Case
Accenture
Accenture began in 1942 as Administrative Accounting Group, the consulting arm of accounting firm Arthur Andersen. In 1989, it launched as a separate business unit focused on IT consulting and bearing the name Andersen Consulting. At that time, though it was earning $1 billion annually, Andersen Consulting had low brand awareness among information technology consultancies and was commonly mistaken for its accounting corporate parent. To build its brand and separate itself from the accounting firm, Andersen Consulting launched the first large-scale advertising campaign in the professional services area. By the end of the decade, it was the world’s largest management and technology consulting organization. In 2000, following arbitration against its former parent, Andersen Consulting was granted its full independence from Arthur Andersen—but it had to relinquish the Andersen name. Andersen Consulting was given three months to find a name that was able to be trademarked in 47 countries, effective and inoffensive in over 200 languages, and acceptable to employees and clients—and that corresponded with an available URL. The effort that followed was one of the largest—and most successful—rebranding campaigns in corporate history. As luck would have it, the company’s new name came from a consultant at the company’s Oslo office, who submitted “Accenture” as part of an internal name-generation initiative dubbed “Brandstorming.” The consultant coined the Accenture name because it rhymed with “adventure” and connoted an “accent on the future.” The name also retained the “Ac” of the original Andersen Consulting name (echoing the Ac.com Web site), which would help the firm retain some of its former brand equity. On midnight, December 31, 2000, Andersen Consulting officially adopted the Accenture name and launched a global marketing campaign targeting senior