| | By Mick James
I’m always bemused
when I see consultants
advertise on television.
The results are nearly
always clever and
well-produced, but what,
I wonder, are they
trying to achieve.
Latest to indulge is
IBM, with a series of
Blackadder-ish adverts
featuring Sir Arthur and
his Round Boardroom
Table. Modern
businessman Sir Arthur
and his cohorts are
suddenly transformed
into a medieval court,
their problems of
commoditisation and poor
staff retention
transformed into the
spells of evil witches
and wizards. Ignoring
the calls of consultant
Ned to build a giant
catapult to throw money
at the problem or
commission a white
paper, Sir Arthur
decides to retain IBM
Business Consulting.
Now all this is great
fun, but what is IBM
saying here? You don’t
have to have majored in
deconstruction at the
Sorbonne to detect the
subtext that clients are
a little backward if not
positively backward in
their thinking. Nor does
it really address IBM’s
branding issues—one of
which is that, despite | |
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| | find this otherwise
intelligent writer
dismisses consultants as
purveyors of
“gimcrackery and
gobbledygook”. I thought
this a bit rich coming
from a man who is happy
with words like
“epigone” and
“chiliastic” but
considers “benchmarking”
to be impenetrable
jargon.
But does any of this
matter? Columnists and
the general public are
not huge consumers of
consultancy. Most
businesses, on the other
hand, now have some
experience of working
with consultants, or at
least employ
ex-consultants. There
are doubtless refuseniks
who’ve never used
consultants (and
probably never will) but
are they such a
lucrative market that we
need to spend hundreds
of thousands of pounds
making the case for
consultancy in
advertising breaks?
I’m not sure that I
believe that the
consumer-style
advertising that
consultancies indulge
in, whether on TV,
billboards or national
TV, is that great a
source of new business.
If you doubt this, then | |
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| | (in return for a
suitable donation to
charity) please feel
free to use this highly
sophisticated
questionnaire on your
clients and prospects:
I employed my last
consultants because:
A: They had this
terrific ad on the TV
B: They came out top
of a balanced scorecard
exercise in which we
carefully evaluated all
the leading players,
taking up references and
going through an
extensive series of
interviews and
presentations
C: A bloke down the
golf club said they were
good
In my view
consultancy advertising
is like an iceberg.
There’s a visible,
client-facing top
section that is quite
attractive, but the bit
that does the damage is
the nine-tenths which is
underwater. That’s the
branding that the
consultancy does, not
with clients, but with
recruits. The right
recruits – whether
you’re acquiring a top
partner with a bulging
contact book, or
poaching an entire team | |
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| | with a roster of happy
clients –¬ will bring
the business in faster
than any amount of
advertising.
Branding to recruits
needn’t be at the
expense of promoting
oneself to clients. Just
look at the current ads
the British Army is
running. These ads are
clearly entirely aimed
at recruits, but they
also manage to give the
impression that taking
on the British Army is
not something you’d do
lightly. I heartily
recommend any large firm
to rip this campaign off
immediately (as long as
you don’t go too far and
make yourself look
silly).
Unfortunately,
recruiters seem to be
pretty low down the
pecking order when it
comes to tapping into
global advertising
budgets. You can imagine
the response – “we’re
not spending all that
money just to recruit a
few people”. To which
the only response can
be: “What else have we
got, other than our
people?”
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