Simon Akers is the founder of Archmon, a marketing and media consultant, a regular NDA columnist and last year’s NDA Agency hero finalist.
We are in changing talent-utility times. Acquisitions and mergers of both vendors and agencies often mean an attrition of full-time senior talent. Well, it has lately anyway and therein lies both the problem and opportunity. More people with serious tenure and talent are ‘out of work’, with an inversely finite number of opportunities further up the chain. Yet this situation provides organisations with a carousel of opportunities to bring in certain people.
Enter the consultants. The self-employed. The one-person-bands. The freelancers. Talent who enjoys the win-win of different projects not forever, working with brands who don’t need them forever and all the time. I have made a living from this since 2019. Supporting brands with marketing or media support who don’t have or want a CMO or agency (yet), or agencies themselves.
So far so good. You can tap into this fractional expertise and support. But how? Now what? The key is your need state, (problem identification) and being aware of the types (generalists or specialists)
Knowing what you need
If you are clear on your problem, or you know the exact task/job that needs doing, then you probably want a specialist 9 out of 10 times. By specialist, I mean the solution to an exacting problem. For example, if marketing was the generalism, measurement could be the specialism. You have a strategy or a plan in place already, and you can tap into available market talent to plug gaps or deliver said need.
Not knowing what you need (except definitely knowing you need help)
The brief is loosely in the head but much less exacting. You are more about solving a perceived problem than knowing an exacting prescription. A greater examination is required. Your sales have dried up, your brand is fragmented, or your retention efforts are dwindling, could be the kind of things I am talking about. For this, you need a generalist. Someone who is widely conversant and aware of the arena in which you play. Albeit sector knowledge or business function (e.g. marketing) knowledge, who can use their polymathic experience to audit, identify the problem and bring in what you need? Speaking as a generalist myself, we usually have a more ‘specialised’ core background (or 2) but the best are aware of their non-areas and can guide what or who accordingly.
Do you know what you need?
This can be dangerous, Thinking you know the answer to a problem ( a hunch), or worse, not spotting the problem and getting a solution for a different bit. Again, the use of consultants is helpful to provide an external POV, and help guide the direction of travel! Self-diagnosis can be dangerous!
There are many ways to access this talent, Have a look on LinkedIn, and check out strategy forums, Several collectives are rightly cropping up; The Zoo London also does their thing with an exceptional black book of seasoned consultants. But it is about going through the steps of self-awareness, and knowing which type of consultant to deploy. I often write about the phrase ‘it depends’, an annoying phrase to hear hence its at-time parody. But it is so often true. What do you need? It depends. And you don’t even need a consultant to say it.
