[Marakon Associates] provides another look at the competency of aligning marketing strategies with culture. It’s a story about a firm that possesses a unique combination of competitive effectiveness: an acceptance of complexity, organizational prowess and even courage.

In the movie The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion sings "Life is sad, believe me, Missy, when you’re born to be a sissy, without the vim and verve." Despite a rather understated profile, Marakon Associates is no marketplace sissy. In pursuit of a competitively advantaged positioning, this firm had the guts to dig deep into a complex, nuanced cultural platform. All too many companies, even those in other industries, tout their cultures of honesty, teamwork, responsiveness, what-have-you. These cultural attributes, as important as they are, have almost become clichés.

Marakon went deeper than that, identifying an ethos – "challenge with empathy" – that has real meaning for clients and for its own talent. It’s a platform that is valuable, decidedly attractive and simple to understand for clients. It is credible for Marakon to claim, and, because of its complexity, would be extremely difficult for competitors to copy.

It’s also highly suitable in the marketplace – but with an effort. That’s where having – or building – a market-driven infrastructure becomes so important. It’s clear that Marakon intended its "challenge with empathy" positioning to have staying power. First, it arrived at a potent marketing strategy by taking itself through its own consulting process, with all the trappings of a client engagement. It was fact-based and choice-driven. It was collaborative and milestone-oriented. Second, to ensure the achievement of its goals, Marakon intentionally devised a series of internal and external processes that iteratively reinforce the choices it had made. This kind of organizational prowess is too rare.

In 2002, Marakon’s new positioning strategy began to show a real impact on its reputation:

• Marakon jumped from 21st place to 15th place in Vault’s annual survey of the top fifty management consulting firms.
• It was cited as the only top 15 firm in the Vault survey that saw more than a one percent increase in its reputation (Consultants News, October 2002).
• Bank Director magazine cited Marakon as one of the top four "most respected" corporate strategy advisors to large financial institutions (October 2002).
• The Economist described Marakon as "the consultancy that has advised some of the world’s most consistently successful companies" (July 23, 2002).
• The firm was favorably profiled in Consultants News ("Differentiation Helps Marakon Grow While Others Struggle," December 2002).
• The number of "quality" press mentions – those that the firm wanted to highlight on its Web site – increased by 50 percent in 2002.