Heal Thyself

I am the child of a teacher, and that has a lot of influence on how one grows up. For my mom, everything is a lesson. As my peers were eating mud pies and burning ants with a magnifying glass, I was learning how and why vegetables grow in garden and the secret lives of all the creatures that inhabited it. When you have a parent who is a teacher nothing is sacred. My toy soldiers, a staple of male youth since the iron or at least the plastic age, fell victims line after line to my mother, who made them little parachutes out of napkins and sewing string to illustrate how air resistance allowed them to float effortlessly down from the window above the garage to the landing zone in the driveway.



So it is without surprise that every summer came with a major lesson and objective. One summer was spent in summer school in order to skip a level of math the following year. One summer was spent caring for my baby brother while mom taught summer school. And one summer, early in high school, my mom offered that I learn scuba or lifeguarding at the local YMCA. A two week stint at the local fast food joint was all it took to convince that I needed a better job, perhaps one that involved less grease.



I was a decent wrestler in high school and was hardly concerned with the physical requirements of the class. Our first night we huddled next to the pool as we received the instructions for our workout. Five hundred yards, divided between the front crawl with head out of the water, a modified backstroke and the side stroke. My classmate dove right in and it was about then I realized I could not swim. That’s not accurate. I could swim but not like these kids. Most of them were from the class instructor’s swim team. They flew through the water with ease. I thrashed like bulldog pulling a small raft full of cats. Having ear infections, tubes and a botched surgical procedure from a dentist posing as an ear surgeon (yes, I’m serious) when I was young, I spent most of my childhood on the side of the pool while my brothers swam. The lack of pool time kept me from learning a decent swimming stroke. It was not pretty. But I was not deterred. Some coaching from mom and a lot of hard work and I taught myself to swim. And I must have been a good instructor, because I eventually rose to teach swimming and then lifeguarding for the YMCA.



The situation in which I learned to swim still makes me laugh. I remember teaching advanced swimming at Simpsonwood United Methodist Retreat outside Atlanta and telling my students stroke correction, only to be reminding myself the same corrections in my own laps. I did not have the benefit of a long youth of swimming and therefore much of what I preached, I was still very cognizant to practice.



My professional practice has been little different, as I often find the things I become most interested in regarding marketing and communications were absconded from efforts by many of those with or for whom I have worked. My only solace was to retreat to the study of the hordes of scholars, practitioners and consultants who screamed at the top of their lungs for the need for strategy. People like Jack Trout, Al Ries and John Steele, and Publications like Harvard Business review. All warn of the perfect storm that will arise when burgeoning consumer choices, a marketing industry more concerned with the myriad of tactics rather than core strategies and the thunderbolts of change striking the media landscape will all collide in a spectacular implosion.



The thing about teaching yourself something is that you have got to know what you don’t know, you know? You need to recognize where there may be more information or knowledge or experience. Unless you can appreciate that the answer may lie elsewhere, you will never go look for it and assume that what is at hand is all that exists and is therefore right. I hate the idea of stagnation in business, but I also appreciate the comfort that might come with predictability. Some people are doing the same things they’ve always done - like a particular ad placement, trade show or format for presentation simply because they’re comfortable with it and it doesn’t seem broke. Some people would call this not fixing what’s not broke. I have a slightly different view articulated by my friend Charlie. It doesn’t matter if you are on the right track if you’re not moving. You’ll still get run over by the train.



This newsletter is not as much me trying to teach you something as it is me trying to illustrate to you that my partner and I are teaching ourselves something. We’re diagnosing our own problems. We’re correcting our own backstroke. We are, in the very essence, trying to heal ourselves.



Years ago, when we founded this firm, it was in response to what agencies were not providing. As many firms chased down new tactics to fill billing gaps in a client’s budget, they left a gaping hole in the place where strategic counsel was supposed to be. Firms are more concerned on being able to absorb billings for direct marketing, interactive, advertising, public relations and event planning all on the same bill that they have ignored to core problem of constructing a central and powerful core strategic plan. They have, in a sense, become a collection of tactics with no strategy. Like an arsenal of weaponry with no idea where to march, shoot, take cover or take over. As they reach to offer more varied service, the hole deepens and brands are taking the brunt of it.



We intend to fill that hole.



I lecture my clients on doing what they do best and communicating such in a thoughtful way. I teach my clients to marry the consumer need with the offering in a way that consumer’s can spot the connection. I tell my clients to focus. And now Richard and I are telling ourselves the very same.



Welcome to a new concentration of problem solving, ideas and actual solutions. Welcome to a new firm that will focus on solving the strategy problem before all else. Welcome to a new Snowden Tatarski.



For some this won’t seem like much of a change. We’ve always talked about the need for a strategy above all else. For others it will seem abrupt, as they have used our service to carry out the various tactics without having a unified core competitive plan. For us it is and will be a series of ideas, ideals, beliefs and guiding principles. Because this is an organic change, I hope you will forgive any rough edges as we make this transition more succinct and harmonious. The following are some concepts which are at the forefront of our minds as we make this important transition.



We are not an advertising agency. We do not and will not constrain ourselves to the tactic of advertising, nor do we retail media in an agency format. We are a marketing consultancy, and while we will create advertising and advise on media planning as it pertains to strategic marketing, we will not put the fresh wine of a new approach in the old skins of a less relevant and outdated format.


We believe strategy is central to whether an effort is successful or not. Tactics are not strategy and campaigns which are not united in voice, message and selling proposition are not functioning at an optimum. If you cannot clearly articulate your overarching brand strategy in less than 30 seconds, you do not have one.


We are located in a seat of knowledge. Ad agencies are in Atlanta where they can be near competitors and a fabulous new martini bar. We are in Athens next to one of the nation’s most respected and prolific academic institutions with which we have a strong partnership. We are a company which provides the thoughtful resolution of marketing dilemmas; therefore we consider the vast resource of the University of Georgia and its world-renowned faculty to be an asset few can match.

We are a small company. Ad agencies have teams of people who hurriedly run about carrying faxes and video tapes and lattes and they can show what each of these people are doing right on your bill. It does not take a keystone army to solve a marketing problem. We maintain a core group of consultants in residence and in affiliation, including a consultant with 25 years in travel and hospitality, one with 30 in packaged goods, one with 15 years in technology and manufacturing, one with 25 years in food services and one with 35 years and several degrees in marketing research. We also maintain close relationships with filmmakers, music producers, interior designers, event planners and all the other tactical people who can make a good strategy a great result.




I hope you will take a second to view our website at www.sn-ta.com. On it you will find information about our new focus and existing qualifications, many case studies about strategies we created that drive businesses and information on how you can contact us to chat. I am sorry that this newsletter may come off as more of a solicitation than the typically weekly fodder; however, those of you who reply every week with insights and suggestions have become a sort of peer review and I relish the learning I get from so many of you.



And that makes this newsletter and this new focus of our firm important. The learning we get and give to each other increases our collective abilities and therefore propensity for individual and mutual success. The more we teach each other, the more we teach ourselves.

Let it grow

This is the year we decided to fight back. When Maura and I bought our current house we were happy to get a decent sized piece of land while still being close enough to downtown for my occasional cycle to work. 1.59 acres might not seem like much until you mow it. Never the less, we think it’s plenty big for us. When we bought it however, nearly a tenth of the property was covered in kudzu. Living in Georgia most of my life, I have only recently had to tell someone what kudzu is. For those of you not familiar, here’s my description:

Kudzu is a green sewer rat with leaves. It is a parasite of a vine that grows a foot a day (no joke) and wraps itself around trees, trailers, satellite dishes (yes, the big ones) and many other places that country teens go to make out. It will grow over top of, wrap around and strangle the life out of your trees. It is a dastardly vine made even more repulsive with the local transplants who’ve had some sick infatuation for the leafy invader and who have taken to letting the kudzu overtake their hovels.

So, the kudzu took over a portion of the yard that was too uneven for the mower and in an area that the former residents saw fit to litter with bricks, rebar, beer bottles, coils of metal wire and if I eventually find one of those canisters with a zombie in it (like from the Return of the Living Dead movie) I can’t say I’ll be that surprised. My grandmother would politely describe the way this part of the yard was kept as “rustic”.

Maura and I were not and are not content with sacrificing this portion of the yard so we worked up a plan of attack. Napalm was too expensive and the barrel wouldn’t fit in my Subaru so instead we decided to mow it, hoe it and till it until we could make the jungle wasteland into our garden. Now you must know I am a man who must have the right tools for the job even if I don’t really intend on doing the job. We have the mower and the hoe (no jokes). What I didn’t have was a tiller.

For those who don’t know the whimsical intricacies that separate tillers, let me be the first to welcome you to the machine. A tiller comes in two sizes. There are the ones that barely work and are best suited for tilling a potted plant. These tillers can be gas or electric and cost about $300. Then there are the real tillers. These tillers have rear, counter-rotating tines, brush guards and run on gas or plutonium. These kudzu devouring monsters cost more like $800. Knowing my love of tools and toys, Maura has me on a strict budget and without divulging my toy budget; I’ll just tell you that if I showed up with an $850 tiller, I’d have to return the new digital camera to the store.

So one day on an errand, Tatarski and I were wandering through the Sears and I wandered over to the lawn and garden department. I explained my dilemma to the sales associate and he made a recommendation: rent a big tiller and do the yard once. Then, buy a small tiller for maintenance. I didn’t want to say that I would be embarrassed if the neighbors saw me with the “kiddy” tiller. I walked off and sulked in spirit of those regulated to paying kudzu a land tax. I moped around to see what other fun lawn toy could lift my spirits when low and behold; I came upon the biggest, meanest, knarliest tiller Sears sells with a price tag of $207. “What’s wrong with it” I asked the associate. “Nothing” he said. “This happens every year, somebody buys a tiller, does their yard and returns it to the store”. I asked Tatarski to keep his hand on it while I checked out. I wasn’t letting somebody sneak in and get between me and kudzu-destroying bliss.

The next weekend was everything I dreamed it would be. Maura and I scalped the area with a small push mower then we hacked the kudzu at its roots with a hoe and machete (everyone should have one). Finally, I roared out with the tiller like a drunken funny car driver and digested the kudzu into a rich, beautiful garden. All the while I was grinding away at this scourge of a plant, once praised and encouraged for its erosion combating traits, I was thinking; good strategy is like a good tiller. And I have a good tiller.

Business opportunity is out there but you’ve got to till it up. Its not just going to sit their on the surface without someone else to come along and get it before you do. I know. There’ll be rocks and beer cans and the occasional discarded badminton net that gets wrapped around your tines, but a good tiller can power through all of that and leave you standing on fertile soil. I'll stretch the metaphors just as far as I can before they break so put your hat on and pull your boots up. Let’s do some yard work.

Get the right equipment.

If you fully understand the task to be undertaken, you will be better equipped to choose a wise strategy. Or tiller. Knowing what you’re getting into can help you do a thorough job of choosing what resources and efforts you’re going to need to be successful. A funny thing about providing resources for efforts is that investing half of what it takes to be successful does not yield half successful results. Had Maura and I bought one of those junior tillers we would not have done a half good job. The job would have never gotten started as the ground and kudzu would have been too much for the pint-sized effort.

Only when a company fully appreciates the pervasiveness and competitive advantage afforded by a good strategy can the adequate appropriations of resources and efforts be made.

I doesn’t matter how big the tiller is if you’re not willing to walk behind it.

A common misconception is that when a strategy is adopted or initiated that it needs no further care. This is untrue. Strategies have an uncanny knack of drifting which sets up an even worse situation than before. Managers will blame the strategies without seeing or acknowledging the drift. The result is total loss of the value of what might have been a great idea simply because the people carrying it out did not understand and the person who should have been following behind the tiller left it to go on its own to run over the garden hose.

Every time you till it correctly it gets easier.

The way things were always done can be a stubbornly dense layer of soil riddled with the remnants of failed efforts and the intertwined vines of bad ideas and bad intentions. My advice is: don’t be timid if you are looking to create fruitful ground. Get in and bust it up. Cut vines; throw out the useless junk that’s not part of a thriving garden.

Good strategies are pervasive. Turn up the soil now and it will be easier every time you need to do it again. You never know; the ideas, opportunities and staff you wish to cultivate might begin to blossom in an atmosphere that breaks up some soil and works some fresh nutrients into the mix every so often.

You reap what you sow.

I am constantly surprised how many business tasks plunge headlong into efforts and budgets without the correct amount of preplanning. Just like the garden, everything in marketing does not thrive equally across geographies, seasons and degrees of attention. Treat your tomatoes like your cucumbers and you’ll be substituting pickles for tomatoes in your salad.

Growing business from strategy takes patience and good old-fashioned hard work. There will always be a tough row to hoe, the occasional intruding vine but then again, there’s the situation when you look up one day and see everything begin to bloom. Be smart and nature will work with you. Put a good strategy to work and you never know what you might grow.