The role of the consulting brand: it’s not what you are, but what you do

By Fiona Czerniawska

40% of senior executives say that a firm’s overall brand has a significant impact on their opinion about the firm, and a further 43% say it has some bearing. That makes brand more important in clients’ eyes than everything except the quality of people they meet and the results a firm delivers. Some countries (the US, the Gulf region) are more influenced by brand than others (the Nordics, the UK); so are some sectors (retail, energy and resources). Finance executives worry more about it than HR directors, presumably because so much of the consulting work bought by the former is tied up with regulatory change, so that’s not something you usually give to an unknown firm.

Our research shows that the importance of brand also varies by type of firm. Looking at our global data (on 16 of the largest firms, collected from more than 900 senior executives in a variety of major consulting markets), the proportion of clients who say that brand has a significant impact ranges from 48% to just 20% (of course there are many more who say it has some impact, but we’re going to ignore those here). As our chart shows, brand is most important for specialists, reasonably important for strategy firms, less important for the Big Four, and really not at all for mid-sized generalists.

What this tells us is that brand, in the consulting industry at least, is important when it tells us what a firm does. So it’s important for specialists (they do what it says on the tin), but it’s much less important for mid-sized generalists because their brands don’t help people understand what services they provide. Brand is in fact a double-edged sword for strategy firms: the fact their labels are ineluctably associated with strategy makes it harder for them to be credible in other areas. The same is true for technology firms. The Big Four sit closer to the mid-sized generalists: clients know the Big Four do everything, and their brands don’t help them understand where the firms’ real strengths lie.

Tempting though it is to compare consulting brands with consumer products brands, I think this data suggests that the two are fundamentally different. If I buy a handbag (it’s been known), I can compare the physical characteristics. Do I like the colour? Will my laptop fit into it? Being a fairly utilitarian person, I think about that before I think about brand, but there are plenty of other people who’ll start with the brand and work from there. My point is that none of us handbag-buyers need the brand to tell us what the bag does, because we see, feel, and test the latter. The brand is about how we want to be seen when we use the bag.

We can’t, though, weigh up consulting firms in the same way, so brand plays a different role. Most consulting firms have built up brands designed to communicate values (integrity, professionalism, intelligence, safety, etc.): while important, that’s probably no longer enough. The consulting brands that have the most impact on clients are those that tell them what a firm does, not what a firm is.