In my wrap-up I described it as a mix of the television show Thank God You’re Here and what I can only imagine must be the sheer terror of a first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Over the course of two-days I had to pretend to be 2-inches tall, Marlon Brando, Irish, and a Whisperer. Then there were the prone breathing exercises, video taped introductions in front of complete strangers and of course what I was there for, the corporate presentation. I am of course talking about the NIDA corporate performance course that myself, Kris and Sam all participated in last week. But why did we do it?

Well we all know that impressions count and in starting this business we were aiming to make research local, contextual, accessible and importantly tactile. The eyeball metric is very important to us. We always want research to be an experience.

As such we have spent a lot of time building our brand and have over 100,000 discreet users a year visit our online presence alone to support and focus that effort. I only realized just the other day that over the last few months I have found myself increasingly becoming the defender of our brand with statements like ‘no you can’t do that with our logo’, ‘no that is not the correct use of our company name’, ‘no that is not what we do’. To me it is one of those pleasing signs of growth.

But brand is also about people. And spending as much time in front of customers and audiences as we do we thought it an important training investment to make sure that our customers are as happy with our visual performance and delivery as they are with the quality of our research. So it was that our brand building continued behind the scenes last week with NIDA - the National Institute of Dramatic Art. The same NIDA that has spawned many of Australia’s greatest acting exports.

In a large firm, an analyst can get away with being great at one of either writing, advising, or presenting. Even in the world’s biggest firms like Gartner or Forrester it is a rare analyst indeed who excels in all or even two of the three. I would even suggest that the number is close to 5%. The rest live under the brand umbrella. Boutique firms don’t have an umbrella. They stand exposed to the elements. 

And as a boutique firm in an industry like ours, it is hard work to climb to the top of the analyst game. It is even harder to stay there. The NIDA Corporate Performance was an opportunity to improve the way we deliver results and allow us the privilege of defending the brand well into the foreseeable future.