| | By Mick James
Marketing has always
intrigued me as a
consultancy area. On the
one hand, the marketing
director is simply
another manager who may
or may not need
management consultancy
advice. On the other,
marketing managers face
their own universe of
professional advisers in
the form of PR,
marketing and
advertising agencies.
And many of the business
areas that marketing is
deeply involved with are
crucial to the highest
level of business
strategy.
So we have an area
where agencies, business
consultants and strategy
houses intersect, yet
often appear to operate
in parallel universes,
speaking different
languages and operating
according to their own
disciplines.
For Robert Diamond,
founder and chief
executive of Diametric
Consulting, that point
of intersection is the
“sweet spot” where his
consultancy is
positioned.
“We see the levers of
growth as brand,
consumers and channel,”
he says. “If you operate
at that level, you can
step down into the | |
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| | very complex challenges
of how to achieve growth
in the business,” says
Diamond. “At the same
time the marketing
consulting community
they face is highly
fragmented. If I need to
answer a business
problem – I’m not
selling enough stuff –
where do I go? There are
so many potential
partners.”
The problem is that
each partner will see
whatever their
discipline is as the
answer: ”an advertising
agency will say you need
an ad campaign, but a
business has a lot of
moving parts,” says
Diamond.
Worse, this can
sometimes be accompanied
by a lack of respect for
the all round
professionalism of the
marketing manager.
“We never
underestimate the
marketing manager –
these people do this as
their day job,” he says.
“You must never think
you know more than them.
Their challenge is that
they don’t have the
resources or the
bandwidth to think about
the systemic structural
problems that can step
change their business.
We see ourselves as an
extension of the | |
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| | marketing department –
we can get them where
they want to be faster.”
Diametric’s
broad-based approach
means that they
encounter different
competitors according to
whether the project is
biased towards brand,
consumer or channel
issues.
“Where we work best
is where consumer
behaviour is seen as the
fundamental driver,”
says Diamond. “That is
how we sew together
consumer, brand and
channel. We do get that
with our biggest
clients, but that’s a
case of cause and effect
– it’s what makes them
our biggest clients and
gives us the biggest
impact.”
Delivering this
approach means that
Diametric seeks
individuals with both
broad experience and a
substantial hinterland.
“There are three or
four things we look
for,” says Diamond. “We
want people who are very
academically strong, and
we want people with
specific skills in
brand, channel
management and consumer
analytics. We also want
people with very strong
and relevant experience,
a healthy dollop of | |
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| | which should be on the
client side.”
As a result recruits
tend to come from
backgrounds with such
major commercial names
as Procter & Gamble,
Unilever, Kraft and
Johnson & Johnson.
The main criteria,
though, is what Diamond
calls “commercial
curiosity”.
“We ask people: would
you like to hold three
or four marketing
managers’ jobs in a
week?” he says. “Some
say yes, that would be
very stimulating, others
say no. We don’t take
the view that good
business people become
consultants and bad
business people stay
where they are, but we
are fairly ruthless and
we only hire the best.”
As a result, hiring
good people remains one
of the main constraints
on Diametric’s growth.
“The deal breaker for
us is the personality
fit,” he says. “We have
a very strong culture –
it doesn’t mean
everybody is the same –
but the clincher for us
is that commercial
curiosity.”
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