Great relationships don’t usually start well but talking about issues, listening to each other without being dominating, and seeing things from each other’s perspective without age, expertise, or superiority barrier, could be a great start
EVERYONE knew Fiona and I had a relationship that transcends the office space. It was beyond a boss and/or colleague relationship, it was more of a journey of building trust, and confidence, and seeing ourselves as sisters, not co-workers.
But hey, we didn’t start like that.
Before Fiona joined Ogilvy Nigeria from Kenya, she came in for the Coca-Cola briefing session and led the brainstorming session with all other agencies for three days at Wheatbaker in Ikoyi. I saw her at her best and kept asking myself if I had what it takes to work with this brilliant and confident woman.
She had her worries too. She has heard so much about Nigerians, and as a Nigerian who was born and trained in the UK, she was worried if I would be easy to work with – even when Seni told her “You will really like Teju”
Coming from a smaller agency, I was trained in almost every aspect of the advertising profession, client service, copywriting, strategy, project management, media planning & monitoring, and a bit of designing. My first nine years in the advertising agency gave me the opportunity to learn it all and I believed that it is normal to take a project from briefing to execution. End – to End!
I soon realised I was wrong! Fiona couldn’t comprehend it when I offered to do anything while we were short-staffed. She always screamed “You can’t do it, we need to employ someone who specialises in that” and my response was always “Yes, but while we are looking, what happens to the work on the ground?”
I always love her look and response when I say that! She groans and says, “foolish girl!”
Through it all, we had our ups and downs. It took almost a year before we were able to take the relationship beyond work. Our breaking point was when we had to deal with a crisis with a staff sitting in a major global client’s office.
We always had issues with this intermediary staff that was hired to sit in our major client’s Nigerian office. It’s a system structure that works well globally with this client but here in Nigeria, we hired someone who lost focus, aligned totally with the client, and wanted to be treated like a client. It was total chaos, and we were always at war via mail.
Those were the days I wasn’t emotionally intelligent, and I would call the person out in emails and copy all the clients just so they knew who they were dealing with. The agency’s understanding of what to do always changes at every meeting this ‘staff’ attends with only us, and when the client bashes us for working on the wrong thing or presenting ‘rubbish’ our sit-in personnel was always ready to throw us under the bus.
To be fair to Fiona, she was always copied in my emails with the sit-in personnel (because there was always a denial) and the tone of the emails was really fiery. Most times, she jumped on the mail to say “You guys need to stop and sort this out now!” It was that bad, and there was no pretense on both sides.
I had a great relationship with the real clients and when things got really bad, my strategy was to speak with the brand managers, marketing manager, procurement, and even the media manager directly. And when there is a need to send an email, I just put our sit-in personnel on the copy. Again, Fiona was not having it. I have to go through the sit-in personnel to liaise with the client because that is the structure.
One day in Fiona’s office we were discussing a project and I told her the client briefed me by mail and calls and also told me to ignore what the sit-in personnel had briefed because that wasn’t from him – I reached out to the personnel to sort the details out with the client so that we know what exactly to work with, but the response was that the agency should not do what the client briefed in. I was at a crossroads because the project was only three days away and we hadn’t even started posting anything on social media to announce the event!
My boss told me to sort it out and make sure I found a way to work with the personnel amicably, to which I responded “But you know I have tried everything, this person lies and denies everything when the client is pissed with us, and every time I check with the client, the story is always totally different. I really don’t know what else to do. I am really frustrated, Fiona”
She lost it. Fiona screamed and said “I am not going to sit here and tell you how to do your job or do your job for you. It’s your f**king job, do it, Teju!” I felt my world collapsed on me. I was looking for hope, advice, consolation, anything but that reaction. I can’t remember any day I hated my job more than that day. I felt my heart was ripped off and I couldn’t control the tears.
Do you know how you feel when you are taking the heat and blame when you are actually the victim? Yes, that feeling of hopelessness and helplessness.
The most painful part of it was that it happened in the presence of someone and that made it more humiliating. I said “thank you” walked to the toilet, cried my heart out, and washed my face, then walked into my office and started cracking jokes and continued working as if nothing happened.
Ten minutes later, my boss stepped out of her office to the stairway and called me on the phone to invite me for coffee outside the office. We discussed our issues over a cup of coffee without holding anything back. It dawned on us that we could make a great team and achieve more if we were indivisible and formidable. We made up and moved on to the next work without ill feelings.
I was vindicated a few weeks later when Fiona also got frustrated with the lies and called out the personnel in a mail to the client.
Great relationships don’t usually start well but talking about issues, listening to each other without being dominating, and seeing things from each other’s perspective without age, expertise, or superiority barrier, could be a great start.
- Olateju Ogunyomi is a Marcoms professional and behavioral analyst. She left Ogilvy Nigeria in 2020 to start her own agency. She is an APCON member, was a member of the AAAN Women in Advertising committee, and the AAAN Event Committee. She is a member of the Project Management Institute and the UK chapter, was the Business Development Director for Aspora Nigeria Limited, an integrated Communications, Strategy, and Consultancy agency she co-founded, and is currently the Brand Director/SBU lead at First Katalyst Marketing.
