Accenture Song absorbed into new Reinvention Services line
After its widely heralded rise to prevalence, Accenture Song is to be incorporated into a wider arm of Accenture’s organisation. Along with four other organisations, it will now come under a unit called Reinvention Services.
Built via a mammoth merger and acquisition campaign, which took in marketing and design agencies including London-based marketing groups Droga5 and Unlimited, and Sydney-headquartered market research agency Fiftyfive5, the brand initially know as Accenture Interactive emerged on the scene with a bang. Quickly becoming established as the world’s largest creative agency, it quickly disrupted established competitors in the space.
But once it was assembled, Accenture seems to have struggled to come up with an effective way to actually use the unit. Amid a sector where revenues were shrinking, and clients were looking for more definitive returns on their investment, the new organisation has repeatedly refreshed itself.
This saw a brand revamp in 2022, with the unit becoming Accenture Song – a move which caused some consternation among clients and observers of the market. According to then-CEO and Creative Chair David Droga, the new name asserted that a changing profile of the agency, not just a design brand, but one with capabilities applying to “solving problems for every chair in the C-suite”.
Three years into that evolved remit – and in the wake of a bruising encounter with public opinion following Accenture Song’s efforts on a now-infamous campaign with Jaguar Land Rover – Accenture Song is being re-aligned once more. It will now be combined with Accenture’s strategy, consulting, technology and operations units, to create the new Reinvention Services wing of the firm.
Julie Sweet, chair and chief executive, Accenture, commented, “Today, our clients need more value faster, and Accenture is their reinvention partner of choice. These changes to our growth model will allow us to deliver that value and continue to scale our business.”
Latest overhaul
The launch of Reinvention Services has prompted a number of key shifts. Droga recently announced he would step down from leading Accenture Song – and once the entity realigns within Reinvention Services, it will be headed up by Ndidi Oteh. Other key changes will see Jason Dess – current lead of CFO and enterprise value – will become group chief executive of consulting. And Rajendra Prasad will lead technology, succeeding Karthik Narain, who is leaving the business.
Elsewhere, Muqsit Ashraf, group chief executive for strategy, will continue to lead strategy within the integrated unit, while Arundhati Chakraborty, group chief executive in operations, will continue to lead operations. But the company has also promoted Kate Clifford to global chief leadership and human resources officer, after Angela Beatty was also announced to be leaving the business.
The substantial restructuring also comes at something of a crunch moment for Accenture, globally. The consulting giant has seen better-than-expected quarterly revenue figures, and an increase in its annual forecasts – but the optimism from that has been eclipsed by a second straight drop in quarterly new bookings – partially driven by a key cutback in US government spending on consulting services, alongside wider economic uncertainty. Amid this, the integrated Reinvention Services unit will serve to simplify some of its inner functions.
At a time when many other large firms are making similar moves, with a view to downsizing their headcount and leaning more heavily on AI tools, the reorganisation follows Accenture’s investment in synthetic audience startup Aaru – which offers a prediction model it says can simulate consumer behaviour and preferences – earlier this year. Integrating Aaru’s model for the private sector into its AI products and services is something the firm has previously said would “reinvent” how it designs products, services and marketing campaigns.
