Lavender takes on consultants with consultancy
With business consultants such as Deloitte and PWC taking on agencies with their own creative offerings, CX agency Lavender is turning the tables with the launch of its own consultancy offshoot.
Lavender Consult will use the same sorts of methodologies as business consultancies have previously adopted in their operations.
The consulting side of the agency will include experience design partner Eric Folger, former principal of Meld Studios, strategy partner Nick Andrews and data partner Brian Sliman.
“At Lavender we believe in creating transformative CX,” Lavender CEO Roy Capon said.
“But to be truly transformative requires a deep understanding of our client’s customers, their business, brand, marketplace and channels, all fuelled by insights and Lavender Consult has been created to deliver on this promise.
“It combines data, experience design, creative, business acumen, strategy (brand, channel and comms) and technology to help solve some of the fundamental business problems that clients are facing today.
Capon said that having an agency approach to challenges from a consultancy perspective brought a level of practicality to the process.
“I have had so many conversations with people who have been with the consultancy groups where they have tried to make this connection between the theory and the implementation. It seems to be a real mismatch,” he said.
He said he had seen many examples of when projects had gone from theory to the implementation that had to be ripped up and started again because the two were incompatible.
“Either the theory that the consultancy groups got weren’t implemented and sat on the shelf and gathered dust after clients paid a load of money for them, or when they went into the implementation phase they had to start again because it just wasn’t practical enough to take to market,” he said.
“Agencies, for good or for bad, have always been very practical about actually doing stuff that allows those stresses to come to light.”
Lavender said that the agency had already been testing the approach with some of its clients, which include Westpac and St George Bank, but that the model needed to be taken to the next level.
“If I look at some of the work we have done in the past and the work we are doing right now, we have developed and helped bring to market new products and services for for Westpac, our client of 19 years,” he said.
“It’s not about writing a creative brief with the creative guys and get the output from that, it’s actually about making sure that we’ve go the right sort of smart people in the room and going on a journey where we don’t actually know where we are going to end up.
“It could be a new product, a new service or a new platform.”
He said often in new business pitches people were not looking for another agency to deliver more communications, “they are looking for strategic and consultancy help”.
Surely what ‘CX’ agency Lavender are not doing is; taking on consultants (who are normally individual strategic practitioners normally within an organisation) with their consultancy (which most people would understand to mean an established office or practice that offers strategic services via experts in a variety of disciplines).
Surely what ‘CX’ Agency Lavender are doing is; taking on consultancies (established strategic offices and practices) with their consultants (individual practitioners who have just joined their ‘CX’ Agency).
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I’ll believe it when I see it.
Agencies can create significant value for clients, but as much as I’ve seen them try to position themselves for consultancy gigs – frankly, they don’t have the talent or resources to deliver the same outcomes.
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