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[quote=Anonymous]I was hired by a "boutique strategy consulting" firm in NYC in 98 right out of college. It was a complete sham. Boutique meant that only 8 people worked there, if you counted the receptionist. one of the partners had gone to Wharton, the other to Harvard (and his son worked there too.) The Harvard partner used to work in advertising. He wore slick suits and used to use very crass language, loudly, on the phone. The Wharton partner was an emaciated b, somewhere between 60 and 80, who would ask for pretzels and water for lunch.

The firm helped companies with branding, but they employed some new agey bullshit to divine the inner essence of brands. Due to the partners connections, they had huge clients, like Sam Adams, Colgate, SC Johnson, Fidelity, etc. Our work as consultants entailed ripping magazine pictures out that seemed to convey some qualities of the brand -- like a preppy white guy in a Ralph Lauren ad to show prestige. We wrote screeners to recruit people to focus groups and then the leader would show them these pictures to elicit words like "prestige, wealth, elite." Then we would sell these words in a "benefits statement" to the company. All of this was packaged in WORD DOCS. Powerpoint was kind of new, but not really. This firm was stuck in the dinosaur age. I tried to show them how to use Adobe products to make their presentations better, but they looked at me like I had two heads. Since I was more of a writer than the others, I was asked to summarize business books for the partners, like the 10 Traits of Highly Effective People. Memorable client meetings with executives at Elizabeth Arden, who were trying to make it a more youthful brand. They asked me what makeup I wore. I remember pulling a Stila lipstick out of my purse that had half melted. It was in a tube made from recycled cardboard. The Wharton partners' face shriveled in disgust, but the EA execs were fascinated. Their  most profitable products were little plastic ampules filled with oil that were supposedly antiaging. Such a tiny amount of product, so much plastic, in packaging that made it look like birth control. I probably shared too many insights in those meetings.

I was fired within 4 months for "failing to meet the benchmarks," but they compliment my memo writing abilities and predicted I would become a writer, which I did.  [/quote]

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