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Thought leadership in the age of mass-customisation
The narrower your focus, the bigger your audience: it doesn’t sound right, does it? Accustomed to the idea of mass-media, we assume that material with the broadest appeal will be read by the most people. But the internet and social media may invert that relationship: because people can pick and choose what they want to [...]
Lean marketing
Back in 1998, whilst working for the now ailing Japanese electronics giant Sony (whose ailing, I should point out, has nothing to do with my having worked there and everything to do with my having left), I applied for a sales position. Asked to make a presentation to my erstwhile colleagues I duly delivered what I considered to [...]
Can you cross-sell consulting services?
It really is a billion dollar question. One of the most important strategic choices a consulting firm has to make is whether to specialise or diversify. Conventionally, the decision has been driven by size (small firms specialise, big firms diversify): the point at a firm crosses from the first to the second signals its transition [...]
Why the whole consulting world wants to compete with McKinsey
In the course of researching our 2012 Management Consulting Market report we’ve been asking consulting firms how the competitive landscape has changed for them. Specifically, we’ve been asking whether they’re coming up against competitors they haven’t encountered before. In all the conversations I’ve had so far only one consulting firm has ever been mentioned in response [...]
Social media: the medium and the message
Watching yet another presentation from yet another social media expert I’m suddenly overcome by a wave of…something. Is it anger? Well yes, in part. Frankly I’m fed up of the consensus being peddled by people who have set themselves up to profit from these things that if I don’t get with the programme where social [...]
It’s Showtime, folks
The news that American TV company Showtime is launching a new comedy series about management consultants, subtly entitled House of Lies makes for a depressing start to the year for anyone working in the consulting industry. But it’s also a timely reminder that any attempts to improve the image of management consultants in the media [...]
Let your logo do the talking
I’m willing to bet that when the marketing departments of consulting firms sit down with their favourite marketing agency to discuss developing a new logo, there’s one thing that isn’t on their agenda: acquisitions. They’ll discuss all the usual stuff, of course: brand values, the way the logo will look on everything from neon to [...]
Consulting by numbers
Not many of us can claim to have a number named after us, but Robin Dunbar can. He’s the British anthropologist who famously linked the number of stable social relationships in a primate group with the size of part of their brain: the bigger their neocortex, the more relationships they have. Apply that to humans [...]
The questionable benefits of being sociable
Leafing through IBM’s chief marketing officer study, published in the last few days, I was struck by one particular chart which compares the reasons companies think their customers follow them via social media sites and their customers’ actual reasons. Interesting in its own right, it’s also – I’d argue – directly relevant to consulting firms. [...]
The question every consultant should be able to answer
Being an extraordinarily sad person, I spent part of my vacation reading Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. I normally give self-help books a wide berth, but Vanderkam is a journalist, more interested in interviewing people who squeeze a lot out of their week (all 168 hours of it) than [...]
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