Couples Skate Only

Hannah was my grade school girlfriend but she only loved me because I could roller skate backwards. She gave me a necklace that had a little key shaped charm on it and she wore the matching heart with a small section in the shape of the missing key. I lost the key while water skiing in Lake Lanier, but even such a young romance faux pas could overcome the fact that I could roller skate backwards. Having grown up in Virginia Beach, the self proclaimed east coast headquarters for roller skating and skate boarding, I could roller skate with a prowess hitherto unseen in rural Georgia. All the girls were jealous because Hannah and I could face each other while we skated to the slow songs while the other couples had to hold hand side by side much like one did with a parent when they were younger.
Hannah went to another school the following year and we weren’t reunited until years later when we were in high school. While our memories of skating rekindled a brief romance, Hannah had turned into quite a beautiful woman and soon left me on the rink. I heard later that she was caught by her stepfather doing the high school equivalent of skating backwards with a senior football player and was abruptly uprooted and moved to another high school. I learned early that there is no perfect relationship no matter how good you skate.
Sometimes I want to kick myself for not remembering Hannah when it comes to client relations. There I am, out there doing 360s, skating backwards and shooting the duck while the object of my attention is at the snack bar. I’ve had the clients that first really like the idea of skating backwards but then they notice everyone else skating side by side so they chicken out and blend in. I’ve had some clients that think they’re ready to skate backwards, but then decide the skate rental cost too much. I have had a few clients that I’ve had to teach how to skate altogether.
My mentor Bob is a great man. He has never seen me skate, but I know he would be impressed if he did. I have tried out my skating skills in this now older body and despite knocking down the fat kid in the sweat suit who was wearing a helmet, I've still got it. Regardless, I don’t know if Bob skates or if he likes to skate, but I do know that Bob knows about relationships. Bobs knows what I wish I’ve always known and that is the correct management of relationships where all participants win.
The client and marketing/advertising consultant relationship has always been a tenuous one. Unlike the cost-cutting, outsourcing and efficiency management that accounting firms are peddling, marketing consultation is typically about investing in a less-than-sure thing. Sure, the biggest gains a company will ever make are far more likely to be related to marketing than cost savings; however, the sheer idea of betting a dump truck full of money that a product and message are going to connect with the consumer scares a lot of executives right out of their skates.
The need for progress does not care if you’re scared. The option to go hide from the consumer is not really an option at all, and if you don’t take the hills of customers’ affinity, someone will be more than happy to take them from you. Marketing also tends to be more art than hard science. Anytime people and their opinions are involved, the level of uncertainty rises. This rising uncertainty coupled with the often artistic and ethereal discussion put forth by a marketing consultant can create a situation of strain on the client and the relationship. Many in the industry have tried to soothe this discomfort with more open communications and understanding. When that failed, the two would engage in all out combat with marketers demanding to know costing and procedures for all agency processes and the agency/consultants reengineering company process, dissolving in-house efforts, acting as a surrogate marketing department and occasionally demanding a share of the pie when profits come to fruition.
It takes losing a few loves to the seniors before one really knows how to manage relationships. When I asked Bob to write the foreword to Gin, Incense and Deacon Blues, the request came at a time when a particular multi-year relationship needed some refreshing. Bob’s advice made its way into the foreword, but his words so impressed me that I wrote down the concepts and put them in a document we often send to potential and new clients entitled “A Word on Relationships.” The document serves as a manifesto of sorts and helps the client understand our orientation concerning relationships and the correct execution of such for the betterment of business and all involved. And now, for your reading enjoyment, “A Word on Relationships.”
A Word on Relationships.
Business is about relationships. It’s the relationships between companies and consumers. It’s the relationships across the web of interconnectedness between suppliers and vendors and end users. It’s the interpersonal relationships within an organization.
We believe relationships are at their best when they are respectful, caring and beneficial while containing a mutual sense of responsibility and benefit. Many call such a relationship “win-win.” We will simply say it is these types of relationships that we seek to create and maintain with our clients. Relationships which by attention, compensation, respect or any other means dictate that one side of the relationship wins and the other loses are not positioned for long term success. We do our best to avoid them.
We have three points that, when followed by both parties in a relationship, will help make that relationship successful and fruitful.
1) Know each other’s intentions upfront.
People do things in business for a lot of reasons, and these reasons often get cloaked behind pleasantries, protocols and professional images. Eventually, however, these motivations will surface, and the result can be that everyone is not working towards the same goal for the same reason.
Our motivation in the relationships we form is simple. We want to do the best and most effective work at the highest level of our capabilities while being compensated for it fairly. In return we offer our best thinking, best effort and enthusiastic energy in making our shared efforts successful.
2) Make commitments with the intention of fulfilling them.
Be it by potential, compensation or expectation, all companies have been guilty at one time or another of promising more than they can deliver. It is these situations that erode confidence and hinder progress. We have found it is better to discuss and agree upon expectations and deliverables from the outset of the relationship. As new projects are added, those projects should also be fully vetted for expectations for all parties involved.
3) Consistently show value for the relationship.
When a relationship matures, it is common for companies to dismiss the affirmation of the relationship as a formality needed only at inception. We believe that relationships require maintenance. This can mean hearing new perspectives, discussing past efforts, plotting new strategies, adjusting expectations, appreciating evolving roles and insight and the myriad of other activities aimed at keeping relationships strong and productive.
We understand that not all businesses will agree with our views concerning relationships. We do not feel that businesses which do not treat relationships the way we recommend are wrong. We simply have found that our particular business thrives when relationships are respectful through and through.
Making your own word on relationships.
The client/consultant relationship as it pertains to marketing will probably never be smooth sailing all the time, if only for the reason that if both parties had the exact same viewpoint, capabilities and insight, the need for consultation in the first place would diminish. Companies looking to make marketing stardom should seek out consul and partners that they intend to treat like partners instead of vendors.

I had a client who praised us and talked of decades-long relationships only to find that during a photoshoot he was in the next room romancing a competitor. My advice: talk your talk and walk your walk. If you are seedy in the way you deal with your marketing consultants, an individual or group who knows all your secrets, vulnerabilities and whose successful allegiance will by far exceed the performance of any other consultant, if you just must be a snake when it come to working with them, then you have a really big problem looming over your head. Better nip it in the bud now.

Some people’s perspective on successful business relationships is where they win and you lose. Avoid these people. You can bet they have a long list of enemies and disenchanted individual laying in their wake. Some of the best marketing I have other seen was done by somebody who was burned in someway by the rival. Strong strategy and creative fueled by venom in the mouth is not only dangerous for the initial bite, the stamina of a marketer scorned is truly something to behold. They are not content with winning market share. They want total war and full destruction of the adversary. They will not rest in pursuing the adversary until they are at the bankruptcy liquidation sale.

A funny thing I have noticed about the consultant/consulted relationship is that when it works, it really works. Consultants begin to understand the essence of a company so much that they involve themselves in the company’s whole strategy planning and begin to find a place in product development and distribution. The meshing and integration of the two entities erodes outdated and hampering boundaries that impede the seamless communication of enthusiasm for the offering. For one client, we wrote the marketing chapter of their businesses plan to help them get funding for a new endeavor. It was partnership at its best. When things are working, you need to keep them working well.

So, in OJ Simpson trial style, I’ll give you a line to ponder. If it’s a fit, you must commit. If you find that the idea and energy you are receiving from the consultant is the exact recipe to turn around slumping progress, the last thing you want to do is to attempt control by fear. Creative thinkers work best when they are not hampered by the looming doom and threat of severing the relationship. Also, a long term commitment lessens the chance that a correction to an internal problem the consultant may spot will be absconded simply to keep smiles up in the next contract negotiation. So of the worst work I’ve done was because of fear. The client started toying with the contract and we responded by doing whatever they wanted. The creative should have gone right off the desk into the toilet. We help make the client a faux celebrity, a situation he had wanted all along, and the result made even the spot’s editor want to change the channel. Fear makes you do stupid things. If you are in search of stupid things, by all means, motivate your people with fear.

It’s been years, but I don’t feel so far from the skating rink these days. Clients wheeling around in circles and everybody trying to impress them with all sorts of tricks. People will flash by with twists and turns sure to dazzle Brian Boitano and if you’re the client, you may be tempted to skate with the kid who can do a double axle. Just remember the kid who does the double axle does it because of the way it makes him feel when people ooh and ahh. And the kid who skates backwards with you during the slow song? He does it for the way it makes you feel.

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