Don’t you hate it when you’re almost finished with a blog post and then you accidentally hit the keystroke to go back a page in your browser, and when you hit the forward button it reloads the page and you lose everything you typed? Arrgh! So, as I was saying…
I just stumbled onto Ignition Consulting Group the other day, and I must say I’m intrigued. It was founded by Tim Williams, formerly the head of R&R Partners.
Their website says this about them:
Ignition Consulting Group helps branding firms define and develop their own brand. We work with advertising agencies, public relations firms, design firms, interactive firms, media firms, in-house agencies and other marketing communications organizations to help them:
1. Define their positioning and align it throughout their entire organization.
2. Adopt the best practices of the best marketing communications firms.
3. Reinvent key aspects of their organization and business model to become more relevant to clients in today’s multi-channel environment.
It’s definitely a niche business. I don’t know of any competitors.
As I’ve been reading through the website I’ve found myself thinking “Hey, we’re already doing what they say to do, that’s great!” For example, their website says:
Structure a system to deliver complete marketing solutions through strategic alliances with providers of other marketing communications services.
This has been one of the main focuses at MWI recently. We’ve been hiring talent, but some areas are too expensive to jump into, so we’ve partnered for the time being. For example, lately we’ve been meeting with firms that specialize in DVD authoring and we’ve found one that does excellent work and we now offer their services to our clients.
I’ve also found myself thinking “We already do that, but we should be doing it more.” Such as when their site says:
Stand out in new business pitches by making the most of your point of difference.
We usually customize our “difference” depending on who the client is and what they’re looking for. Our main difference is that when we say “full-service” we mean we can do it all, and do it all well. Most of our competitors do one or two things well, but fall short in other areas, especially interactive and web. We usually play up this difference, but I don’t think we do it enough or strongly enough. I should probably be more confident about it and emphasize it more.
And finally, I find myself thinking “Man, we aren’t doing that at all and we really should.”
Raise the visibility of the agency with a new business program that will attract more of the clients the agency really wants.
We don’t do much to attract new business. We used to do a lot, but then we found out that most of it wasn’t working, so we quit. Then the business started coming in, and so we haven’t focused too much on developing new business because we’re trying to keep up with what we’ve got. But I know that doesn’t last forever, plus we’re not entirely satisfied with where we’re at. I’d like MWI to be bringing in the $5-10M advertising contracts and we’re a long way from that. We are working on some new programs but it can be hard to find the time. The cobbler’s kids have no shoes and all that.
It will be interesting to see if Ignition succeeds. I suspect Tim has the connections to make it work. I don’t think I’d hire them because their website alone has already given me more ideas for things I should do than I have time for, but who knows.
