Strategic branding: Leveraging technology and design at Ernst & Young

Design Management Journal, Spring 2003 by Burger, Peter J, Reyes-Guerra, David

In an organization with more than 100,000 people around the globe, The Branding Zone is the digital resource that maintains the consistency, power, and integrity of Ernst & Young communications. Peter Burger and David Reyes-Guerra outline the structure of this valuable technology and explain how it contributes to acculturating new employees, strengthening relationships with clients and vendors, and supporting the corporate vision and strategy.

In January 2002-four short months after accounting irregularities at Enron first surfaced in the press-the value of the most innovative name in energy dropped to virtually zero in the eyes of investors and the public. So, too, did the reputation of its auditor, Arthur Andersen, once the premier name in professional services. Just as suddenly, the Big Five had become the Final Four.

This unique confluence of events resulted in a remarkable transformation. As the Andersen brand name imploded around the world, the remaining major professional services firms engaged in a spirited competition to attract Andersen partners and practices and merge them into their organizations. In the end, Ernst & Young acquired more Andersen country practices than any other firm. (The global professional services firms are comprised of individual country practices conforming to national regulations.) Approximately 25,000 former Andersen employees-some last seen bearing placards proclaiming "I am Arthur Andersen"-became part of Ernst & Young almost overnight.

In an industry in which brand assets and people assets are one and the same, Ernst & Young now faced a daunting but critical integration challenge. Significant investments in training and education would be necessary to acquaint these new employees with the firm's technology systems, practice methodologies, and independence requirements. Beyond these areas, however, was the critical aspect of corporate culture and how the ex-Andersen employees could most rapidly comprehend and be assimilated into an organizational ethos different from the one they knew. The success or failure of large integration efforts like this often depends on the effectiveness of enculturation.

Fortunately, Ernst & Young was well prepared for the challenge, for the same reason it garnered the largest share of Business Week Global 1000 auditor changes (post-Enron) of any Big Four firm: a vibrant, unified, and brand-centric culture. And if you ask how we developed a brand-first culture to begin with, our answer is that we did it in no small part by leveraging technology, design, and interactive learning to create The Branding Zone, the Ernst & Young global branding intranet. This dynamic tool has helped our people not only to understand the competitive advantages associated with a strong brand, but also to realize their collective responsibility in building our brand assets.

Introducing The Branding Zone

The Branding Zone is the authoritative source of information and tools for Ernst & Young employees and vendors wishing to portray the firm's brand powerfully, consistently, and effectively around the world. Whether the focus is advertising, marketing, or client relations, the Zone provides virtually everything necessary to understand and communicate the Ernst & Young brand and image, including the firm's business and marketing strategies, advertising campaigns, visual identity standards and design templates, and naming process and architecture.

Practicing global brand leadership

When the firm's brand strategy and management team was formed in early 1999, the Ernst & Young brand was clearly in need of revitalization. Market research had revealed that the firm's target audience (C-suite executives such as chief executive officers, chief operating officers, and chief information officers) did not think of Ernst & Young first when choosing a professional services firm. There was a need, therefore, to create a much higher level of brand awareness. But how? By cutting through the clutter of the marketplace. Yet while a company like Coca-Cola, whose top-down, hierarchical structure seems more conducive to centralized brand management, a partnership like Ernst & Young, with its multiple service lines and entrepreneurial culture, presented a much more complex set of branding challenges. At the time, for example, our firm consisted of numerous country practices, with 660 locations around the world, as well as functional "silos" of tax, audit, corporate finance, and consulting services. Moreover, our fractured brand image-reflected in the conflicting portraits shown in our brochures, Web sites, and advertisements-undermined our identity as a global firm (see figure 1).

We faced an unprecedented opportunity and challenge: to reshape our organization's brand leadership and to unite the many pieces of the firm into a single, global brand. To do this, we needed to recreate and implement a strong, progressive brand identity system and associated naming architecture to communicate a unified brand vision and "look" (see figure 2).