Content

1. Case Introduction

2. Consulting Industry

3. Marketing Practises in the consulting Industry

4. Marketing Practises at Bain & Company

5. Suggestions for improvement

Bain & Company Case

1. Case Introduction
David Bechhofer, a director at Bain & Company is facing a dilemma:
The changes within the consulting industry and the decision of Bain to be present in more and more
countries, forces the company to reconsider and restructure its marketing.
Traditionally, marketing was foreign to Bain´s corporate culture and focused mainly on customer
relationship marketing and networking. Anyway, it could not ignore traditional marketing tools any
longer.

In the following we will present our case analysis based on the assignment questions:

1. What does marketing mean at a conventional consulting firm?

2. How does marketing evolve in the consulting industry?
3. What actions do you recommend for the marketing of Bain & Company?

Bain & Company Case

2. Consulting Industry
 Roots of the consulting industry can be traced back to Taylor
 Since then, management consulting evolved into a global industry

In 1996, the consulting companies differentiated themselves across 4 dimensions

Strategic Consulting

Information Technology Consulting

Specific Situation Consulting

Hybrid Accounting Consulting

Bain & Company Case

2. Consulting Industry

Impact on consulting
Factors changing the consulting industry in the 1990s
companies

Especially high growth from 1980 until 1996

Reasons:
• Rapid rate of change in many industries Increased competition
• Ongoing downsizing of many industries
• Increased growth of technology

Integrity
Increased difficulty of
• Integration of services and expertise within consulting companies through
differentiation
M&A
Globalization
Difficulty of maintaining a
• Clients of consulting companies became multinational and consulting
consistent company image
companies had to follow

• Widening of the definition of consulting

• Increased difficulty to differentiate between the industries

Bain & Company Case

3. Marketing Practises in the Consulting Industry

• Aversion to traditional marketing

• “narrowed” approach
•Tools:
• Publications
• Executive conference
• Books
s 0991 er of e B

• Articles

Strategy consulting:
Focus:
• Customer relationship marketing
general
• Publishing of articles, books
business
• Creation of platform e.g. by Mc Kinsey (Change Institute, Global Institute)
ideas & problems
IT, hybrid and specific situation consulting:
• Broader marketing approach
• In addition to the tools used by strategy consulting, they used the following tools:
Focus:
• TV
no s 0991 mor F

Specific products
• Sport Sponsorship
• Print

Bain & Company Case

4. Marketing Practises at Bain & Company

• Traditional marketing foreign to Bain´s culture

• Focus on relationship marketing and networking
• Communication mainly with a small set of customer
• Tools:
• Publications
• Conferences and social events
• Books
• No efforts on creating a consistent corporate design

Impacts of industry changes on Bain´s marketing:

• In order to attract best client with high budgets, need to increase awareness among a broader audience
• Clear positioning within the industry and differentiation among other consulting companies
• Create a consistent appearance worldwide

Bain & Company Case

5. Suggestions for improvement

1st Step: Corporate Design and appearance world wide

 Create CD and set up rules for using the CD world wide
 Standardization of titles world wide

2nd Step: Implement additional marketing tools

Target Group Objective Channels/Instruments

• Create awareness in • Print

all operating countries Image Campaign in Newspapers targeting Bain´s
among a broader customer e.g. business newspapers, well known
audience daily paper, newspapers of airlines
Customer:
Decision Maker • Sport Sponsoring
• Position Bain clearly Sponsorships in sports which is of interest of potential
Top Manager
client (e.g. Golf , Sailing)
as a strategy
consultancy in order to • PR
differentiate Well directed positioning of Bain in articles through
themselves interview of “Bainies” with newspapers
• Events
• Differentiate from Invitation of decision maker of actual clients as well as
other consulting potential client
companies
• On-Campus presence
• Increase positive Campus events e.g. Bain Student competition, or
Potential employees: “word-of-mouth”
Students • Online
communication Image campaign on student platforms

• TV Presenterships
Presenterships in TV channels used by target group e.g
Bloomberg

Bain & Company Case

Thank you

Bain & Company Case