Welcome to our newsletter for April - May 2005.

This issue focuses on brand alignment and career options for professional services marketers.

Please forward this newsletter on to colleagues and friends who may also find it of interest.

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info@davismarketing.com.au.

Dianne Davis
Principal and Managing Director

www.davismarketing.com.au

One of the significant business challenges for organisations is aligning their external and internal brand to achieve consistency and coherence between the external brand promise, and internal delivery and commitment.

In particular, integrating the brand values, personality and positioning into key people and operational processes, ensuring organisational technology and infrastructure support the brand strategy, and committing leadership - at all levels - to the brand vision.

Davis & Associates is currently developing a brand alignment model - that we call BEAM (Brand Enterprise Alignment Model) - to enable organisations to systematically and holistically develop and sustain brand alignment.

Here is an overview of BEAM:

BEAM is the result of drawing together strategic brand, marketing, organisational development (OD) and change management specialists; few brand consultancies have worked in any serious way with OD specialists to build a model that effectively "hard wires" brand deep into an organisation's culture and core processes.

BEAM represents such an approach.

Below the top line view of BEAM, we are developing a series of diagnostic & benchmarking tools that will enable organisations to:

• Assess their level of current alignment in relation to core work & people processes, technology and infrastructure support and leadership
• Develop and implement a strategic framework for sustaining / increasing brand alignment
• Measure, monitor and report on brand alignment.

In our consulting work, we come across many professional services marketers who have worked in the sector for several years (typically having clocked up time with a number of accounting and/or law firms during their careers) and are at a stage when the following questions are of great significance.

• Where will the next genuine challenge come from?
• If I stay in professional services what impact will this have on my broader career (am I in danger of being typecast)?
• If I elect to move out of professional services what are the credible options?

Industry-focused recruitment agencies and in-house HR managers are unlikely to actively encourage marketers to think beyond the professional services arena - it's not really in their direct interests to do so.

And for some marketers a career spent largely in professional services is indeed both satisfying and sufficient.

But there does come a time (certainly after three or more professional services firms are on a CV), when you need to take stock and entertain moving out of the sector.

Why?

Because:

1. Professional services marketing focuses strongly on the business development side of the equation and too infrequently offers marketers the opportunity to develop and implement significant strategic brand programs and integrated brand campaigns (and we are not talking about marketing communications tools such as PR, seminars or brochureware, nor are we referring to visual identity updates /logo refreshes).
   
   For senior and middle-level marketers committed to their professional development, not having meaningful strategic brand experience in your personal toolkit (and CV) represents something of an omission.
2. Budgets at professional services firms will always be circumspect - allocated marketing spend is at the behest of the partnership.
   
   Consequently, the fullness and impact of marketing programs may not be realised because the marketing function is not given the necessary resources required from the start.
3. As a sector focused on business-to-business marketing, you get too little real exposure to some highly relevant elements of consumer marketing (i.e. refined customer-client segmentation frameworks, applying predictive modeling tools, commissioning regular customised market research, employing direct marketing tools and techniques, and developing and tracking brand and customer metrics).

We've identified some potential drawbacks of a career spent solely in professional services, but by the same token, it is a sector that offers marketers solid grounding in a number of areas, disciplines and skills:

• Business development experience, especially around tendering, targeting and account management
• Negotiating and influencing skills
• Coaching and mentoring skills
• Development and articulation of thought leadership programs (and the harnessing of intellectual capital)
• Building organisational market positioning and profile via public relations and events / networking
• The ability to work within tight budgets and to extract maximum value from them.

So with these kinds of experience and skills, what are some credible alternatives for professional services marketers looking to transition. We outline some likely options below:

• Institutional banking (account management / relationship marketing is seminal to managing major corporate and medium-sized business, while negotiating-influencing skills are important in getting cooperation from senior managers and other business units)
• Investment banking (account management is important for the same reasons as institutional banking, plus experience in tendering and targeting is also valuable in helping secure major deals, mandates and engagements; as well, there is scope to enhance organisational brand-building via PR, thought leadership and events)
• Wealth management / securities (where a focus on high value segments and higher net worth individuals fits with a business-to- business marketing background, and experience with specific tools such as thought leadership, public relations and networking)
• Industry associations (knowledge of professional segments and markets is highly relevant, as is the ability to apply the principles of account management and targeting to membership acquisition and retention strategies)
• Not-for-profits (knowledge of the corporate sector is useful in developing and structuring corporate partnerships, thought leadership experience can inform advocacy and lobbying activities, and targeting principles and practice have relevance for fundraising).

On May 16, Dianne Davis and Trish Carroll (of Galt Advisory) will present a 3 hour workshop in Sydney on law firm branding. The workshop, sponsored by The College of Law, will focus on:

• The role of brand as a strategic business asset
• Key findings & implications from Brand Perceptions 2004:
  Managing Partner-CEO Perceptions of their Brand Environment
• Practical frameworks & tools for managing a firm's brand
• Applying brand management frameworks & tools