The Managing Partner of The Branding Partnership (TBP) was describing her business. ‘It is about four years now since we specialised in the small to medium firms market. Before that we also used to provide brand consultancy services for anyone who walked in the door. However, within the firm, I think we could focus our activities even more. There seem to be two types of assignment that we are given. About 40 per cent is relatively routine. Typically, these assignments are conventional market research and focus group exercises. These activities involve a relatively standard set of steps that can be carried out by relatively junior staff. Of course, an experienced consultant is needed to make some decisions. Customers expect us to be relatively inexpensive and fast in delivering the service. Nor do they expect us to make simple errors; if we did this too often we would lose business. Fortunately, our customers know that they are buying a “standard package”. However, specialist agencies have been emerging over the last few years and they are undercutting us on price. Yet I still feel that we can operate profitably in this market. The other 60 per cent of our work is for clients who require more specialist services, such as assignments involving major brand reshaping. These assignments are complex, large, take longer and require significant branding skill and judgement. It is vital that clients respect and trust the advice we give them in all “brand associated” areas such as product development, promotion, pricing and so on. Of course, they assume that we will not be slow or unreliable, but mainly it’s trust in our judgement backed up by hard statistics that is important to the client. This is popular work with our staff. It is both interesting and very profitable’.

(a) How different are the two types of business described?

(b) It has been proposed that the firm is split into two separate businesses: one to deal with routine services and the other to deal with more complex services. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of doing this?