How a youngish advertising account planner learned to become a consultant.

1. 1
Getting into the executive suite
Ten year old observations on what advertising
agencies can learn from management
consultants (still good)

2. 2
the context

3. 3
In 2003 the US APG (advertising account planning group)
held a symposium on how agencies can learn from and
beat management consultants.
As partners in a consultancy that had recently bested
McKinsey in a pitch for a pan-European innovation
assignment from Credit Suisse and been hired to train
consultants at CGEY!s Center for Business Innovation,
we were asked to present a point of view on how
consultancies and agencies differ in both approach and
practice.
To prepare, we sat down to talk with management
consultants, agency people who had worked for
consultancies and CEOs and marketing directors familiar
with both worlds.
A great deal has changed but we ind that most of what
was observed then still has relevance today.

4. 4
our place in the landscape
CEO
McKinsey/Bain
Corporate ID
CIO
Accenture
CFO
Accountants
CMO
???
Ad Director
Agency

5. 5
the journey
Communications
Strategy
PR
DM
Advertising
Interactive
Corporate
Strategy
Analysis & IT
Operational
Strategy
Audit
Financial
Strategy
Marketing
Strategy
Design
1.! Major consulting firms move from corporate strategy toward communications ("top down#)
2.! Communications firms need to move from communication disciplines towards corporate
strategy; the beach-head we need to reclaim is marketing strategies ("bottom up#)
3.! "Bottom up# strategies can work; CPA firms navigated from audit to IT and from financial/
operational strategies to corporate strategies
1
2 2
1
3
3
Source: Rob Scalea,
Brand Union

6. 6
"As a leading strategy consulting firm, our Marketing Practice works with
clients to build substantial, profitable growth ...
Complementing McKinsey's traditional strengths in industry/client
knowledge, strategy, and organization are marketing professionals with
deep expertise in branding, sales, pricing, customer relationship
management, and e-marketing.#
B2B Branding CRM
marketing practice areas
customer loyalty eConsumer eMarketing
marketing organization spending effectiveness research
marketing strategy pricing sales/channel mgmt.
e.g. McKinsey!s marketing pitch
Link: http://marketing.mckinsey.com

7. 7
"customer relationship management# as part of CRM
e.g. Accenture!s pitch
•!CRM strategies that
maximize capabilities
•!Improve ROI
•!Economic value of your
brand
•!Effectiveness of marketing
operation
•!Insight driven marketing to
build brand loyalty and
increase ROI
-world class analytics and
modeling of customer
acquisition, development,
retention
-optimize key marketing value
levers such as pricing
-positively impact every
customer interaction
•!Leadership focus on
positioning and customer
value
•!Aligning everything the
organization does and
communicates with the
promise of its brand
•!Creating an integrated
view of the customer
$marketing &
customer strategy!
$customer insight! $customer interaction!
practice areas
Link to CRM practice:
http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enWeb&xd=servicescrmcrm_home.xml

8. 8
"Bain has been a thought leader on the subjects of…
–! Customer loyalty
–! Segmentation
–! Profitability
… for two decades. Developing a true
customer focus requires clearly measuring how every activity results in
improvement to the product or service in a way that is meaningful to the
customer.#
e.g. Bain!s pitch as part of strategy
strategy customers growth
practice areas
Link to $customers! practice:
http://www.Bain.com/bainweb/expertise/expertise_capability.asp?capability_id=15

9. 9
CONSULTING WORLD COMMUNICATIONS WORLD
Authority Partner / Supplier
Deductive reasoning Inductive reasoning
Top-down approach Bottom-up approach
Engagement Relationship
Credibility Creativity
"Charge a lot# "Give it away#
Serious Fun
C-level Communications Level
Recommend Deliver
Knowledge Skill
a summary of key differences

10. 10
So how do consultants approach problems?

11. 11
our research sources
interviews with:
Marketing directors and CEOs
Former consultants (less tight lipped once they leave their firm)
A former McKinsey consultant who became a marketing director
Former agency people who became consultants
A former advertising agency head who now runs a strategy
consultancy
selected reading
"The Mckinsey Way# by Ethan Rasiel
"The New Organizational Wealth# Karl Erik Sveiby (Ch.9 on
McKinsey)
"The Loyalty Effect# Frederick Reicheheld (Bain & Co.)

12. 12
Ask questions that provoke a higher level
dialogue, avoiding the advertising $center of
gravity!. This is key in developing high level
access.
?
"what!s on your mind?#

13. 13
for example
As an exercise in asking "higher level#
questions, 2003 APG, workshop participants
were asked to put together a list of specific
questions that they might ask on first meeting the
CEO of a hypothetical client.
The task was to ask questions that relate to what is
on the $CEOs mind and to avoid a communications
and positioning center-of-gravity…

14. 14
question topic areas
1.! Vision and aspiration
What is your vision for the company? Are there challenges that
your industry is facing? What business are you in and what
business could you be in?
2.! Specific Goals
What would define success? What are your specific
expectations? What sort of ROI are you expecting? What!s your
timeframe?
3.! Problems
What (or who) is driving this new venture? What threats are you
facing? Are there customers you are not attracting?
4.! History and Culture
What is your company!s tolerance for risk and change? What has
worked (or not worked) in the past?
5.! Personal
What other businesses do you admire? What keeps you up at
night?

15. 15
what!s on your mind?
"It seems that advertising agencies
always come to the table with their
solution in hand, whatever the problem.
Consultants work hard to understand
the true nature of the problem and that
way they show themselves to be
solution independent.#
- former consultant and CEO
"what!s on your mind?#
?
Consultants define problems from first principles.

16. 16
Turn your consumer planning skills onto the
client. For instance "we need to sell more/be
more profitable# is the business equivalent of "I
don!t feel well.# Using projective techniques or
business analogies can help tease out the real
issues.
listening like a planner

17. 17
Work with the client in defining the boundaries
and scope of the problem…
framing the problem

18. 18
framing the problem
"I have found that you need to have
your act together before you brief
agencies. I think they respond well to
a tightly defined problem.
That!s why we go to outside consultants
to get help with defining the parameters
of what the agency has to do. If the
agencies could credibly help us organize
the upfront issues we wouldn!t have to
go elsewhere.#
-Former Marketing Director

19. 19
design & identity $below the line!
communications
advertising
engaging all of the brand
"Agencies talk about the brand in terms of 360 degrees of
communications…
…but that!s only half of the picture...

20. 20
engaging all of the brand
business model
design & identity $below the line!
advertising
…Consultants engage the brand through internal issues, which
means they get to the table earlier.#
-Marketing Director
communications
$internal! issuesculture
customer
experience

21. 21
avoiding the big idea up-front
"It often feels like agencies are shooting
in the dark. They can!t possibly know
all the issues and yet they already have
an answer.#
-Marketing Director
How credible would your doctor be if she
diagnosed you as you walk through the door?
Often they can - but the point is they don!t…

22. 22
9 tricks of the consulting trade

23. 23
1. the audit as management tool
Make sure your clients feel heard – they!ll then
trust you and become agents on your behalf within
the company. At the very least, speak to anyone
who can say "No# to your project.

24. 24
2. collaborative engagements
Don!t be afraid to put your clients to work during strategic
development – you!ll deepen your relationship, and they
will $sell! you throughout the organization.

25. 25
collaborative engagements
"It's a question of getting the best ideas and not being
precious about where they come from, which ad
agencies often are. You have to make them believe it
was their idea. It's not the easiest way of working.#
-Marketing Director
"Consultants are trained and used to enhance their
clients careers which in turn drives business. The focus
is on thinking through which internal franchises need to
be persuaded to behave or believe a certain thing which
will enable the client to gain stature or power. It is not
unusual on a project to do a significant syndication
document (pitch to internal constituents) every week.#
-Former agency head now running a consultancy

26. 26
3. being accountable
Train everyone to add value and be accountable for the
agency!s work.
"No one in advertising takes responsibility anymore. I once sat in
a meeting where an account person answered a strategy question
with $I!ll have to go back to the agency and talk to the planner
about that!. At McKinsey even the most junior person on an
engagement is expected to be able to speak for the Firm.#
-Former consultant and agency head
"It was a rule that any participant in a meeting had to make at
least three valuable contributions, no matter how senior they
were.#
Former consultant

27. 27
4. learning by doing
The best way to learn to fly is in a flight-simulator.
Likewise, make use of workshops, as clients more
readily understand and embrace strategies they have
worked through themselves.

28. 28
5. being MeCe
MeCe: "mutually exclusive, comprehensively exhaustive.#
This is a cornerstone of McKinsey consultant training.
!
Possible solutions
A
B
"
!
!
!
!
!
!
C
"
Show your thinking and provide the client with strategic
options to work through.
Source: The McKinsey Way; Ethan Rasiel

29. 29
"Always gesticulate with 3 fingers while speaking. You
always need to have three major points, each with 3
minor points supporting them. Never have more or
fewer than 9 ideas at once.
A quote from my training: "when you bump into the
Partner from your study in the hall, and he asks you
how's it going, you damn well better three-finger him..."
Just remember, when three-fingering (rude as it may
sound, it really is a McKinsey verb), you must first
review the three majors, and go into the minors in
order, whilst always recapping their appropriate majors.
If you're not worried about getting promoted, or want to
foster an image of being a rebel or creative thinker, you
can occasionally mix this up and throw in 4 majors.
However, only 2 majors is risky as it shows a shallow
mind... And five majors would show an inability to fully
distill the issue (in a MECE way of course).#
Former McKinsey consultant.
being MeCe
"3#

30. 30
being MeCe
Show your
working:
!
!
!
C
"I!ve noticed that agencies do a hell of a lot of work
and then they put just one word on a page so that the
solution looks really simple. But reductive thinking
doesn!t mean hiding the steps that get you to a
solution. CEOs trust facts and numbers.#
- Marketing Director and former consultant
"Consultants show you different strategic options and
then they work with you towards making the right
choice. Agencies offer you a range of creative
solutions but only ever sell one strategic option.#
- Marketing Director
Provide
options:

31. 31
Demonstrate the link between the issues you are dealing
with and gained or lost opportunities.
6. talking dollars and cents
$

32. 32
talking dollars and cents
$
$$
$$$
Interbrand and Prophet use
brand valuation as a first step
in obtaining brand consulting
assignments
$

33. 33
talking dollars and cents
Quantitative customer segmentation has long been an
important consulting tool for identifying business
opportunities (especially at Bain).
http://www.bain.com/bainweb/expertise/tools/mtt/customer_segmentation.asp
insightful segmentation
$

34. 34
"It!s easier to bring discipline to what we do than
for consultants to add art and richness to what
they do. I!ve found that when you link your
research to revenues, you suddenly get top
management!s ear.
For instance, in one segmentation study, I
demonstrated the link between business image
and lost opportunity in dollars and cents.#
-Prospero partner and
Ex-agency Global Chief Strategy Officer
$
talking dollars and cents
Planners have the skills…

35. 35
"The key differences that
McKinsey brings is branding
solutions within a genuine
business context.
That means they do the economic
modeling for any brand decision
(e.g. if a brand wants to stand for
X, how does it deliver it, and what
in detail, are the costs, returns,
and the associated roll-out plan).#
- McKinsey Consultant,
former advertising planner
7. providing $business context!
Brand

36. 36
8. overcompensating on analytics
Clients will assume that an agency is creative but they
might doubt our rigor. Fill documents and proposals with
business analogies, facts, and analytics, especially if you
are competing with a consulting firm.

37. 37
"Most general consultants have an engineering,
economics or math/science degree. At our
company, we have almost no liberal arts folks.
They are biased towards facts versus intuition,
charts versus text, numbers versus words.
The value is that opinions stated exclusively as
such do not appear part of a solution space except
as "proven" by reason. Obviously all these
components can be manipulated to tee up any
conclusion including wrong ones but the level of
argumentation is quite strong and difficult to
debate.#
- Former advertising agency head now running a
management consultancy
overcompensating on analytics

38. 38
McKinsey branding tools
Paper 1: http://marketing.mckinsey.com/solutions/McK-Branding.pdf
Paper 2: http://www.marketing.mckinsey.com/solutions/Solutions-MSE.pdf
Example: $Brand
funnel! – measures
attributes that
relate to the health
of the brand at
every stage in the
customer!s
experience…
One may disagree
with the theoretical
framework, but at
least there is one…

39. 39
Structure the engagement so that it prepares the
groundwork for future work. For example at…
9. constantly creating opportunities
CGEY!s Accelerated
Solutions Environment
…their mega-workshops lead to 7x revenue in subsequent
assignments. Consultants are present at the inception of
new initiatives and can instantly volunteer to take
responsibility for the execution of ideas.
link:http://www.us.cgey.com/ase/

40. 40
CGE&Y!s ASE
"At the Accelerated Solutions Environment™ (ASE), we combine our
world-class facilitation team, patented, decision-making process,
global knowledge bases and innovative workspaces to enable
organizations to make better, faster business decisions:
•! Get all of your stakeholders to not only talk about your business strategy,
technology architecture or next business improvement initiative, but to actually
develop it together
•! Unleash the full potential and creativity of your staff, your leadership
team, key suppliers, customers, and subject matter specialists all at once - and
agree on a common vision and transformation roadmap
•! Accelerate all phases of your system development projects, reducing
months to weeks and weeks to days
•! Identify tens of millions of dollars in opportunities, develop a detailed
action plan to realize the benefits, and then commit to each other to go for it
link:http://www.us.cgey.com/ase/

41. 41
appendix 1
How did McKinsey create such a strong
brand?

42. 42
culture management
A strong culture built on three simple principles
Client
focus:
"First
the client,
then the Firm,
then the
consultant#
Constant
challenges:
"Up or out#
Respect for
rigor:
"Obligation
to dissent#

43. 43
relationship management
Careful brand-building through relationship
management
Honored Alumni Honored clients
Treat former
consultants and
even job seekers
like future clients
Put fast trackers
at all levels on
the McKinsey
team and create
clients for life
Continually engage
people through
seminars,
publishing (e.g.
McKinsey
Quarterly), and
public speaking.
Thought
leadership

44. 44
Thank you
If you have any questions, please
feel free to contact us at Table
Consulting, a member of the
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