Allen AdamsonAs head of one of the advertising world's leading brand development firms (Landor Associates), Allen Adamson views management consultants as both coveted clients (e.g. Accenture) and fierce competitors.


CM: So what types of consulting firms do you view as competitors today? Adamson: Actually, we compete with McKinsey and Booz, and a lot of consulting firms are in the brand space because brand and business strategy intersect more and more. It's a natural growth opportunity for them. So it is something of a friction point because they come at it from the business strategy side and we come at it from the idea-driven side. CM: In your new book Brand Simple, you discuss how the best brands are simple. Is this as true for corporate brands as it is for consumer brands? Adamson: I think that it's more important for corporate brands because more people inside the company need to understand what the brand stands for to deliver it. If you're at BP and you're saying, "We're going to stand for something Beyond Petroleum," and you don't have everyone in that company working toward that goal, from the people at the service stations to the people delivering fuel, and they don't understand the vision and the purpose and the brand promise, you're not going to be able to keep that promise. The ads may all look neat and slick, but the experience won't be there. So you really need to get it inside the company, across every function from R&D to product delivery to customer service. Everyone needs to truly understand what the brand is and that the brand is a promise, and what promise the company is trying to make. And the simpler that is, the better able you are to spend your effort delivering the promise as opposed to explaining the promise.

CM: Is it important that global brands be simple?

Adamson: It's even more important because you need to be able to execute them in different countries and different cultures. And if you can get it pretty simply, you have a better shot at getting the idea to go around the world. If it was very complicated, and then I've got to explain something complicated to you, then we're dealing with cultural differences and language differences. Almost all big branding projects today have to be somewhat global because even if you're a small setup, you want to have a footprint that is global. Like Dove — the Dove campaign for real beauty — that's going around the world. That's in Britain. That notion that there is a misperception of how idealized women should look and how it makes women feel.
CM: What is the biggest mistake most companies make when managing their brands? Adamson: There are two mistakes. One is not having a good idea to begin with. Worrying about the signals: Let's get a new logo. Let's do some new ads. Let's get a new PR campaign — when the core promise, what they're promising, is no longer different or relevant. So half the time, they're worried about the execution when they should be worried about whether this promise is really real. The other mistake is that they worry about communicating, and they don't realize that the best corporate branding happens inside out. First, get your people to understand it. Get the promise delivered and then worry about making the promise to the marketplace. I think that those are big mistakes and big challenges that companies face.
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CM: Who's branding correctly in the consulting business these days?

Adamson: There are sort of two best practices I see when I look in consulting. One, I think, is Accenture, which does it very well because they've got a very brand-simple idea: "Performance — Delivered." You know, they're talking about great outcomes and that they're going to deliver those outcomes, which is a very pragmatic promise. They've been focused on it for a long time, and they've got a powerful way of communicating that through Tiger Woods. I also think that McKinsey does a very good job because they know that it's about intellectual capital and knowledge development and all of their brand. Every time I touch their brand, they are sharing insights thinking and their magazine, The McKinsey Quarterly, all of which reinforces that they have intellectual leadership, whereas Accenture does it in a very focused way about pragmatic, impactful results. These are two very clear positionings on the consulting world.
CM: There have been recent reports of McKinsey and other management consulting firms beefing up their brand development capability . . . Adamson: Well, they have been in the space for a while, and they are a serious player in this space . . . We often partner with a lot of the consulting firms, which bring us in to help dimensionalize and articulate their brand strategy, and sometimes, of course, we compete with them. We position ourselves a little differently. We come at it from, "What's the conceptual idea and how do we bring it to life?" I think that consulting firms often come at it from, "Here are the analytics. We can take it further. We've done your business strategy. Now let us do your brand strategy." The other key point is that they have to work together. The best brands are built on a tight connection to a business strategy. So if you don't understand the business strategy, you're not connected to the business strategy, you could have a great brand, a great branding, but it won't be effective, you won't be able to execute it because it won't be connected to your business strategy and how you make money.
CM: You mentioned Accenture, and we're aware they are a Landor client. Could you give us any of the history with this firm? Adamson: We did work for them when they were Andersen Consulting, AC, and then we managed the process as far as the change to Accenture went. And I think that they did a very effective job because overnight almost, within six months, they had strong name recognition. And the "Performance — Delivered" is a very direct thought. You don't have to over think that.
CM: How important is having a "simple" brand inside the consulting world? Adamson: It's critically important on a global basis, at any time when you play the game of telephone and you're trying to tell another idea, because most brands are still communicated by word of mouth. What have you heard about Accenture? Who are those guys? Who are the people from McKinsey? What are they like? What is Booz Allen like? And this telephone game only gets worse on a global scale when you're dealing with language issues and cultural issues. So if you can't get it really simple, you can't execute on a global scale, which is why some of the best global brands have very simple messages.  
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