Gracechurch Update

General Outlook

Conditions are still tough; professional services clients are resigned to a relatively 'flat' outlook in which they will have to compete strongly for market share. At the same time market conditions are hugely different and clients are having to think hard about how they can stand out and innovate. Gracechurch is benefiting from the growing number of businesses who need help with planning and evaluating revised strategies. This appears to be a healthy trend with good businesses focusing on what they do well and what they really stand for.

Law is still finding conditions challenging; demand is sluggish, the corporate market is quiet and clients are exerting downward pressure on fees. Accountancy is also experiencing downward pressure on fees and is negatively affected by its exposure to global economic conditions.

Thought leadership is becoming more important in both sectors, for creating commercial opportunity out of adversity. We are currently discussing or implementing several such programmes and demand is increasing.

Our commercial insurance sector clients are positive; profits are up for most, having generally experienced a good year in terms of solid rate rises and low claims incidence. The market is more competitive as businesses diversify to take advantage of opportunities at home and abroad. This will likely result in more consolidation as players seek to benefit from larger scale operations. Despite having very traditional cultures, marketing is becoming a much more important component of how these businesses compete.

I attended a conference last week where the keynote speaker reflected that this had been the most difficult year economically that many of us had ever experienced, and also the year that Barak Obama was elected. Which, he asked, would history books record?

Memories are short - and at the end of this year, we find ourselves hoping that the economic miseries of the last two will quickly seem a distant memory.

Gracechurch is ending 2009 in good heart. The last few months have seen a resurgence of demand as clients start to look at their plans for next year and consider how best to rebuild. As always, we are very appreciative of the loyalty shown to us by our clients - do keep calling in 2010.

May we take this opportunity to wish all of you a very Happy Christmas - and let us trust that the New Year will be a much better one for us all.

Keeping Busy: Recent Assignments

Exploring demand

Sometimes our clients spot what might be a growth opportunity from work they have been asked to do. This client saw an interesting and different vehicle for providing finance, in a market where credit is tight.

We were asked to explore the demand in 15 countries around the world ranging from the US to Hong Kong and Russia to Bahrain. Not only was geographical co-ordination a challenge, but getting to grips with a highly complex technical proposition - and explaining this to potential customers was demanding. Add to all of this, that our client needed considerable assistance in identifying the target audience - we felt we'd done an exceptional job by the time we handed them the final report and recommendations.

Global Brand Development

Late 2008 we were asked to run a challenging project for Thomson Reuters. Again working closely with HawkPartners. The brief was to recruit groups of traders in key financial markets around the world and to test out a number of new propositions around the Thomson Reuters brand including their new service developments.

The project was successfully executed despite tight deadlines and the usual reluctance of financial traders to participate in research. Groups were very interesting with exceptionally candid feedback. A number of Thomson Reuters people attended and found the whole exercise both enlightening and valuable. Advertising is now appearing in various financial centres and picks up on many of the key research findings as well as the language that traders understand.

Claims Insurance 2010

Gracechurch will be running an expanded programme of insurance services from 2010.

The Claims Performance Monitor will run throughout the year, building on the benchmark established through 2009. The study will be increasingly used to help subscribers take action to improve client loyalty through improved claims service. As the study develops we will be building more robust business line trends so that teams can focus on developing more tailored services out of their specialist claims teams.

London Market Study, now in its 10th year, will run in the first quarter of 2010, with results delivered in March. This study has run every two years but will take place annually from next year. LMS will focus on the competitive positioning of the key players in terms of perceived service levels and market reputation. Again the outputs will focus on helping clients to take action to improve reputation and achieve clear service differentiation.

Thinking Ahead

At a time when many of our clients have had to shrink their marketing budgets, it is perhaps surprising that we have seen a substantial growth in the number of projects which one might categorise as "Thought Leadership". We say "might categorise" because such projects vary considerably in their remit: traditionally they would be largely about raising the firm's profile by generating column inches but, more recently, the emphasis has been shifting strongly towards techniques that will win business.

In the days where they were mostly about media relations, these projects were often suggested and handled by PR agencies, but any firm looking for a means to equip partners and frontline troops with a business development tool needs a different starting point.

We usually start with a creative workshop whose primary purpose is to distil issues around which partners can construct a sales conversation. Let's face it - many thought leadership pieces result in glossy, fairly interesting reports - but try to create a sales conversation off the back of these and you'd be stumped!

It is the initial creative process which determines whether the project will be a commercial success. Sometimes a workshop at the start suffices - the team alights quickly on a key area and some desk research confirms that the issue has not been covered well to date by other commentators. But in other cases, especially when tackling newly emerging and therefore less clearly defined issues, the creative process needs to run for longer.

We are increasingly employing techniques such as Delphi, using an expert panel to shape and define issues before researching them in detail. A well chosen Delphi panel can provide an additional marketing output as well as refine the team's thinking before any wider fieldwork is undertaken.

When it comes to the research, many firms find the greatest challenge is having the right people to interview: getting internal approvals to speak to clients is frequently problematic; added to which there is often a question as to whether clients provide a sufficiently balanced sample to survey. We have therefore been building databases that we use to provide for or supplement the research sample and where needed we create bespoke databases for this purpose.

An increasing number of our clients find it suits them to outsource the production end too. We have a number of financial journalists on our team who interview our clients' partners and experts to gain the firm's perspective and that can be used for a report, for media relations, for business development programmes and for sales aids to partners and others.

The acid test must be - does it generate work for us? There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that it does, but we are now developing a set of ROI measures for clients who want to get serious about balancing their investment over the coming months.

If you are contemplating a thought leadership project or looking for ways to stimulate business development, we'd be happy to share our experiences.

Developing our people and beyond

Gracechurch Associates
Great people are absolutely key to our business. Not all the people who work on our assignments are full time with Gracechurch: we have an expanding list of very senior and experienced associates who we bring onto assignments because they bring the level of experience and expertise that our clients demand.

One particular aspect of developing our people has been to develop a core team of Associate Directors, each with complementary skill sets. This team is our own SWAT team if you like for major projects, but also a creative group which is tasked to come up with 'breakthrough thinking' - something we are constantly striving to deliver to our clients.

Each newsletter we'd like to introduce you to a member of our Associate team, and as Chris Scoble has done quite a lot of work with us recently we thought it appropriate to introduce him to those who don't already know him.

Chris Scoble

Chris has been working

with Gracechurch for a

couple of years now.

His varied background

has seen him in a range

of roles with Barclays

Bank, both in the UK and in Continental Europe, as well as heading up the European marketing function of two major American law firms. That variety has equipped him well to take on very diverse work with Gracechurch, from facilitating senior management teams on key decision-making through to undertaking client feedback interviews around the world. His time spent living and working in Europe, combined with a life-long passion for languages, means that he is comfortable operating in Spanish, French and Italian.

Have a look at the team here: http://www.grch.net/people-02.html.

Gracechurch Alumni

It has always been one of our core philosophies that we want people to join us and to invest in them so they grow and develop. After 10 years we can now claim a fair few alumni who have moved on and we feel that at least in part, Gracechurch helped them to get where they are today (well they all come to our parties anyway). Liesel worked with Gracechurch for many years and left early in 2008 to take on some challenging roles in the financial industry. She's told her story about how Gracechurch helped her along the way:

Liesel von Molendorff

My career journey in the UK started off at Gracechurch Consulting in 2001 where I worked as a PA and had the opportunity to learn a great deal from the Directors. I had good career prospects with plenty of options and a lot of variety within my role. Typically I got to work with more than one senior Director which gave me more responsibility within the wider team. Starting off in a smaller firm means that you can get involved in everything and provides the stepping blocks to build and explore your strengths and interests.

I was able to explore different areas of the business within my role to increase my knowledge and experience, which you don't necessarily get with large organisations. You never get 'pigeon holed' and therefore you can achieve so much more in a shorter period of time if you are focused and ambitious. I also got the support of the Directors which helped me to grow and explore all opportunities.

It is a steep learning curve and you do have to work hard and be dedicated but it definitely prepares you for other positions. I had the opportunity to use all my valuable experiences that I got working at Gracechurch as a springboard to become a manager within a large financial organisation.

And finally...

Congratulations to Herbert Smith and Lovells who have recently been appointed to advise the HM Treasury on the stability of the financial markets. We have worked with both law firms recently and are very happy to hear of their achievements.

Also, well done to Aldar who successfully delivered the Formula 1 track at Yas Marina for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on 1st November.