ACCENTUREHIGH PERFORMANCE . DELIVERED .

HISTORY

• Accenture was originally launched as the Administrative accounting group in 1942.

• It was the consulting department of accounting firm Arthur Anderson.

• In 1989 it became a separate IT consulting unit named Anderson Consulting.

• Despite a revenue of $1 billion it had low brand awareness.

• It launched large scale advertising campaigns and was a leader within a decade

• The company was granted independence from Arthur Anderson but had three months to relinquish Anderson Consulting and come up with a new name.

• The name Accenture came from one of the company’s employees as part of an internal name generation initiative.

• Accenture launched a global advertising, marketing and communications campaign targeted towards senior executives, partners and employees, media, analysts and potential recruits.

• As a result, the company completed a $1.7 billion IPO in July 2001.

• Accenture believed its differentiator was the ability to provide innovative ideas – those grounded in business processes and IT- as well as to execute them.

• Thus it managed to compete with McKinsey- which was specialized at developing strategy and IBM which was advanced in technological implementation.

• In 2002, Accenture released a new positioning statement “Innovation Delivered” which was supported by the promise “From innovation to execution, Accenture helps accelerate your vision”.

• Accenture also introduced a new policy where it contracts contained incentives to be fulfilled only once business targets were met. For example with client Thomas Cook.

In 2003 Accenture built upon its innovation campaign by releasing a new tagline, “High Performance. Delivered.”

In 2003 it signed star golfer Tiger Woods as its spokesperson as a symbol of high performance.

• However after the scandal surrounding him in 2009, Accenture dropped Tiger Woods as their spokesperson as consumers were distracted by it and didn’t focus on Accenture’s strategic message.

Accenture now faced a challenge. It had to work on creating a ground breaking global campaign that elevated its brand image.

Thus in 2011 it launched a new “Greater Than” campaign across 35 countries, in order to redeem itself.

The campaign contained success stories of clients including Unilever, Starwood hotels and Caterpillar.

A new marketing twist to the greater than symbol was carried out whereby it was used as a major element of the campaign and appeared on billboards thus become a unifying element for Accenture.

THUS ACCENTURE HAS MANAGED TO TARGET ITS B-TO-B AUDIENCE EFFECTIVELY BY:

• Establishing a unified global identity.• Providing a total problem solution through

one platform.• Adding high quality services and additional

offerings.• Creating valuable long lasting relationships

with its consumers.

Today, Accenture excels in the market and its clientele is impressive with 99 of them in the Fortune Global 100 and more than three quarters in the Fortune Global 500.

TO SUMMARISE..

We viewed-

• The history of Accenture.

• Its first campaign “Innovation Delivered”.

• Its differentiated and innovative strategies.

• The “High Performance. Delivered” campaign with Tiger Woods.

• Re innovation of its campaign with the greater than symbol.

• Reasons behind its B-to-B success.

Thank you!

• Disclaimer:

• Created by Akshita Nichani, DJSCOE, during a marketing internship under Prof. Sameer Mathur, IIM Lucknow.