Accenture’s Bid to Redefine Consulting

Has anyone not seen an Accenture ad? The company formerly known as Andersen Consulting launched a $175 million ad campaign on January 1 to build awareness for its new name. Its a huge campaign, encompassing print, online, and broadcast ads on six continents. Accenture will broadcast more than 6,000 television commercials by the end of March, including four 30-second spots during this weekend’s Super Bowl.

The stakes are high

The firm sacrificed a lot to win its freedom from Arthur Andersen, partly by agreeing to extensive cash payments, but especially by giving up its name, which Andersen Consulting had developed to become one of the most-recognized and respected brand names in the IT world. The Times (of London) cites estimates that the old Andersen Consulting brand name was worth $4 billion or more. To make things even tougher, the Accenture launch is running smack into an economic slowdown, turmoil in the e-consulting world, savvier clients in less of a hurry to lavish millions on IT and e-business projects, and intense scrutiny on Wall Street.

And time is short

The arbitration agreement allows Accenture to refer to its previous identity only until the end of March. Arthur Andersen can use the Andersen Consulting name after January 1, 2002.

Accenture’s ambition is nothing less than to redefine consulting in the new economy within a matter of months. Teaser ads and Web graphics through the end of 2000 highlighted the slogan “Renamed. Redefined. Reborn. 01.01.01.” New ads stress the breadth of Accenture’s offerings, including consulting, technology, outsourcing, alliances, and venture capital. Public rhetoric emphasizes Accenture’s capacity to serve clients at every level as “market-maker, architect and builder.”

Can Accenture pull it off?

The ads themselves are simple, sober, to-the-point, and well executed. While they are not extraordinary, their clarity and repetition should at least serve to get the new name into the marketplace. But the real power of Accenture’s campaign is behind the scenes. Andersen Consulting helped pioneer the whole idea of branding and advertising IT services throughout the 1990s, and the new campaign boasts at least five great strengths.

• Despite the accelerated launch timeline, the campaign is built on a repositioning effort that was underway well before the final August 2000 arbitration. The core idea of the campaign is thus based on a well-developed foundation of research and internal consensus.
• The campaign is truly global and integrated, encompassing simultaneous efforts to educate key stakeholders internally and externally around the world about the new identity and positioning.
• Accenture has invested heavily in building a brand management infrastructure to support all aspects of the campaign, and can leverage technology (especially a brand management extranet) to help coordinate all advertising, communications, education and training around the new brand.
• The firm has long demonstrated the internal discipline needed not only to launch a brand campaign, but, more important, to maintain brand consistency across all regions and functions—a discipline shared by few other firms in the IT space.
• The firm has put its money where its mouth is in terms of the importance of branding by elevating the two marketing leaders to partner status—an almost unheard of move in an elite professional services partnership.

If the last few months have shown us anything, it’s that great buzz and flashy ads don’t mean much in the long run. Accenture’s ambition is enormous, and the new effort runs the risk of promising to be too many things to too many people. But given their strengths in execution, I certainly wouldn’t bet against their success.

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