By Fiona Czerniawska.

A novel in which several young women vie to find husbands: are we talking about Pride and Prejudice, or War and Peace? If we boiled down the plots of any major work of literature to a few words, we’d never be able to tell them apart – and we’d certainly never read them. So it is when consulting firms try to describe their services: years of dedication and genuine insight are lost behind that thin but impenetrable façade known as a ‘proposition’. Some years ago, I sat through a presentation by a major firm in which they described the fascinating results of months of research and discussion around various business issues. And how did they plan to go to market with this? ‘Supply chain management.’ And I suspect something similar has gone on behind almost every other piece of marketing collateral: certainly when we look at thought leadership, it’s the sections that aim to articulate what a firm’s services that are the weakest (the average score here, when we rate them, is 1.3 out of a maximum of 5). Behind every brochure there’s probably a decent idea trying to get out – but we’ll never know. How can we remedy this? What sets a good proposition apart? Distilling what clients have told us, we’ve concluded that the most successful propositions are likely to be:

• Targeted – too many propositions are aimed at just about everyone, but different groups of clients have their own, specific needs.
• Precisely different – the best propositions explain exactly what’s distinctive about the firm’s approach.
• Instantly comprehensible – something that can’t be said for War & Peace, if we’re honest.
• Concrete – a weak proposition gives you no sense of what’s going to happen.
• Compelling – provide enough hard evidence of past successes to make you sit up and pay attention.

War and Peace is aimed at smart people with enough time and patience to spend hours separating their patronymics from their diminutives. They are rewarded by one of the most majestic expositions of how sweeping historical forces impact, but never quite overwhelm, humanity. In Pride and Prejudice two young women demonstrate how good sense and virtue can overcome snobbishness and a whole slew of embarrassing relatives. It can be read and enjoyed by everyone.

Click here to find out more about our approach to proposition testing.