The trade magazine Accountancy Age asked three leading UK ad agencies to come up with campaigns to help repair the image of the UK accounting industry, following Arthur Andersen's damaging involvement in the collapse of the energy company Enron.
Accountancy Age asked HHCL & Partners, J Walter Thompson and Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper to create proposals on behalf of a fictional trade body called the UK Association of Accountancy Firms.
HHCL & Partners employed a product recall idea saying that it was an attention-grabbing ploy, and pointed out that most product recalls showed that 99.99% of recalled products were flawless upon inspection.
Its ad carried the headline: "Important: Product recall on all accountancy practices". The copy read: "Despite rigorous quality control procedures it appears that a proportion of this product fails to meet safety and moral standard requirements."
Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper put the Enron story at the heart of its "exception" ad, which employed the 'E' of the Enron logo to spell out the word exception. Euro RSCG's idea was to spell out the fact that what happend at Andersen was far from the norm. The strapline read: "99.999% of company audits are honest and independent."
J Walter Thompson's effort avoided mention of the Enron scandal and instead focused on promoting understanding of what accountants do. The ad, which carried the strapline "British Accountancy. Insights beyond number", centred on the idea that there was a lot more to each number than meets the eye.
The ad features a table of figures with one number circled to illustrate the value of that number beyond the figure itself, translating it into strategies and action that ultimately reflect every part of the business.
The list began: "This is the nine; that was ruthlessly checked; that showed margins were up...that put the company on the fast-track to the future."
According to JWT, it was about understanding "the truth behind the number".
Damian Wild, editor of Accountancy Age, said: "The accountancy profession is in crisis right now. Post-Enron its reputation is in tatters and it needs to convince the public that auditing works. From an advertising point of view, between them the 50 largest UK accountancy firms turn over £7bn a year. And since it's a market that doesn't traditionally advertise, it offers adveritisng and marketing agencies a rich source of potential income."
The article appears in the May 23 issue of Accountancy Age.
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