


Snowden Tatarski is a marketing consultancy based in Athens, Georgia that focuses on the development and implementation strategic marketing plans. The company offers marketing research, marketing strategies, advertising development, media strategy and planning, sales consultation, trade communication strategies and the production of advertising, sales collateral, broadcast and interactive systems and materials. Information online at www.sn-ta.com