Company: Accenture, Chicago, IL
Company Division/Group: TBWA\Chiat\Day
Company Description: Accenture is a consulting, technology and operations company, with approximately 289,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unmatched experience, broad capabilities across all industries, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses. The company generated net revenues of US$28.6 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2013.
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Reputation/Brand Management

Nomination Title: Accenture Strategy and Digital Launch

Tell the story about this nominated campaign since January 1, 2014 (up to 650 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms.

Anticipating the changing needs of clients in today’s dynamic landscape and driving growth in high-demand areas, Accenture expanded its suite of services and launched two new capabilities: Accenture Strategy and Accenture Digital.

Goals
Accenture had to get a small number of highly influential C-Suite executives at the world’s largest companies and organizations, especially at Diamond Clients (its largest clients), to learn about its capabilities in Strategy and Digital. It was important that the marketing effort went beyond awareness. Accenture’s expertise in Strategy and Digital was highly differentiated; therefore, Accenture wanted the target to engage with content about its capabilities in order to drive consideration.

Specific goals were:
• Double traffic to Accenture Strategy and Accenture Digital content on accenture.com
• Reach more than 600 of Accenture’s largest client companies and more than 75% of Diamond Clients
• Double the number of requests for the specific type of work offered by the two new capabilities

Audience
A large and diverse set of competitors targeted Forbes Global 2000 “C-Suite” executives. The number of key decision makers and influencers within this group of executives was small. They were notoriously hard to reach, difficult to impress and were bombarded with messages.

Crucially, the most valuable segment within this small number of buyers consisted of Diamond Clients, at the time comprised of 138 companies globally. Although a very small percentage of total clients, this segment represented a significant percentage of total revenue.

Applicable Research
From extensive research with C-Suite executives, Accenture learned that its key clients were very familiar with its technology and operations capabilities. However, Accenture wasn’t always considered first in Strategy against pure strategy consultancies. Accenture leveraged its key competitive difference — bringing together business strategy and technology strategy equally — to show that high performance today requires technology-enabled strategies to take advantage of opportunities.

Similarly, Accenture wasn’t always considered first for Digital in what had become a very fragmented competitive landscape. This included pure technology players, advertising agencies as well as marketing agencies. Accenture Digital leveraged its key point of differentiation – bringing together industry-leading capabilities across digital marketing, analytics and mobility to help unlock the power of digital to drive growth, create new sources of value and transform clients’ businesses.

The services offered by Accenture Strategy and Accenture Digital are capabilities only Accenture can deliver.

Execution

Accenture ignored the B2B conventions of bland headlines and dull stock images in order to reach the Forbes Global 2000 C-Suite audience in a fresh, new way. For Accenture Digital, Accenture created three executions featuring striking visual metaphors to highlight key business outcomes.

For Accenture Strategy, Accenture created a series of hard-hitting, all-type advertising executions that spoke directly to Accenture Strategy’s unique, technology-enabled approach to strategy. The bold use of black, white and red helped the messaging break through the clutter while conveying a premium feeling.

Accenture leveraged a unique media strategy: dominating airports. Accenture also engaged the audience digitally by placing hyper-targeted C-Suite digital placements via online, tablet in-app, mobile web and smartphone. Content was further disseminated via social channels and print media.

In bullet-list form, briefly summarize up to ten (10) of the chief features and results of this nominated PR program since the beginning of 2014 (up to 150 words).

Evaluation with Measurable Results

• There was a 2.5X increase in traffic to Accenture Strategy content and a 3.8X increase in traffic to Accenture Digital content (pre- and post-launch).
• C-Suite executives from across 650 client companies, including 117 Diamond Clients, visited the Accenture Strategy and Accenture Digital pages a combined 14,700+ times. This is an average of more than 11 visits per client company.
• More than 84% of Diamond Clients executives visited the Accenture Strategy and Accenture Digital pages after launch.
• Using lead generation via requests for services through accenture.com to determine interest and demand, Accenture Digital saw a 4X increase in requests; Accenture Strategy saw a 3X increase in requests.