How to avoid becoming a successful brand consultant?

Anyone wishing to avoid a successful career in brand consulting – and who wouldn't? – should take precautions early on. Studying the social sciences is a good start, preferably with a Marxist worldview thrown in. Examining social power relations, economic interests and the contradictions of capitalist societies ought to dampen any enthusiasm for the professional cultivation of corporate identities. A subsequent spell in basic research offers additional protection. Anyone who takes seriously the limited capacity to control organizations should be largely immune to the promises of brand management.

Unfortunately, these precautions are unreliable. There are cases in which they not only fail but encourage the very professional success they were meant to prevent. Scientific insight becomes analytical competence, social criticism becomes strategic thinking, and a less-than-market-friendly outlook becomes a competitive advantage. Everything falls into place as a remarkably coherent success story. Even the original reservations turn out to be special qualifications. Quite an achievement in brand management, before the actual work has even begun.

The first danger arises earlier. Anyone from modest circumstances who learns early on that social belonging cannot be taken for granted develops a strong desire for recognition. Education opens opportunities, and opportunities are there to be seized. Success confirms that the effort has not been in vain. Combine this ambition with a desire to change social conditions, and the result is a mixture of adaptability and a rebellious spirit that can prove exceptionally good for one's career. The circumstances remain unchanged, but one's own position within them improves considerably.

Science offers a degree of protection. Basic research means pursuing questions without already knowing the answers. An explanation must stand up to scrutiny, even when it is politically desirable. Contradictions do not disappear simply because they get in the way of a persuasive theory. And sometimes scientific progress consists in abandoning a cherished certainty. This work has its own aims and criteria of success. Its value does not depend on whether its findings can be put to commercial use. Knowledge is not a raw material merely waiting to be turned into a consulting service.

Scientific methods, however, can also be applied outside science. Things become dangerous when the study of strategic action is added to social theory. Game theory shows how actors pursue their interests, respond to one another and produce outcomes that nobody intended. It explains why individually rational action can have collectively irrational consequences. This is scientifically interesting, quite apart from any practical application. Regrettably, it also proves useful when advising organizations. Scientific work nevertheless remains an activity in its own right. The fact that its insights later become commercially useful does not retrospectively turn it into preparation for a career.

Another danger comes from design. As long as it appears to be the aesthetic packaging of economic interests, there is little to fear. But an encounter with demanding design can thoroughly unsettle that prejudice. Good design requires intellectual precision, judgment and the ability to make visible connections that previously remained indistinct. It is not the embellishment of finished ideas but a distinct form of thinking. Anyone who recognizes this and takes pleasure in the work has already come dangerously close to brand consulting.

Especially unfortunate is an encounter with people who embody this ambition. Suddenly the question is no longer whether brand consulting is fundamentally a dubious occupation, but whether a particular piece of work succeeds. This is a consequential shift in perspective. The pleasure of doing good work and the commercial usefulness of its results are by no means mutually exclusive. Anyone hoping for an irreconcilable opposition between the two is in for a disappointment.

Once one has entered brand consulting, new opportunities arise to prevent a successful career. The consistent application of scientific insights to clients' problems seems particularly promising. Anyone who knows that organizations can be controlled only to a limited extent, that interests diverge and that decisions have unintended consequences ought to have considerable difficulty with the promises of strategic brand management.

Brand consulting itself seems largely untroubled by such difficulties. It is populated by people with a remarkable ability to explain the world. They know what companies lack, why their strategies fail and how to secure their future. They are particularly reliable at diagnosing shortcomings in their clients' identity, differentiation and credibility. That their own industry presents itself with almost identical offerings, interchangeable promises and remarkably uniform language is apparently a less pressing problem. Here lies their greatest commonality: they all promise to be unique.

Brand consulting owes its existence to a bold claim: professional work on a company's brand can not only help people understand the company better but make the company itself better. From the necessary simplification of complex circumstances occasionally arises the notion that those circumstances can be changed by simplifying them in the right way. Strategy is confused with reality, and its persuasive presentation with its practical implementation. And when reality fails to follow the strategy, the usual explanation is a lack of consistent execution.

Particularly impressive is the confidence with which an industry whose own concepts and methods are subject to constant shifts in fashion promises to provide other organizations with direction. No sooner has one concept been introduced than it is replaced by another that means essentially the same thing but sounds considerably more up to date. Advertising becomes communication, communication becomes experience, experience becomes a touchpoint, and reasonably consistent corporate management becomes a lived brand identity. The ability to turn such changes into ever-new consulting opportunities deserves recognition. It should not, however, be mistaken for intellectual progress.

Terms such as attitude, authenticity, purpose and identity are especially popular. Companies are expected to know who they are, what they stand for and where they want to go. That such questions can be answered through a consulting engagement is taken for granted. After all, the business depends on it. And when brands are expected not merely to succeed commercially but also to assume social responsibility and improve the world, a commercial service becomes, almost unnoticed, a moral authority. The invoice remains the same.

It can be particularly damaging to one's career to ask not only what makes a brand successful but also what follows from that success. A successful brand does not necessarily do any good. This is an unwelcome insight for a profession that prefers to regard success as confirmation of its own achievements. Anyone who insists on establishing whether a client's success would be desirable in the first place is likely to make winning the assignment unnecessarily difficult. The competition will be grateful.

Anyone entering this business with scientific standards might despair. There is, however, another option: to take part in it. Analytical skills help identify the contradictions. Design skills help present them convincingly. And economic interests ensure that recognizing them does not necessarily lead to the obvious conclusions.

Clients do not expect a treatise on the limits of organizational control. They want to know what to do. A recommendation should provide direction and enable decisions. The accurate observation that reality is more complicated than the strategy suggests is unlikely to be welcomed as helpful. Especially when it identifies the client as part of the problem.

Anyone who insists on scientific precision in this situation can indeed put a career at risk. Yet one can learn to distinguish between necessary simplification and unacceptable distortion. This opens considerable scope for decisions whose justifications are more convincing than their actual motives. Anyone who has learned to argue carefully can also justify their own interests with remarkable care. A well-argued compromise remains a compromise. But it looks considerably better.

Things become dangerous when criticism of these practices itself becomes part of the consulting offer. The industry can then even afford its critics. They are seen as independent, awkward and particularly credible. Provided their criticism remains a service. In an industry that sells authenticity, conviction and differentiation, even dissent is a welcome business model. Such people are called thought leaders.

Financial independence appears to be a particularly effective means of preventing a successful career. Anyone who does not depend on every assignment can reject demands, refuse recommendations and, if necessary, leave the business. Money makes it possible to take decisions without constantly having to make them dependent on their financial consequences. This is less about wealth than self-respect. Anyone who can afford to say no need not ask, whenever faced with an unreasonable demand, whether they can afford to refuse.

The problem is that this independence must first be acquired. And acquired, of all things, through success in the very business from which it is meant to provide independence. To avoid having to adapt in the future, it seems sensible to adapt a little more for the time being. One more assignment increases security; another successful financial year expands one's room for maneuver. The point at which enough has been achieved proves remarkably flexible.

This approach works particularly reliably when the desire for financial independence is combined with a strong sense of responsibility. Personal interest then becomes a moral obligation. This is reassuring because it casts one's decisions in a better light. And dangerous because almost any decision to carry on can be justified in this way.

This brings us to the most dangerous development of all: taking on leadership responsibility. Anyone running a consulting firm can no longer confine themselves to recognizing the contradictions of the business. Assignments must be won, salaries paid, employees kept in work and financial results delivered. Whether a recommendation is sufficiently well founded scientifically remains an important question. It is joined by another: will the company still exist next year?

This changes the perspective considerably. Decisions previously criticized as expressions of economic self-interest now appear to be necessary conditions for responsible action. Not without reason. Responsibility for other people is real. So is the opportunity to hide behind it. An assignment may be accepted because jobs depend on it. Or because its financial rewards are tempting. Usually there is something to be said for both explanations. Anyone with sufficient analytical ability will rarely struggle to find the more persuasive account.

Professional success makes the problem worse. Growth creates new obligations, recognition creates new expectations, and financial success creates new benchmarks. What was originally intended as a means to independence develops a momentum of its own. Game theory certainly offers explanations for this. Only the explanation is of little help when the next decision comes due.

By now, the attempt to avoid a successful career should be considered a failure. Unless one manages at least to preserve the identity of an outsider. Fortunately, plenty of arguments are available. Social origins, a Marxist past, scientific training and a critical distance from one's own profession can be combined into a persuasive self-image. Being part of the business does not, after all, mean having to identify with everything that happens in it. And surely the ability to look critically at one's own circumstances distinguishes one from those who have settled into them all too comfortably.

It is an attractive idea. Unfortunately, it is somewhat undermined by the fact that the supposed outsider now wields considerable decision-making power. Assignments are accepted, objectives set, performance assessed and demands made of others. Critical distance does not prevent any of this. Perhaps it even helps on occasion.

Critical distance, too, can have market value in consulting. Anyone who knows the weaknesses of their own industry and can name them convincingly appears particularly credible. Criticism becomes a point of differentiation; independence becomes a positioning. Resistance to the logic of the business turns out, of all things, to be a particularly successful application of that very logic.

Then there is retirement. It offers an opportunity to view the business from a safe distance. No more assignments, no revenue responsibility, no obligation to turn complicated relationships into persuasive presentations. Financial independence has been achieved. Self-respect no longer needs to be defended against the next invoice. One can now say openly what is doubtful about the promises of brand consulting, questionable about its methods and occasionally ridiculous about its self-image.

It could be an act of liberation. Except that the criticism now takes place under exceptionally favorable conditions. The financial rewards of the earlier career are secure; the professional risks have disappeared. Anyone who now calls out the absurdities of the business no longer has to decide whether doing so might cost them an assignment.

One's own biography, too, can now be examined critically. Scientific convictions, the pleasure of good design, ambition, money, power and responsibility provide ample material for a series of essays. Each can be another attempt to free oneself from the justifications of one's own past.

But this must not turn into yet another success story. This time, the story of someone who first makes a career and then finds the courage to examine it critically. Self-criticism, too, can enhance one's reputation. Anyone who subjects their own past to unsparing scrutiny can hope for recognition. Intellectual integrity becomes the final distinction of a successful career. And criticism of brand consulting perhaps the last successful piece of branding.

What remains is to keep writing. Sentence by sentence. Essay by essay. And with each attempt, to watch out for yet another particularly convincing story about one's own independence. Went along with it then, sees through it now. But one thing is clear: he's not getting off that cheaply.