Product category:
Customer publishing
News Release from: Grist
Edited by the Marketingservicestalk Editorial
Team on 06 February 2008
What makes a world-class contract
publisher?
Grist recently undertook customer research as part of an ongoing exercise to develop closer, more positive relationships with key clients.
We wanted to better understand what was expected from a world-class contract publishing agency John Aves - a Grist non-executive director with over 20 years' experience in the area of customer focus - interviewed senior marketing executives from ten of our key clients, including BDO Stoy Hayward, British Standards Institution, Computer Sciences Corporation, EC Harris and Clifford Chance
Following a structured approach, and by probing and debating the issues that emerged in response to critical questions, Aves and the executives who kindly agreed to talk to him spent up to an hour at a time mapping out precisely what excellence in the contract publishing industry actually looked like.
The findings, detailed below, underpin the importance of long-term value-adding relationships - giving the publisher the opportunity to understand the client and their unique differentiating factors more deeply, and in turn leverage that understanding by distinctively reflecting that differentiation in the publications they create.
Assumed competencies.
The first key finding was somewhat surprising.
In essence, the basic competencies involved in contract publishing - the kind of prior experience and capabilities that invitations to tender, for example, routinely specify - are not, in fact, competitive differentiators at all.
Instead, they are a 'given' - but put a business at a significant disadvantage if the company in question didn't, in the end, deliver them.
Good project management skills, for instance, were one such basic competency.
The requirement: a true 'turnkey' capability, with minimum internal input from the client.
"Ultimately we have limited - and stretched - marketing resource; [a contract publisher] needs to create a top-quality product without adding to the workload of existing teams," was the assessment of Hamish Munro, Business Development and Marketing Director at BDO Stoy Hayward, the UK member firm of BDO International, the world's fifth largest accountancy network.
Perversely, given the objective of our research, relationship management fell into this category, too.
In essence, believed the senior marketing executives who we interviewed, high-calibre relationship management went with the territory of being a world-class contract publisher - and would be evidenced by, as one put it, "an ability to add genuine value: knowing our aims and objectives they should bring a stream of well-researched ideas to the table".
Frank Post, Marketing Director at BSI British Standards, a leading business services provider to organisations worldwide, went further.
A world-class contract publisher, he argued, "should be a nimble and flexible extension of our own internal functions, capable of fitting around the services we currently offer".
Treating the publisher as an embedded member of the internal team ensures consistency - with writers well versed in the corporate culture, market positioning and messaging of the client.
So which competencies are differentiators? Excellent thought leadership capabilities emerged as a clear hallmark.
Here, the requirement was to be able to understand the global context within which clients were working, and then be able to build on this to develop a deep understanding of the imperatives faced by the client and their industry.
Superficiality doesn't cut it.
"We'd like partners with real subject expertise, capable of validating and challenging our point of view," said one interviewee.
Added Stephen Fitzmaurice, External Communications Manager at international law firm Clifford Chance: "It's about objective, independent, authoritative analysis that will help us to engage with senior decision-makers - not merely rewritten marketing material".
And where was this expertise to come from? From the people chosen by the contract publisher to work alongside the client - not just on a given project, but as part of the bedrock of the relationship.
For if superficiality doesn't cut it, neither will mediocrity: the quality of the people working within a world-class publisher were a very clear differentiator.
As Simon Knowles, European Marketing Director at Computer Sciences Corporation, a leading global IT services company, noted: "World-class contract publishers should be intellectually impressive, able to interview - and sometimes challenge - senior members of the organisation as equals".
Another senior director went further, reflecting the operational pressures and constraints under which marketing was sometimes called upon to commission work.
"A key component is the brief, which may initially be short, and sometimes non-existent," one observed.
"The publisher's people need to be proactive - able to interpret this, ask the right questions and create leading-edge publications, without too much involvement from me".
Much of this confirmed our own thinking within Grist.
As our clients know, many of our people have backgrounds involving work at the Economist Group, the Financial Times and other blue-chip publishers.
The final finding took us by surprise - and it's something that we're working hard to reflect in our work.
Like many within the contract publishing industry, we've always regarded the publications that we deliver as the most durable testimonial to our work.
But publications have a shelf life.
Imparted skills and new abilities, on the other hand, don't have a sell-by date - and a significant number of the senior marketing executives we spoke to regarded skills transfer as an important, albeit unsaid, part of what a world class contract publisher can offer.
"World class contract publishers should aid the development of in-house teams, helping us to develop best-in-class processes," said one.
"They should leave something behind that is of value - perhaps critiquing existing publications," added another.
Nor should skills transfer be seen as purely a 'giveaway', urged Alan Matthews, Marketing Director at EC Harris, a leading international consultancy working on the real estate, infrastructure and construction sectors.
By helping the client to create ways of measuring and enhancing the impact of publications, he pointed out, publishers in effect demonstrate the return on investment to make the business case for future publications - a virtuous circle of excellence helping to bring about further excellence.
It's a model of circularity that strikes us as going to the heart of how long-term relationships can further the interests of both our clients and ourselves.
For professional services firms struggling to stand out in a crowded market, the challenge of showcasing their capabilities in new and compelling ways is never-ending.
At Grist, we aim to help meet that challenge, by working closely, over the long term, with those professional services firms who aspire to be thought leaders.
Author Andrew Rogerson is director and co-founder of Grist, a research and contract publishing agency specialising in creating thought leadership magazines, newsletters and research reports for professional services firms.
Current clients include: BDO Stoy Hayward, British Standards Institution, Clifford Chance, Computer Sciences Corporation, EC Harris, Jardine Lloyd Thompson, QinetiQ, Siddall and Company and Watson Wyatt.
Grist also produces Strategy Magazine for the Strategic Planning Society.
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