It's taken long enough, but the professional services field has discovered marketing. Perhaps it's more accurate to say the value of marketing. Just look around and see who's marketing what.
Business consultants are among the marketing mavens.
In fact, some of the largest advertisers in The Wall Street Journal are consulting firms. One example is Wisdom of the CEO , a thinly-veiled promotional piece for PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Several of the largest law firms in Boston have gone casual. Rather than hiding this not so subtle change in dress code, they made sure it was national news as a way of recruiting eager young lawyers and attracting more laid-back technology clients. The walls of restraint have come tumbling down.