Brand Consistency: Delivering Experience As Well As Services

Abstract

Seeing things from the client’s perspective, brand is a substitute for accreditation. It’s what clients turn to for reassurance that the consultants they’re hiring will at least ‘make the grade’. The more standard the project, the less important brand will be as part of the purchase equation (which is why the brands of auditing companies are significantly less well developed than those of consulting firms). The more innovative and individualistic it is, the more important brand is. Why? Because a firm that undertakes standardised work — by which I mean projects governed by a formalised methodology — can:

• Train (and accredit) their own consultants in the methodology;

• Acquire accreditation from an outside supplier (for example, a software house);

• Demonstrate a track record of similar work to prove their credentials.

Clients don’t believe that a single firm can do everything. That’s not credible’, they’re saying. ‘What do you really do?’ It’s a bit like a Christmas tree — underneath all those glittering trimmings, there’s a solid tree — and that’s what clients want to see — but some trees are so heavily decorated that it’s not easy to look beneath the surface.

Daniel Flamberg, Senior Vice President, Digitas, Europe