Brand

Following an evening at the Special Forces Club in London recently, I mentioned to a friend - by way of trying to sound coolly underwhelmed by the experience - that I hadn't been terribly impressed with their egg-mayonnaise vol-au-vents. So when I was invited back a few weeks later my heart skipped a beat. Had my friend betrayed my confidence? Were my vol-au-vent-eating days about to come to abrupt end at the hands of trained operatives whose 'Death, and how to dispense it (2012)' manual had been updated to include a section on 'termination by hors d'oeuvres'?

I've had the chance, as a result of the hard work of my wife and the talent of her brother, to spend a bit of time on red carpets over the last few years.

For some time now one of the truisms of consulting has been that you can either be a (big) brand or a (small) specialist; anyone in the middle ground will either be absorbed by a bigger player or dispersed among smaller ones.