| | 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 accountability | |
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| | 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 market
research we’re in big | |
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| | 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 Billetts, the
office joke was “David’s | |
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| | 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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