I was recently asked by a journalist about
the costs of our consultancy for a particular client. Apart from never divulging individual client
fee agreements, I was more disappointed with the attitude towards us as a cost,
as opposed to an investment. It touched
a raw nerve as it reflected the view of many that you can buy brand development
and treat it as a one off cost. A view
that I have tried for many years to change but clearly many do not get the
message. By definition, branding is
about creating a differentiated profile and reputation. Building a reputation is a long term exercise
– an aggregate of user experiences which meet and justify the desired image of
the company. The true costs are
therefore an integral part of an organisation’s expenditures.
Separating out a fixed one off cost –
typically say a consultancy fee and maybe some additional marketing and real
estate budget misses the point. The negative implication is that consultancy
cost is, like lawyers, seen as a distress purchase, a necessary evil. The aim then is to minimise the cost by
finishing with the consultants once the concept brand book and drawings are
handed over.
Accepting the point that branding should be
a company wide initiative, it can be particularly frustrating to work with
managements who do not see the value of utilising our wide experience in
developing and implementing new concepts and roll-outs. There is a tendency to see the final ‘brand
book’ as the point where the consultancy can be ended and the in-house team
then left to make it happen. In every
consultancy proposal we make the point we are keen and able to help with such
activities but often the budget cost has only allowed for the front-end consultancy
on the belief this will minimise costs for the company. This is particularly ironic for us when,
without a massive investment, we can continue to act as brand guardians and
cost effectively support and direct the in-house team and their consultants.
Luckily, many of our clients realise this
and we have long term relationships based on this approach. But some do not. Inter-department politics and disinterested
top management can make the investment in our services of less value when our
implementation knowledge and expertise are not utilised. This could be due to middle management pride,
pressure from top management and, from our perspective, a lack of trust and
confidence in our consultancy relationship.
This is to be regretted when we see good ideas scrapped or diluted when
effective commercial solutions could have been delivered. We are sometimes told a roll out is too
expensive but a ‘cardboard’ relaunch e.g. marketing, print and point of sale
can represent a highly cost effective refresh strategy and the more expensive
shopfitting change overs delayed or reprogrammed to suit general refurbishment
programmes.
It comes back to cost/investment
discussions – if we are seen as a ‘cost’ then our potential to help companies
more than recoup their investments is lost.
As an architect I often see unnecessary costs on expensive real estate
that can be ‘saved’ effectively with a bit of creative thinking. Equally, excessive marketing costs for
predictable expensive media awareness campaigns could be avoided with some more
strategic focus on effective loyalty database marketing or viral marketing
based on clever event activity.
Achieving the best return on investment
from a consultancy starts with agreeing a clear strategic commercial
brief. Our heart often sinks when the
brief is to create a ‘wow’ solution.
This can reflect a management’s wish to have a ‘big idea’ as this is
more attractive than the more difficult ‘every little helps’ approach of Tesco. Incremental improvements on every front are
often the key to success and the ‘wow’ factor is often of limited long term
value. Big ideas are great but
potentially short term if cosmetic fixes are not accompanied by substantial
management input and cross departmental initiatives and effective resourcing.
Everyone preaches about the need to achieve
real value. Clearly we need to be better
in communicating our real value to an organisation, avoid that ‘cost’ question
and encourage an ‘investment’ discussion. I live in hope!
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