Mind the gap

Too many businesses are letting people down. The gap between how they want to appear and what they actually deliver is growing. Yes there are exceptions - Apple, Toyota, Waitrose and a host of web businesses - but so many huge organisations are being left behind because they fail to notice that customers have wised up and are already looking elsewhere.

We are all pretty smart consumers these days. We will not be fobbed off by big brand promises that fail to follow through, poor customer service or processes and procedures that favour machines rather than humans. And when we (in my day job on the communications business) think about this in relation to our own work, it seems clear that a new relationship between business and brand advisors is becoming imperative.

The future work of brand consultancy and client is about getting close to what customers want, and ensuring the business or brand owner adapts to deliver just that. It's an exciting space where the rule book needs to be ditched in favour of common sense built around the human needs of customers and staff. If they get it right there will be no gap between promise and delivery, no customers left feeling they were hoodwinked by canny advertising or staff feeling disengaged and restless.

Brand consultancies are ill equipped to deal with this. In an unholy (if sometimes unwitting) alliance with ad agencies, they depend on artifice and hyperbole for their existence. Both of these 'disciplines' focus too much on the show instead of tackling the thornier, structural issues of their clients' business.

The brand consultancies of the future will be business designers, content strategists and meaningful work advisors backed by rock solid ethics and a balanced view of the world.

I'm so proud that my business has never advised banks, mortgage companies, hedge funds, political parties or estate agents.