Not long ago, consultancies were eating ad agencies for lunch and often buying them up – most notably Droga5, which became part of Accenture in 2019. Now AI is putting the consultancies under threat, because Chat GPT can tell you exactly what McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group might advise in a matter of seconds, and probably for free.
Which is why Accenture has renamed its 800,000 staff “reinventors” (as reported in the FT) in a bid to outsmart AI and convince clients that they won’t be able to understand the new automated world without their help. The move is meant to reinforce a restructure in June that merged Accenture’s strategy, consulting, creative, technology and operations units into a single “Reinvention Services” offering.
Accenture spent £100m in 2001 when it replaced the old Andersen Consulting with its current name, which is a condensation of the idea that the company provides an “accent on the future.”
The big post-pandemic demand for tech consulting has now been replaced by a generalised AI panic, and consultants’ shares are suffering as companies cut back on expensive suppliers – particularly impacted by business in the US where, under President Trump, government agencies have been ordered to review these kind of contracts.
Like Disney’s 1986 relabelling of staff as “imagineers” (a portmanteau of imagine and engineer), Accenture’s move might make business sense but it smacks of desperation and leaves them open to mockery. It might also provoke a smile and a touch of schadenfreude from ad agencies, if they have time to look up from their own challenges for a moment.
