What brand consultants should be doing

Change the inside.

Any agency planner who has worked with big companies know one thing: they are built for efficiency, not for dynamic change. This means the biggest obstacle for innovative thinking in marketing and communications are created by themselves. Paradoxically, it has never been more important for a company to differentiate itself. 

The problem is not about what to do, because coming up with clever brand strategies isn't that difficult – most advertising agencies can perform this. What’s really hard in the marketing world is getting it done, because for every brilliant idea there are a hundred executional bottlenecks – usually manifested by rigid internal structures and processes of companies. 

What’s needed: radical marketing thinking plus organisational change without compromising operational efficiency. Hardcore consultancies like McKinsey do some of the stuff already, but I believe they lack the creative edge that’s necessary for marketing innovation. This is where brand consultancies could play a very useful role and create true value. Turning companies up-side-down will indeed require some muscle, but in my world, it's the only real task for the brand consultancy that wants to achieve real change and not only talk about it in a nice PowerPoint.