Have we captured the full potential of fusing consulting and creativity?
Both consulting and creative industries have already been disrupted. Consulting has been disrupted by technology creating new opportunities, the growth of expert networks, competition from different sources, new service models and clients demanding a different experience and outcome. Advertising has seen revenues flatline or decline, margins shrink and consultancies encroaching on their turf.
Much has been written about the merging of advertising agencies and management consultancies and the acquisitions that have been made. Many acquisitions have been separated from core business and separate ventures created recognising that different cultures and DNA prevail. Fewer have perhaps cracked defining and executing the full potential of fusing commercial, brand, creative, design, operation and technology together across the entire operation to fully capture the ‘best of both worlds’.
Typical modes of operating are different in management consultancies and creative agencies, but if fused together would have a transformative impact on client business growth and transformation.
Consulting vs. Agency — Example modes of operating
There are clear transformative benefits on both sides that when fused together will be a powerful impact on any business challenge:
· The ‘big idea’, can inspire a transformation arguably more powerfully than any data and analysis, but the idea needs to be fuelled by insight
· The iterative delivery of value to the client needs to be built through the engagement, leading up to a big reveal
· A standard set of methods and tools will accelerate engagements and create efficiencies on future engagements
· Creative campaign roll outs can be built into change management approaches to build greater engagement over time
· The human emotion that creative approaches taps into could be built into the user experience of all engagements
The value case has also been proven. A Mckinsey study*showed that companies that harness creativity and data in tandem have revenue growth rates twice as high as companies that don’t.
Perhaps this is an opportunity to define a new space where the two approaches are fused closer together and the combined value articulated to clients?
The biggest challenge in fusing is perhaps the inherent culture and DNA and thereby creating an environment where both sets of talent can flourish together in an integrated way. We know so much M&A execution struggles when bringing two cultures together. Creative talent arguably has more in common with artists than management consultants. They thrive in unstructured free flow environments, where personal risk taking is the norm and there is rarely talk of process, structure and methodology. Imposing too much rigour and method will inevitably stifle the creative process. Consultants are trained in rigorous analysis and insight to solve problems and make recommendations. Its arguably harder for consulting firms to integrate creative talent and therefore managing this talent separately rather than infusing is the easier option.
The answer perhaps lies in thinking about how to get different and diverse types of talent to collaborate and work together, having a common nomenclature, platform, integration opportunities and mission to achieve the client objectives.
Questions are often about whether agencies or consultancies will build or acquire capability the fastest, but the bigger question is perhaps how to uniquely define this combined space, create the culture and environment where combined approaches can thrive together and position this value to employees and clients that looks and feels different to the way both consultancies and agencies operate today.
The winner isn’t perhaps those who build or buy capability the fastest but who crack the culture conundrum across the entire organisation.
Karen Thomas-Bland
*Mckinsey Study: The most perfect union: Unlocking the next wave of growth by unifying creativity and analytics Brian Gregg, Jason Heller, Jesko Perrey, and Jenny Tsai
