The lead sentence of Grokking Republicans brought a wistful smile.
“Mitt Romney deliberately inverted...Makers and Takers...” it reads, and therein lies a marketing tale. Not a successful one; who cares about them? You learn from mistakes, not successes, right?
Awhile back, a client of 15 years asked my firm for advice. Their prospect client base was becoming more and more elusive. The demographic was very niche, very specific—an almost exclusively Jewish-owned legacy garment manufacturing customer. Altacockers whom my client, a boutique M&A firm was dragging reluctantly into the 21st century.
The business reality was that their once thriving industry; their blood, sweat and tears family enterprises and business methods had become as obsolete as petticoats. There was no way they could compete with overseas (read: Asian) cost and labor practices.
If this seemed duh-simple to anyone in the late 90s-aughties, imagine my clients’ consternation. As much time, energy and money as they’d thrown into advertising and PR, as much broadcasting in everything from the trades to the WSJ about this obvious inevitability, this irreversible reality—this impending doom—my clients were having trouble getting to first base with a very lucrative hold-out market.
And by “lucrative,” selling body parts was the first image that came to mind to the crusty immigrant owners resisting. They’d given lifeblood building empires they were now told to abandon, dismantle and sell for nickels on the dollar. It meant little to them every minute’s delay gnawed at that nickel. Money wasn’t the product; that wasn’t what their pride and joy sprang from. Money was the byproduct. Respect is what they’d earned and before you touched a stitch of their business, show some.
See, now I’ve whipped myself into a Capraesque froth. Which was perfectly appropriate to target sensibilities. So I wrote a “Makers & Takers” whitepaper to my client reminding them of those sensibilities, from Minsk nobodies to manufacturing mavens by dint of moxie no blue-blooded Wall Street banker had the slightest inkling of, least offer to lend them a penny. To gain sales rapport I advised, it is well to remember this paradigm of makers and takers and for God’s sake, don’t come off like the latter, lest “M&A” read Murderers and Assassins.
Not in those words, but the gist. None of it was stuff they didn’t know—the company after all was second and third generation Jews well familiar with the tale. But they exalted the reminder. Lively discourse and renewed focus was reported; I even recall the term “rabbi” tossed my way, which was meshuggah flattery.
Remember the scene in “Jerry Maguire”—the ebullient welcome the whole company of shark agents gave him for his heartfelt mission statement? Remember the scene after? —Yep.
Not that it was ceremonious excision, just a slowly atrophying business relationship.
Footnote for MBA autodidacts: The imperative follow-up; a 10 or 20-point walk-through of talking points, emotional leverage strategies, jargon does & don’ts, pivot opportunities, etc. was not neglected, but simply restored to my briefcase. Upon being escorted into the CEO’s corner office and seeing his prominently autographed photo of Dick Cheney, I couldn’t—I just couldn’t. I’m sure they didn’t want for the data anyway.