We're hoping for some feedback from you to help us with our identity crisis...

Well, not really a crisis, but when we're doing press releases, or when asked for the "elevator pitch", we struggle to find a neat word or phrase to say what we do as a company. Which might be good because we're unique, or might be bad because our proposition is not clear enough.

Our name is part of the problem, of course. We're not actually a consultancy though many people assume we are. We do bring together advice on 'e' things and provide access to people who give advice. And we are a bit like a consultancy which has opened its own internal knowledge resources to the wider world.

We focus on best practice online marketing and e-commerce in the UK. We publish research, run events and do training and bespoke briefings / research. We're also a community and we help matchmake people with common interests through our roundtables and work exchanges.

Here are some of the words we typically use to describe ourselves:

- 'Publisher'. Our business model is essentially a publishing one (subscriptions, events, some services). But this seems to omit the people side of what we do (community, networking, services etc)?

- 'Resource'. We are a resource, but this sounds a bit 'flat' and passive and again misses out the people aspect.

- 'Community' or 'Network'. We are these things but we're also a business information publisher and don't hang our hat on networking in the same way, for example, as Ecademy.

- 'Analysts'. Because of some of our research, guides and reports we sometimes get compared to the likes of Forrester, Datamonitor et al. But again this misses the people aspect.

So any feedback on how you perceive us would be much appreciated. Imagine the beginning of the press release: "E-consultancy, the [xyz company], today announced..."

Thanks

Ashley

Hello Ashley

How about something like: "E-consultancy, the [online technology community and centre of excellence], today announced..."

I realise it's a bit long, but I was trying to capture the key roles ;->

Marie

On 14:38:41 20 April 2004 Ashley wrote:
>We're hoping for some feedback from you to help us with
>our identity crisis...
>
>Well, not really a crisis, but when we're doing press
>releases, or when asked for the "elevator
>pitch", we struggle to find a neat word or phrase to
>say what we do as a company. Which might be good because
>we're unique, or might be bad because our proposition is
>not clear enough.
>
>Our name is part of the problem, of course. We're not
>actually a consultancy though many people assume we are.
>We do bring together advice on 'e' things and provide
>access to people who give advice. And we are a bit like a
>consultancy which has opened its own internal knowledge
>resources to the wider world.
>
>We focus on best practice online marketing and e-commerce
>in the UK. We publish research, run events and do training
>and bespoke briefings / research. We're also a community
>and we help matchmake people with common interests through
>our roundtables and work exchanges.
>
>Here are some of the words we typically use to describe
>ourselves:
>
>- 'Publisher'. Our business model is essentially a
>publishing one (subscriptions, events, some services). But
>this seems to omit the people side of what we do
>(community, networking, services etc)?
>
>- 'Resource'. We are a resource, but this sounds a bit
>'flat' and passive and again misses out the people aspect.
>
>- 'Community' or 'Network'. We are these things but we're
>also a business information publisher and don't hang our
>hat on networking in the same way, for example, as
>Ecademy.
>
>- 'Analysts'. Because of some of our research, guides and
>reports we sometimes get compared to the likes of
>Forrester, Datamonitor et al. But again this misses the
>people aspect.
>
>So any feedback on how you perceive us would be much
>appreciated. Imagine the beginning of the press release:
>"E-consultancy, the [xyz company], today
>announced..."
>
>Thanks
>
>Ashley

>So any feedback on how you perceive us would be much
>appreciated. Imagine the beginning of the press release:
>"E-consultancy, the [xyz company], today
>announced..."

As you've already pointed out, you cover such a broad range of topics, that it's going to be extremely difficult to describe your whole range of services in a single phrase (without breaking some serious grammatical rules...).

We have the same problem (we use 'Internet Development and Consultancy', but this doesn't cover 'content management'', one of our biggest products/services...).

I guess you may just have to 'invent' some kind of new-fangled phrase, which doesn't make any sense except to marketeers, maybe something like:

"E-consultancy, the internet business-intelligence company, today announced..."

or

"E-consultancy, the executives e-business center, today announced..."

I guess you're quite similar to an online IOD, providing business facilities, networking opps, events, based on a subscription...

Hmm... maybe you should run a competition...

Thanks for those suggestions Dan. We had an e-mail sent directly which also suggested:

"E-consultancy, the online business network and research company" or
"E-consultancy - online business networking and intelligence".

The "business intelligence" theme seems to come through quite a bit. But then business intelligence ("BI") is a whole other industry in the minds of many (data warehousing etc.).

The IOD comparison you make is interesting as I think this is indeed similar to what we do. They describe themselves as:

"As a worldwide association of members, the Institute of Directors (IoD) provides a professional network that reaches into every corner of the business community."

I don't think they have a short version either and I'm not sure how I'd describe the IOD in the 4 words or less, press release style. They have built their brand enough, however, that perhaps you don't need to say what they do because people just know. I guess we can always aspire to that...