| | By Mick James
One of the biggest
success stories in
consulting in recent
years has been the
emergence of niche
consultancies that have
quickly grown to
critical mass and gained
the ability to match
even the biggest
consultancies in terms
of expertise and
capabilities.
Not all niches are
equally easy though, and
marketing is a
particularly tough one
to get the consultancy
message across in. Not
only does it have its
own highly developed and
heterogeneous service
industry, it’s one in
which many of the
potential buyers seem
quite happy with the
adage that 'Half the
money spent on
advertising is wasted,
but no-one knows which
half'.
“One marketing
executive said to me, if
this project proves my
advertising doesn’t
work, I’d rather not do
it,” says David Bridges,
CEO of Billetts
Marketing Sciences. “A
marketer’s CV boasts
about how much money has
been spent, not how much
has been saved.”
BMS is part of the
Billetts Group, which
has a long track record
in marketing | |
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| | accountability and
helping clients get
value-for-money out of
their media spend.
Billetts Marketing
Sciences’ focus is on
improving the
effectiveness of that
spend.
“The challenge is to
get some insight into
how marketing causes
translate into business
effects,” says Bridges.
In the past companies
might have been content
to allocate marketing
budgets on faith, but
now he says he’s seeing
a “mindshift”.
“In the effectiveness
arena we have this
debate,” he says. “If
you don’t understand how
effective the marketing
is, does that help you
get budget or lose it? A
big piece of work we do
now is budget allocation
across brands – in the
past that’s been all
about horse-trading, and
very little about
factual decisions. We
help people make
apples-to-apples
comparisons that help
them decide where to
invest to get the best
returns.”
Bridges is conscious
that at first glance
this work might be
confused with the
services offered by
market research firms.
“In many ways if
we’re lumped in with | |
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| | market research we’re in
big trouble,” he says.
“Market research gets
the response ‘that’s
interesting’ and that’s
the last thing you want
to hear in this
business. The simple
differentiation is that
market research is
insight, our work is
insight into action.”
Rather than assess
campaigns after they are
over, BMS works with its
clients during campaigns
in a “do-learn-do” cycle
that allows for
continuous improvement
rather than a post
mortem.
The goal is to move
marketing from a “dark
art” to a fact-based
discipline. Bridges
says: “The founder of
the company, John
Billett, sold me this
vision of marketing:
that if you were to try
and construct some
metric that measured the
level of spend against
the level of
accountability marketing
would be off the end of
the scale.”
Marketers
increasingly need to
create a case for
investment, and in so
doing can only enhance
their credibility with
the board – which is
currently pretty low,
Bridges believes. When
he left Deloitte
Consulting to join | |
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| | Billetts, the office
joke was “David’s going
off to grow a ponytail”.
This kind of attitude
to marketing is insane
given the sums involved,
Bridges says. “RHM came
to a conference and they
said: ‘Why is this
important to us? Look at
the P&L and you’ll see
that our single biggest
line item is trade
promotional spend. How
do we get value for
money out of that? How
do we use it to grow the
brand?’”
At the moment this
market is wide-open –
Bridges counts “internal
lethargy” among the
firm’s biggest rivals.
Accenture recently
entered the market with
the purchase of
Billetts’ closest
competitor which was
immediately rebranded
“Accenture Marketing
Sciences”.
“When that was
announced people asked
us if we were bothered
about that, but I said
‘no, it’s good’ – if
people are adding to the
noise then it’s got to
be good.”
Current plans for BMS
are to continue to
cross-sell into the
wider client base of the
Billetts Group, and to
expand the footprint in
Europe and the US. The
recent purchase of the
group by a PLC, Thomson | |
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| | Intermedia, has
increased the resources
available for growth.
However, Bridges says
that this will always
depend on finding the
right people – the
company recruits from
industry as well as the
consultancies, and will
also look at highly
numerate graduates with
a passion for marketing:
“At the moment we’re
trying to get someone
from a consultancy or a
FMCG who really
understands trade
promotions and also has
analytic and
presentation skills –
the two don’t always go
hand in hand,” he says.
Even with the “deeper
pockets of the plc”
behind them, BMS is not
going to pursue growth
at all costs. With 95%
of its business coming
from former clients,
Bridges is confident
that they can win
clients and hold onto
them:
“We’ve always been
demand-led,” he says.
“I’ve never taken the
‘Field of Dreams,
if-you-build-it-they-will
-come’ approach.”
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