Marketing: Know Your Enemy

Beginning of article

"We have turned up to meetings in the City and clients have been surprised that we weren't carrying tommy guns. We are trying to professionalise what has always been seen as a gumshoe trade," explains Timothy Hewitt.

Mention industrial espionage and most of us conjure up images of dirty raincoats, dark alleys and rummaging through rubbish bins. We wouldn't think of besuited graduates in their late twenties. We wouldn't think of Hewitt and Calum Forest, joint directors of the London-based firm Ticari International.

If you want to find out what your competitors are doing, these guys will find out. Legally. Industrial espionage, they point out, is illegal. They …