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"Significanly less than a million dollars" - Grant Thornton's recent rebrand (new logo on right)

The issue of professional services branding has divided even those who work within marketing themselves. Objective performance metrics are thin on the ground, and opinions on both sides of the argument are often based on rhetoric and intuition. Certainly, within the AccountingWEB community, members generally seem to think it’s a waste of money.

When the ICAEW re-branded last year at a cost of £65,000, members were almost unanimous that it was something that shouldn’t have happened. ACCA spent £85,000 doing the same thing only months afterwards, and met with much the same response. Often, the big firms don’t offer a much better example than the accounting bodies.

In 2002 PricewaterhouseCoopers came very close to calling itself Monday. It was “a real word, concise, recognisable, global and the right fit for a company that works hard to deliver results,” opined PwC’s then chief executive Greg Brenneman. This peculiar vision was dropped soon after the firm found out the internet domain was already taken, after an estimated £75 million costs had already been incurred. The next year Deloitte succumbed to its own case of SARS (“Severe Acute Re-branding Syndrome”) when its consulting wing almost became Braxton. After considering 3800 suggestions, the firm later settled for a modest green dot, in place of a full stop, after its name.

When news broke this month of Grant Thornton’s re-brand, the responses on AccountingWEB could be imagined. But what was the story from the firm’s perspective?

The case for the defense

In the official press release, Grant Thornton UK chief executive Michael Clearly played up the global client base as justification for the re-launch.

“The market is no longer content with firms, however competent within national borders, that are unable to access a strong and cohesive international organisation,” he said. Grant Thornton was becoming increasingly global in its offering, and so needed a new global brand. But there isn’t anything especially global about a purple circle, is there?

In person, Grant Thornton’s global director if international communications was more forthcoming.

“The previous brand was over 25 years old,” says Jon Geldart. “If you look at any international brand, like Shell or Heinz or BP, they all change and gestate as the business moves forward.”

On a certain level, then, it may be fair to say that Grant Thornton re-branded because everyone else is doing it. There isn’t anything inherently supercilious in saying this. After all, keeping up with the competition is a prerequisite for staying ahead of the market. Unlike the accounting bodies, Grant Thornton is a profit-driven concern, and while it has a bigger budget to spend than most firms, it is expecting the same returns on its investment. What Geldart is at pains to point out is that branding is more than a logo or a type face.

“The brand is the promise you make to your customers and how you fulfil it,” he explains. “The colour and pictures are just the physical manifestation of that.”

Geldart is familiar with the anti-branding arguments, not least of which is the cost. He describes the Institute’s 2007 re-brand that so irritated its members as “pretty good value for money”. He also admits that the Grant Thornton re-brand wasn’t cheap, coming in at “significantly less than a million dollars”, but he insists it was “good business sense”. He’s also aware of where most of the criticism will come from.

“The irony of all this,” Geldart says, “is that the smaller you are, the more important it is to differentiate yourself.”

On closer inspection, it looks like he may have a point. If anything, the branding argument is easier to understand when applied to the smaller firms, where the numbers involved invariably tend to be much smaller.

Ch-ch-changes (turn and face the strain)

Last year the Wells Partnership became one of many such firms to change the way it presented itself when it re-branded to become TWP Accountants LLP.

“There were several reasons why we did it” explains TWP’s managing partner Philip Munk, “and they all coincided in April 2007.”

Firstly, the senior partner retired. Secondly, it was felt that moving from a very traditional partnership to an LLP not only offered commercial advantages, such as risk voidance, but portrayed a more modern image of the practice. The scene was set for a re-brand that would differentiate the six-partner firm from its competitors.

Matters were helped greatly by the fact Munk and his colleagues could turn to the same marketing agency the firm had been using for five years.

“They know what we’re about and that’s important,” Munk says. “They also know our client base, and the sorts of clients we work with and like to work with.”

Geldart agrees that the relationship with your design or marketing provider is key, whether you’re a top 10 firm or two guys in a back room.

“You don’t start by focussing on look and feel,” he adds, “you start by focussing on what you’re about. Trying to be something you’re not isn’t the right place to start.”

TWP’s re-branding was part of a repositioning away from typical compliance work to the new, value-add, business advisory role most firms are seeking these days. The partners chose the name, but the marketing agency did everything else, coming up with several alternative logos, promotion in the local press and professional networking groups, and communicating the change with existing clients, and designing the website. The total cost, Munk says, was less than ten thousand pounds, and delivered exactly what was wanted.

“I didn’t want to be seen to be a traditional firm of accountants,” he explains. “There are loads of those. A client can walk in and ask for a set of accounts anywhere.”

A few clients didn’t like the new look, and said so, but Munk was able to explain the shift didn’t reflect a change in personnel or in how the firm did things. Nobody left, and at the same time Monk says TWP have won new work since, primarily through the website. This is telling, because arguably, it is the internet that is making branding a near-universal necessity for British accountants, if only because it’s difficult to have one without the other.

Branding and the web

“It’s possible to have a website without a brand, but it dilutes things severely” says Jonathan Mann, operations manager at Practice Web. “After all, you’re trying to present yourself and put a message cross about who you are and what you do.”

It is a commonplace observation that accountancy firms are getting more sophisticated in their offerings. Yet at the same time, how many partners have heard a client express surprise when he or she discovers the firm can do more than they knew? An increased offering should be matched by an increased presence, and this is something more and more firms are investing in.

“There are more people providing these services than ever,” Mann says, “although there are pitfalls. You can spend a lot of money for something that only looks good in one media, for example, but there are a lot of people specialising in marketing for accounting firms exclusively who will guide you through all this.”

PracticeWeb, which like Accounting Web and Sift Media is owned by Sift Group, is only one such business, but business is brisk across the sector. It’s not only the drive to value-add which acts as a branding catalyst, but also the profession’s succession crisis. For most accounting firms that average partner age is well into the 50s, and exit strategies are a real issue. Prospective buyers, especially external ones, will be looking for signs of growth, and a functional marketing strategy is part of that.

Nevertheless, for the sake of balance, perhaps the final word on branding should go to Alan Evans, director of business development and marketing and BDO Stoy Hayward, who offers a credible and cautionary tale for those tempted to re-invent themselves.

“If you’re a three man partnership then visual imagery is far less important,” he warns. “The smaller the organisation, the more important the individual personalities become. Often, the senior partners are the brand. One of the challenges that big firms like BDO and Grant Thornton face is trying to create a brand personality when there are 3500 people in the organisation.”

Maybe that explains the big budgets behind branding in the accounting top 10, but it doesn’t change the underlying truth that in cyberspace, nobody can hear you scream. A firm’s website must rely on something visual, however loud or professional the personalities behind it may be.