It’s a fair question-forgive me for answering one with another-

In the past when you’ve interviewed agencies for different projects, what was the vibe you got from the other side of the table?

Did you sense a genuine concern for your company and the issues you were facing? A desire to connect with your culture and begin building a lasting partnership to the benefit of both parties? An understanding of your uniqueness in the marketplace? Perhaps coupled with some insight on how best to utilize it to interact with potential customers? Or was it simply a “how do we convince these people to give us the business and how much will we make on the deal” kind of vibe?

If you’re new to Group23, you should know that we’re shooting for the former rather than the latter-for so many reasons that really strike at the core of why we exist in the first place. If we don’t think the business relationship is a good fit, we’ll tell you up front. If grabbing a beer together after work doesn’t sound appealing, maybe we should both keep looking. The phrase “It’s only business” is usually code for “we took advantage of you, but it’s your own fault for not paying attention” and it has no place in what we do or why we do it.

So what am I really trying to say here? How about that at Group23 we truly feel that the client-vendor dynamic is a partnership in every sense of the word. We’ve all seen those relationships derailed by a focus on short-terms gains, and one of our stated goals is to do all we can to avoid those outcomes. We’re just naive enough to feel that your success should be our primary goal, and if we can help you achieve that objective then business will take care of itself.

I had a really interesting meeting a couple of weeks ago with a long-time client that gave my world view (business-wise, at least) a bit of a shake. We’d been discussing some long-term web and branding strategies that were long overdue in my mind. We talked about brand consistency over several different mediums, streamlined UI for the various web properties that owned, and how (to our way of thinking) there were tremendous opportunities ripe for the taking. “How so?” he asked without batting an eye. (In hindsight, this is where the little alarms began going off in my head-I of course ignored them and plowed on ahead)

I spoke of the importance of a focused brand-consistent logo, colors, fonts, etc, etc to more firmly fix the company and product in the public’s eye. (The Coca-Cola logo is a great example as it’s instantly recognizable to a sizable percentage of the world’s population, even if it’s written in ancient Sanskrit) I went on to talk about the importance of providing proper web metrics, how many unique visitors, entrance/exit points, search terms, referrals, SEO, SEM, banner ads, and on and on in reference to the web properties.

“Of course you’d say this” he interjected. “It’s your business. You’re assuming that those things are connected to how much business we do.” His tone made it crystal clear that at that moment, in his eyes I was just a salesman blindly pushing his product with a practiced script. My brain quickly turned this over-of course a focused brand is important, fixing his websites would improve web traffic and streamlining the UI would improve his bottom line, just because it happens to be a part of our business doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

In my enthusiasm I’d forgotten two very important things, the first being that the man on the other side of the table owned 2 (3?) more Ferraris than I did, had been doing this for a long time, and was quite possibly one of the 5 most intelligent people I knew. He had considered all of this before, and I was not the first person to raise these topics with him. The second thing I’d forgotten was my Hume.

David Hume was the 18th century philosopher who was one of the first to point out that what we call “causes” are really strange bits of knowledge. If we do x and y happens, then x is responsible for the change in vector. Hume pointed out that causes are not facts, but a “lively conception produced by habit”. Put another way, we use them as mental shortcuts to make sense of what we experience. Nothing wrong with this as it helps us with all manner of activities and enables us to create some technological marvels. Things start to fall apart when dealing with really complex systems however. “Identical” twins may be genetic duplicates, but they are certainly not duplicate people. Despite billions of dollars in technology and decades of research, a forecasted sunny weekend turns into a blizzard. A sedative that was supposed to help cure morning sickness caused birth defects instead. Couple the reality that “causes” are not facts with a person or entity who’s financial situation is vested in proving their own value and it’s no wonder that this client (who knows his Hume backwards and forwards) was skeptical of my not-so polished claims. (Continued next week in Part 2)