Marketing

By Edward Haigh.

Want something done? Establish a clear set of objectives, set aside a budget, pull a team of people together, and let them get on with it. Unless, that is, you’re dealing with the marketing department of a consulting firm.

Earlier this year, marketers and their bosses in around 30 consulting firms were kind enough to give us their views on a variety of issues about marketing. It was an important exercise because consulting firms are indeed setting aside very sizeable amounts of money for marketing and pulling together armies of people to spend it. What the results show, though, is that the one thing consulting firms aren’t doing is letting them get on with it.

Consulting projects don’t emerge out of nothing. Unlike the universe, there’s not a vast expanse of emptiness in clients’ minds into which pops—miraculously—the idea for a new project. No: clients’ minds are teeming with life. But much of what’s swimming around is at an early stage of evolution, singled-celled organisms if you like. So what takes an amoeba and turns it into a fully-fledged consulting project, and what role can marketing play in that process?

There are really three evolutionary stages we need to think about.

By Fiona Czerniawska.