What it takes to align brand, people and strategy in professional services with Paola Garbini, Head of Marketing Europe at Oliver Wyman

B2B has the potential to be electrifying. But the industry is paralyzed by a culture of conservatism scared stiff in a straight jacket of rational ideas. It's time for change. It's time to make B2B marketing visceral. Join us as we uncover and explore the Truth with leading B2B marketers. This is B2B Marketing the Provocative Truth. Hello and welcome to B2B Marketing the Provocative Truth. I'm Benedikt and today I am joined by Paola Garbini, who is Executive director, head of Marketing Europe at Oliver Wyman. Have I got that right? That's correct, Benny. Excellent. Okay, well, that is a relief to hear. A very, very warm welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? I'm very well. Thank you so much for inviting me. I am looking forward to having this conversation with you. Excellent. Well, we were just chatting about the Olympics, so we need to make sure this podcast is equally as engaging and riveting because we are talk about the idea of speaking with one brand voice, which instinctively seems to make sense to people, but I think if you scratch below the surface, it might just be one of those terms which is thrown around and there isn't really an understanding of what that means in practice. What are the trade offs involved in developing one brand voice? What are the practicalities and you know, what does it actually feel like as much as anything else for, for brands that are involved in that? And I think that you are a very, very qualified to have this conversation given the, I suppose the changes that have been going on within Oliver Wyman and the, the group that you're part of, which is with Marsh. Now I'm going to get you to give probably a far better explanation of what's been happening shortly. But as I understand it from the outside, there has been a sort of a rig architecture and there has been sort of a move of aligning the legacy insurance businesses with some of the consultancy businesses. And then there is a sort of a alignment, I think it's fair to say, of Oliver Wyman within that sort of family. Now, I'm sure I've completely bastardized that as a description. So maybe we start off with you explaining what that model is and I think also really importantly, what was the context which brought about that need to make that shift. Absolutely. Very happy to talk about it because it's actually a fascinating story, at least to me. The way we describe it is the expanded brand. And actually you're not far off with your description of what has been happening And I'll give you, let's say, the lay of the land in terms of why we ended up where we are and why we decided to make this shift. There are three main reasons for this expanded brand to come to life. The number one is actually client led. So delivery more for clients was the number one priority for us. So this idea of seeing clients in such a rapidly changing environment and highly complex environment as well, looking for answers across a wide array of questions. For example, what do I do when it comes to my people? What do I do when it comes to risk? What do I do when it comes to changing strategy? So we needed to figure out a way to better serve our clients and to have clients have a better experience of us, one level above the individual brands and our individual offerings. So that was, number one, broadening, if you will, the impact that we have at our clients. Beyond the specifics of our delivery models. There was another more involved. The first one was delivery more for clients. Another one was unlocking more opportunities for our people. Yes. So thinking about more alignment, more collaboration, opportunities to cross pollinate, and also opportunities to, say, share knowledge and offer opportunities for mobility internally. Apologies. So this was the other more that we wanted to have. And the third one was actually investing more effectively, investing more in things like technology. Everybody talks about AI, so AI was also part of the discussion, focusing on better and broader innovation that we could then deliver to our clients. So this idea of expanding the brand was in service of these three needs, if you will, the way we expanded this. And so the expanded brand concept enables us to access, you know, a wide array of offerings for our clients. And so our clients can actually in reverse be able to understand the capabilities that we have. And at the same time we can preserve what makes us unique. From my perspective, running Oliver Wyman marketing in Europe, I shall say that the market context is very tangible in this situation. And so if you think about the highly fragmented markets we have, we also have different levels of brand maturity, we have different levels of engaging with clients. And so this expanded brand is an opportunity for us also to, you know, come up with different offerings to our clients and let's say aspirationally look at something broader for the future. Excellent. Well, I mean, I think it's very clear in terms of, you know, that more holistic ability to service clients. And also you talk there about some of the synergies, if you'll just sort of indulge me. And this is more being a bit of a sort of like brand strategy nerd, I suppose. I'd be fascinated to understand, you know, the specific decision. I mean, you talked about it being an expanded model. What the rationale was for keeping that slight degree of separation for Oliver Wyman alongside Marsh. As I say, almost just for the real, sort of like strategic nerds amongst us. What was the thought process and the theory that went behind that decision? Absolutely, because that's a very important component of the strategy itself. So as a management consultant, Oliver Wyman often works on highly strategic and sensitive client engagements. And these programs have some specificities that we need to take into account. And so at times, Oliver Wyman benefits from having this separation of its brand. And if you think about it from the client perspective as well, clients have very specific needs when it comes to engaging with a management consultant. And so knowing that Oliver Wyman has this ability to independently assess a situation and advise is really important. At the same time, though, again, for all the reasons that I described before, we recognize that being part of Marsche brings a very important advantage to our clients as well. And that's why if you look at our new logo, when we reintroduced the brand, we reintroduced also a new logo. You can see that we are Oliver Wyman, a Marsh business. And this goes back to the topic that we discussed before about this connectivity with the Marsh brand to showcase to the clients that we are actually even more than Oliver Weinman and we can offer other opportunities them to connect with the. With the other companies. And that's what I think it's. I think it's a really fascinating conversation because almost when you, you know, an organization goes to a fully branded house model, this idea, which we sort of introduced at the beginning of the podcast of speaking with one voice becomes more straightforward now. And there's a lot of, I think, probably teething issues with implementing it, but ultimately there is just that clarity where one brand with one voice. When we look at the. The new structure that you've got there with Oliver Wyman and Marsh, and you talked about how it's really important unlocking that sort of value between. Between the brands. And ultimately, you need to speak with one voice. What does it look like in practice when you do have that association, but also a slight degree of separation? Again, I think it's, it's. It's a very interesting question, and I just want to clarify one thing. We're at the start of our journey, so it's a lot of testing and learning, but we're. One thing that is absolutely clear to us is that when it comes to one brand voice, it's all about, you know, everyone not sounding the same because otherwise you lose identity. But it's about communicating our, let's say, distinct personality in every interaction. So how we articulate the voice, not only when it comes to advertising or shaping an event, but actually every time we interact with a client, with a prospect, or with the wide array of different target audiences that we have at all the touch points. And so how we show up what we stand for, how we speak about impact and how we speak to our clients and the world is really important. And basically in practice to us it means that speaking in a way that shows a set of principles that we adhere to with clear guidance rather than a strict set of rules. Yes, that's critical to us because otherwise it would sound all the same all the time. It's having coherence and purpose as well. And so in practical terms, I think it's all about reminding ourselves that there's an under an underlying posturing that is unmistakably marsh. At the same time, we can figure out a way to be insight led and trustworthy and outcome focus in the way we speak. And you say, you talk there about, you know, an underlying posturing. We talked about a distinct identity and we saw about a set of principles. How did, what was the process, I suppose, in terms of defining what those were? And you know, I mean, you said it's not about rules, so maybe codifying isn't quite the right word. But almost defining them and then introducing them to the, the organization, I think that it was a very interesting collaborative process. And by that I mean that, you know, on one side you have to have some sort of search. Central governing enables a conversation to start and to progress, especially when it comes to, you know, bringing so many voices at the table and trying to understand the direction of travel. So you need to have brand leadership. And I think that actually a kidify moment for us has been receiving, I would say, a clear mandate from the top and having someone like our chief marketing officer, Heather Stern, who is the chief marketing officer for Oliver Wyman, who really took on the challenge and led with strength and with this ambition of making, making this happen. So on one side you have the brand leadership that sets the principles and shows you the way and also defines some non negotiables because you have to have such non negotiables. But at the same time you remind yourself and your knowledge that it's the businesses that then make this idea come to life and make the brand come to life. And so you have to find ways for them to Be authentic to the audiences that they speak with and, and the people they speak to. And so obviously you encounter disagreement. You, you know, it's not a linear journey, the one that defines your brand and your brand voice, but what the central governance helps you with is clarifying where you need to change, where you need to pivot, and where instead you need to plot through and move ahead. And when you have questions, I think that the answer is always going back to the core, like, are we stumbling on something that might be helpful to change? Because it helps us clarify, for example, in our case, who Oliver Wyman is in the ecosystem of Marshall? Yes, no. Depending on the answer, then we make a decision and we course correct or we move on. So yeah, it's a hub and spoke type of approach, I would say. And I think there's a really, a really important word that you use there is around this idea of leadership when you're going through a process like this. And I mean, leadership means a lot of things, but inherent within leadership is making tough decisions. And in this context, it's actually about making trade offs because you're seeing a bigger picture. I'd be fascinated. You know, from, from your perspective, you know, providing you're able to share this information, almost what were the sort of difficult trade offs that you as a representative of Oliver Wyman or the Oliver Wyman brand almost had to go through as part of this process? But it was a trade off because it's about achieving a bigger goal which is getting out of that alignment with Marsch. Yeah, I can definitely answer from my perspective, running the Oliver Wyman marketing team in Europe, but also having spoken with, with Heather and other and other people participated in this process of building the new brand. I would say, and let me speak first of all, something that is really important to me that connects to your question and that's the topic of convergence. So oftentimes you look for consensus, especially when it comes to these big projects and these ambitious endeavors where you on one side want to get to the finish line and you want to achieve success and make change happen, but on the other side you also recognize the need to bring a lot of people along the journey. And I think that actually, especially with my experience in a consulting firm, which is basically the sum of many people, brands and many, many individuals who are really specific about the way they go to market and about the way they think. And that's the beauty of a firm like ours. It's almost impossible to build consensus. What I value even more than consensus is convergence. And that's what I wanted to start with by answering the question. So I think that in the context of a rebrand or the reintroduction of the brand, like in the Oliver Wyman case, in the broader market Marsh ecosystem, we wanted to build convergence. And I think that the main difference between convergence and consensus is that you establish a dialogue with building convergence. You don't necessarily have to have everyone buying in what you're doing from the, from the start. And when it comes to brand, there's a lot of feelings involved, there's a lot of human elements as well. So everyone is attached to the brand in a slightly different way. So it doesn't really matter that at the moment everyone is understanding fully what you're doing. But what matters is that with your authority, with your efficacy in the way you communicate, with your commitment to making things happen in a certain way, people follow you. And so I think that that is an important step, especially when, and I'm getting to your specific question, there are challenges and you need to make trade offs, as you discussed before. For me, if I were to think about two things that have been challenging and will be challenging as well, because as I said, we're at the start of the journey. One is around the fact that, you know, we need to educate people, we need to inspire people, we need to empower people. And so all these things take time. And you don't meet people at different, I mean, at the same stage and at the same moment, you know, you need to really bring them along the journey. And so becoming more explicit about our role within the marsh ecosystem, building connectivity as well with the other companies to go to market together, is something that we really need to focus on in order to win more and be better. And going back to the first principle, doing more for our clients, the other one is, and it's very Oliver Wyman focused, I would say, also because that's the experience I have, letting go a little bit of everything is unique, everything has to be unique, everything has to be different. And what do I mean by that? There's beauty and consistency when you're trying to grow a brand, there's beauty and uniqueness as well. And you always want to do the best for your client. And so you shape an event, you come up with a communications campaign, you think about something that is very strategic and has a marketing orientation. It always has to be unique. In the context of what we're doing at the moment under the Marsh umbrella, I think that actually having more consistency over what we do, how we show up, starting from colors to our voice, as we were saying before, more might actually be an advantage and we need to embrace that a little bit more. I would say it's a, it's a really interesting. It's probably quite an unfashionable thing, what you've said, which I don't mean any in any sort of disrespect, but I think that it's really interesting in terms of. There is an obsession about, I mean, originality or uniqueness and it's almost a relentless pursuit of trying to find that and never really capturing it. And actually what you've probably articulated there is that what really matters is how effective you are and the way that you can be effective. If you look at very, very basic sort of marketing brand principles, it's about consistency. And actually, Benny, I, I want to quote our CMO again because one thing that she says, and she's a, an avid music listener and she says something that everyone I think should really remember, at least in our team, and that is we should learn how to sing from the same song sheet. Yeah. And that's something that really inspires me because the more you leverage that ability to be unique, but in a way that is consistent and the more you'll be able to show up in the right way and the stronger the brand will be. Well, I mean, it's. And I think that it. The absolute logic behind it and it's, it's almost just, almost a basic sort of rule of economics as much as anything else that if you have a weight of people saying the same thing, it has more strength, it has more authority. So I mean, there is really just a very, very strong logic to that. There's a couple of things I'd be interested to pick up on, but I think firstly you spoke about how it's always going to be difficult when you're going through this process because it's actually quite a human experience for people. People have that sort of emotional engagement and in many respects I think that going through any sort of brand architecture type work is. It's a business transformation exercise, you know, first and foremost. And therefore there is change management. Yes. And if you don't get the change management right, you're going to make life at best difficult for yourself and at worst your whole sort of program is going to sort of like topple over. What do you think were the really key things that, you know, Marsh and Oliver Wyman got right in terms of thinking about the people involved in this process? Yes. Well, it's challenging, isn't it when you are a people led business. I mean, we're talking about Oliver Weinman who she's a strategy manager and consulting. And it's made of individuals who carry the brand on their shoulders. Ultimately, when you think about a client eventually deciding to work with us, the decision was made because of the way they have experience talking to us and engaging with us at the human level, of course. And so I think that in order to get things right, you need to make sure that you give, you recognize, let's say, the specific role that each individual in the company has to play in the context of reintroducing the brand, reorganizing ourselves around a specific brand voice and so on. And I think that keeping people at the center of the conversation has always been a strength of this process. We spoke about convergence before. I mean, you need to build convergence because you have people around you and you give them a voice. We spoke about chartering a specific path across, you know, different brands, but also within the brands, different markets, different industries, different client offering and so on. So there were a lot of people who were brought to the discussion table and there's different ways of listening and the one that we used I think was listening to learn. Oftentimes you listen, but then you at the same time want to offer your solution and your idea of what a good brand really looks like and so on. In our case, it was more like listening to learn how people perceive the brand, how people talk to clients about the brand, how people feel the brand, so that we could take the good of that, enhance it when it was needed, or maybe deflate it a little bit when it wasn't part of our future story. So I think that that is something that was done very well by the core team and I think that it's actually bearing fruit right now because ultimately it's the people who actually have to carry the brand forward. And the more we understand where we're going and the more we understand that voice and make it ours, the better it's going to be. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I was speaking to our creative director actually today about a very, very similar idea, which is the, the role of identity within brand. You know, fundamentally, certainly when you're going through this process now, I think that, you know, what you were just describing there sort of, it recognizes the level of identity that people have with a brand and a legacy brand and therefore actually starting to, you know, disconnect them from that identity is an unpleasant, uncomfortable process. And unless you properly sort of engage with people and Enfranchise them so they can see something within the new brand. It's very, very difficult to enable that transition. And I think the other sort of flip side of identity which I think is specific to professional services is that the identity of the consultants, you know, are inherently part of actually the, the corporate brand as well. So to bring us back to these, you know, the conversation around speaking with one voice, how do you, I suppose, reconcile, you know, the idea of one voice at a sort of a corporate level and then the need for that individual expression at a partner level, for instance? Yes, and I mean I, I should preempt that I am a big fan of people brands. Yeah. So I really like to recognize the value that a single individual to expanding the meaning of a brand. And going back to the topic of being a people led business, I mean, our consultants are the core for us. They are the core of our value proposition. And when it comes to our clients experiencing us, they buy into our people, they buy into their values, they buy into their expertise. So these people are essentially our product. And by being our product, they are the ones who can actually bring the brand forward and make it come to life. So we also have some specific individuals within Oliver Wyman with whom we work extensively in order to make them show up in a way that they want and they like when it comes to being more visible externally. So there's also a very specific avenue for us to look after personal brands. But more in general, I think that the idea is to say as long as we clarify the principles that we follow in order to show up in the way we want to show up, and we give freedom of expression and the ability to elaborate on these principles so that every individual brand can express themselves in a way that is authentic, but at the same time ladders up to the corporate brand, we are fine. This also enables for consistency on one side, but not for copycat type of outcomes. And so again to the topic, going back to the topic of being human, being approachable, being trustworthy, being understood by clients and prospects, I think that that's the only avenue. Otherwise you would sound either tone deaf or completely out of scope compared to a client or someone who inquires about the opportunity of collaborating for an extensive period of time in a moment of transformation. I mean, they actually need a human being. On the other side, they don't need someone who is just splattering out tagline. And is that something which is just implicitly understood, that partners need to exercise that discretion, or is that actually something that you explicitly communicate you know, when you're talking about, well, this is our new voice, this is the new way we speak. But I need you to bring your own spin on that. I think it's interesting because, I mean, I think that the aspiration is to make sure that everybody, you know, has it clear in their mind. Is it always happening? It's a journey, right? So you, you, you have instances where you have to have that conversation. Some people maybe get it more than others at the beginning. But again, I, I, I have faith in the process and I'm, I'm, I'm happy to far everything has been rather easy, I would say, in that sense. I'm going back to the topic of the fact that our brand is really not just our brand, but brands in general, I think, are the sum of the experiences that people have with either the products and in this case, actually the assets that are our people. And so in a way, if we find a way to always reconnect to the core, and if we find a way to keep the dialogue open, we can test, learn and we can pivot, but ultimately we'll reach the goal. If you ask me, when we know if the voice, if this idea of having one voice and being a bit more connected at the brand level is working, I would say so far I've recognized it working in some specific cases. I would say so first of all, when you have clarity, when you have clarity over, you know, the understanding that the clients have about you, so clients can actually articulate who you are and what you stand for. It's easy for us to articulate it when we, you know, when we have it on paper or when we have defined it ourselves. But when you have the clients who actually can articulate it for you, it's a big win. The second one is what we were talking about before, this idea of trust. So building trust is super important for us. So when our message across markets, across different industries feels consistent and trustworthy. And then the third one is the commercial impact. So being able to see that the brand is an amplifier and further substantiates the key messages that we have for our clients and therefore has a role to play in reducing the time between maybe the first contact and the decision making over, over buying our services. Yeah, three things that are very aspirational, but at least you have this type of way of looking at them and seeing are we going in the right direction, should we change or should we try something different? Is it all working? And you know, what you've described, there are implicitly, I suppose, Measures of success. And you've also started to talk there in terms of there's a journey that you're going on and it's about tracking against that. Is there almost actually a measurement framework that you have developed which would be the markers of this being a success? You know, quantification, I know you talked about commercial impacts on and so forth, but almost just some headline things which everybody needs to keep focused on. We call it Romy, which is a return on marketing investment. Yeah. And it's, it's such a critical thing. It's been such a critical thing in my specific journey as well, running the European team. And I think it's also one of the most challenging discussions that you may have in B2B marketing, because on one side you want to demonstrate the impact. In our case, it's even more than that because we wanted to come up with some sort of metric or way of assessing what we do to ensure that we could invest or divest based on the results of this ROI exercise. And so we've been on a journey. The Rovi journey started a little earlier than the brand. The topic that we are discussing today, to me it's made of two components. The first one is being very clear and intentional around what you want to measure and expanding the conversation beyond the marketing and the brand team. So in order to have very strong Romy, you need to speak the same language of the business. So what do we want to track against and why? Once you have done that? The other thing that is super critical to us is to ensure that you have consistency over the metrics. So every month, or every other month, or every quarter, whenever you need to assess, make sure that you have always the same metrics to track against to make sure that you can see the evolution over time. What is becoming really challenging, but at the same time shows an incredible opportunity is how on one side you can almost automate these types of metrics, but on the other side, you still have to be very, very analog in the way you capture the results. When it comes to the third R of marketing, when it comes to reputation building and relationships, it's a bit easier because you can track KPIs when it comes to the third R, which is the revenue. And I'm a big fan of marketing playing a role in business development. You have to speak with the practitioners, in our case, our consultants and principals and partners who go to market and sell. How is this campaign, how is this client engagement? How is this event helping you build something stronger to then reach an agreement with the client. And that is very analogous. It's very far from AI still at this point in time, but it enables you to understand how close we are to the business strategy. If you may allow me for another thought on roi, we recently introduced this very simple but I would say rather effective idea that is the one of story mining. Oftentimes in B2B marketing, I see situations where we are being called upon a bit too late and we're being asked to help and support and brainstorm teams with teams on how to go to market or how to build something that might be engaging for clients and prospects. But we're not there when the conversation happens, the upstream conversation happens. And so we don't really understand in full what the ambition is. And so we recently introduced this idea of let's have a first conversation that has nothing to do with marketing. I need to understand this is with people in the business we're talking about. Yes, yes, apologies, I should have clarified that. Let's talk about your ambition as a business line head or an industry head or a capability head, because we're organized like that in a matrix environment. And tell us a little bit more about your ambitions. Tell us a little bit more about what you think we are doing different compared to competition. Tell us a little bit more about why should people listen to you when you speak. And then later you let us think about it for a while and then later we will talk about potential marketing initiatives. With this simple shift, we're now able to really be there when the first conversations are happening and then strategize over the business outcomes a little bit better. And that helps with Romy. It helps with coming out with something that is a bit more interesting and effective and so on and so forth. And how have you found the business respond to that? Almost being a consultant to the consultants, I was very surprised about the outcomes because people adore to speak about what they do and their core. And sometimes actually marketing has a challenge in the sense of we're not speaking the same language of the business. And so it's always a question of translating and building conversions. Again, in this context, we're asking questions that are all about you. And so it's easy for you to come back to us with excitement sometimes and tell us all about your business, your line of thought and what you want to do for the future and how your clients behave and your aspirations, and also the challenges that you're facing. And it's a massive door opener to us. We can learn so much and then we can advise you better. I mean, coming from an agency background, the process that you've described absolutely is the process to follow. And I think that it's really, it's a lovely place to finish, actually. Facetiously, there's sometimes a perception that marketing is almost a service center. It's like I need this piece of content or whatever it might be. And actually what you've described there is how you reposition marketing not as a service center, but as a solution provider ultimately, which I think is, you know, or can have transformative effect for how well marketing served the business. I mean, it's been a really, really enjoyable and also a surprisingly far ranging conversation that we've just had there. You know, certainly when we're sort of talking about that end section on return and marketing investment. And I'm almost tempted to close with what, what Heather obviously had said around the. The beauty of consistency. I've slightly corrupted what she said, but you know, that was the idea. But, but I think that one of the things which really struck me then when we were having the conversation is it's about convergence, not consensus. Yes. And when you're going through a process like a rebrand or changing brand architecture, you have to engage with the people who are living that experience and you have to make sure they are represented. And it's a process of bringing those people together which enables you to move forward as one. So really, really enjoyed that conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. B2B marketing the provocative Truth is brought to you by Allen Agency. To find out more, head to allen-agency.com you can stream B2B Marketing the Provocative Truth on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere else great podcasts are found. And don't forget to click subscribe to ensure you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at Allen, thanks for listening.