Thought leadership is all about having interesting and attention-grabbing insights on the big problems facing your customers.

You could be using these insights in interesting articles and blogs, well-argued reports and white papers, and also delivering them in videos, LinkedIn posts and of course face-to-face in meetings and when speaking at events.

But is there research out there showing it brings commercial benefits for management consultancies?

Many consultancies of all sizes regularly appear in the UK's business and national media.

But also many never appear, and often we find that they have misconceptions about what journalists want to write about and how consultancies can go about using the media to build powerful reputations.

Our recent "Building a business-winning reputation" webinar looked at how consultancies can build a strong business-winning reputation, and how to get the communications strategy right to achieve this.

This webinar is now available as a complimentary video 

New research reveals how to change a management consultancy's reputation

I took part in an interesting discussion last week hosted by the Management Consultancies Association where professors Tim Morris and Will Harvey (Said Business School, Oxford and University of Exeter Business School respectively) presented new research they've been doing into how management consultancies protect and improve their brand.

To jump to their conclusions, the three ways their in-depth research showed as effective in changing (i.e. improving or shifting) a management consultancy's brand are:

1. Focusing on the partners to ensure the experience every client and prospect has are as close as humanly as possible to the new perception