This morning I went to meet one of the directors of a well established UK brand. It's been a bastion of the maritime transport industry for centuries, and the oil paintings, which you cannot fail to miss when you emerge from the office lift, scream history and heritage at you.
The reason we met with this gentleman was that his company has been bought by a massive Middle East construction operation, for whom we do a sizeable amount of digital work, and by whom his company and brand is about to be subsumed.
We're tasked with managing the digital subsumption (is that a word?) project.
There was one very touching moment when I asked, gently, if I'd be right in thinking that his colleagues would be sad at this history being erased from their plot of cyberspace. His expression and the timbre of his voice immediately told me three things:
1. Yes, this was a sore point, and a genuinely emotional moment in their history;
2. We had established a connection - I was no longer solely on the side of the bastard subsumer (again, no idea of this word exists);
3. I knew now exactly how to approach the brief.
By contrast to the perfunctory introductory handshake, I received a warm and heartfelt farewell.
1 comment:
Your perceptiveness is one of the reasons you are an extremely good planner (in my humble opinion). As is your emotional intelligence.
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