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Azure Chip Consultant Seems to Take Steps to Reduce Its Visibility

When I labored in the vineyards of Booz, Allen & Hamilton, visibility for the firm and certain consultants was an important part of the firm’s marketing. Here is how it worked at a blue chip consulting company. A consultant had a sales goal. In order to meet the goal, the consultant had to find a way to pull inquiries to the firm and the issue area. One way was to write an article in the Harvard Business Review. This did not have to be a great work of non fiction, but it had to get through the editorial process. Once the article appeared, the consultant would work like the Dickens to get interviewed, land speaking engagements, do briefings at certain organizations, and perform like a hard working Cirque du Soleil performer to land business. The whole sequence of events had to executed with a low profile, aw shucks approach that made the brilliance of the firm’s consultants appropriate and compelling. Booz, Allen had an effective marketing machine, and the “we are thought leaders” approach worked like a champ. Of course, the other blue chip outfits like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, the “old” AT Kearney, and a couple of others knew the drill too. With top consultants almost inter changeable among these firms, the method of making seven figure sales was not a secret.

In a phrase, the technique was to use knowledge to make the firm into a magnet for business.

Imagine my surprise when I read Network World’s “When Censorship Goes Too Far, We Cannot Say Gar-ner Anymore”. The key point to the write up in my opinion was this passage:

I received a really nice email (if you want to call it that) from Gar-ner on Friday. If you are asking who is Gar-ner, well it’s this company that put companies in a square divided into four sections. I received an email asking me to take down my blogs that contained this companies name by them telling the following:

“Per our Copyright and Quote Policy, available at the link below and at any time from Gartner’s home page, other companies may only externally quote, mention, reference or display the Gartner name or Gartner research after first obtaining approval in writing, in advance, from my department.  In violation of this restriction, your organization has been using Gartner’s name and research as shown in your blog entry at this link”.

Several thoughts went through my mind:

First, the consulting firm in question, Gartner Group (“the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company”) has a very good reason for informing the person writing the Network World article of its policy. If I were younger, I might look into this but frankly the internal machinations of a consulting firm do not interest me.

Second, the consulting firm is on the rebound after cancelling at least one of its pay-to-play conferences. In the positive financial climate, the executives at Gartner may not have time to field inbound calls or deal with those who visit the firm’s public Web site and tap into the rich vein of information. Success does that. When the cash register rings, logic often shifts into a different gear.

Third, the firm and possibly its attorneys and public relations experts perceive some risk to the firm when outsiders comment, question, analyze, cite, compare, or dissect the firm’s reports. When I see a consulting firm’s white papers and news releases, I know that I have ample opportunity to comment. There is a reason why Booz, Allen & Hamilton had a method for getting appropriate publicity. The idea was that when multiple BAH consultants reviewed information, the chance for saying something that was ill conceived, poorly crafted or just downright stupid would drop to almost zero. Smart people working cooperatively can produce some very intelligent work. That method is shared among the blue chip firms. An azure chip consulting firm lacks this commitment to “being smart.” The quick fix, in my limited view, may be to choke off exposure. The “don’t mention us” approach may work some of the time, but I am not sure it is appropriate for today’s consulting environment.

Finally, the Gartner analysts have examined the upsides and downsides of having their firm indexed by Google, Microsoft Bing, and any other search system. The assessment may be that appearing at the top of a results list offers no material value. My research suggests that appearing in an index like Google’s is pretty important. I am confused about the ban on mentioning a firm’s name, citing its research, or taking any of the blue chip marketing steps with which I am familiar. This Web log is a marketing tactic. It is not news. I use it to stimulate traffic, conversations, and the occasional project. I even put links to my for fee reports in the Web log and I describe some of the research that the goslings and I work on. My view is that anyone can cite, recycle, criticize, or comment on its content. It is public. I just don’t charge for access nor do I spam people like the Wall Street Journal, magazines, consultants, and Viagra sales professionals.

I am pretty careful about citing the Associated Press. I do point out the silliness of trying to enforce a business model from the early 20th century on today’s Web user. I will continue to comment on the public information that becomes available to me. I understand that the azure chip consultants are not too happy when one of their azure chip consultants finds himself or herself on the receiving end of a goose beak’s peck. But in the larger world of critical thinking, getting pecked by an addled goose is not exactly the end of the world.

No wonder that outfits like Gerson Lehrman Group are sucking revenue from mid tier consulting firms.

To close, let me urge you to read this item from the Gartner “press room”: “Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue on Pace to Decline 17 Percent in 2009”. Now ask yourself, “With the economic storm clouds disrupting businesses worldwide, how big a surprise is it that semiconductor sales are deteriorating?” My answer to this question was, “No surprise.” But then ask yourself, “How can Gartner’s analysts nail the decline at 17 percent?” This number suggests considerable precision. But what math method yielded 17 percent, not 15 percent or 19 percent. In fact, why not round up the number to 20 percent? Why not round down the number to 15 percent?” I am not going to cite these data because I think the approach underscores why some consulting firms have one color chip and other consulting firms have another color chip.

Oh, for more useful data about global semiconductor sales, I turn to the trade associations’ reports, the financial filings of semiconductor companies, and similar types of information.

Stephen Arnold, August 27, 2009

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