All organisations engage in marketing activities: you have to show your customers you have something they want, after all.
For top-tier consulting firms, there are two primary marketing efforts – the first, marketing to attract entry-level recruits, is quite visible. Firms regularly visit target school campuses, and buy online advertising on LinkedIn and Facebook to boost their applications.
The second marketing effort, marketing to attract clients, is less visible. There are no bus stop advertisements for McKinsey & Company; no online pop-up ads for the Boston Consulting Group. Instead, marketing materials take the form of thought leadership: reports designed to show potential clients that these firms have the expertise clients need.
McKinsey has the McKinsey Global Institute, regularly publishes McKinsey Quarterlies, and links to a Featured Insights section on their homepage. BCG has the BCG Henderson Institute, regularly publishes BCG Perspectives, and links to an Ideas & Inspiration section from their homepage. Bain also links to an Insights section on its website, and all firms publish a variety of articles, reports, podcasts and interviews. There is a stunningly diverse set of articles and topics, from the incredibly niche to the terrifyingly broad.
A brief scan shows that Bain, for example, believes increasing reliability, improving the customer experience, and reducing operating and maintenance costs “have never been more pertinent or urgent” questions for the managers of electricity transmission and distribution utility networks. BCG once valued the sea, conservatively, at $24 trillion.
These are, ostensibly, research publications. Carefully considered guides for practitioners on evidence-based best practice. And they are no doubt successful: BCG’s Growth Share matrix was first published as a BCG Perspective in 1970, and how often do you hear the prefix, ‘according to a McKinsey report…’?
A great skill of good consultants is the ability to use a hypothesis-led approach to find and test an answer quickly. But epistemologically, this is very different from the consensus approach to robust knowledge production. The academic approach has its downsides too, of course – but findings are generally peer-reviewed, subject to burdens of statistical proof, and with conflicts of interest clearly stated. Though it operates slowly and inaccessibly, the academic world contributes a degree of certainty and impartiality absent from consulting materials.
The thought-leadership reports published by top-tier consulting firms should be seen for what they are: marketing materials, which often serve to lend legitimacy to a particular service or approach valued by consultants. Clients and potential clients are invited to launch events for books and reports where firm expertise is showcased. Reports are held up as evidence of firm expertise during pitches and in proposals. These materials serve as a signal: trust us, we’ve thought about this stuff. In my own time in consulting, I never saw or heard of any research report being used or recommended in the course of day to day case work. There are seldom control groups, tests of statistical significance, or much more than rhetorical advice and corporate truisms. Behind every great report is a team of sleep-deprived analysts – and at best, a researcher with some subject area expertise – doing their best to turn partner directives into robust and marketable content.
This is not to say the conclusions of such materials are not backed up by rigorous analysis, or that they should be discounted entirely: they can be useful and high-quality. But they should be taken with a grain of salt, and presumed to serve a greater interest: selling consulting services to clients.
Sam Smith worked in a top-tier management consulting firm for two years before taking time out for study. They write under a pseudonym to bring you honest reflections and insider information.
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