Accenture has reportedly begun calling its near 800,000 employees “reinventors”, as the consultancy tries to position itself as a leader in artificial intelligence.
The consultancy’s chief executive, Julie Sweet, has already started referring to staff by the new label and the business is now pushing for the term to be used more widely.
The “reinventor” label came from a reorganisation across Accenture in June, which merged its strategy, consulting, creative, technology and operations divisions into a single unit called “Reinvention Services”.
The rebranding exercise comes three years after the consulting company renamed its interactive division to Accenture Song, as it looked to become a leading player in the global creative advertising industry. The rebrand was widely mocked.
“From the people that brought you Accenture Song now come the ‘reinventors’, staff are going to cringe,” said Damon Collins, the co-founder of the marketing agency Joint. “If they think this move is going to win favour with many employees, or clients, they have another thing coming. It is a very unusual bit of corporate panic, they really have the wrong end of the Nvidia chip.”
The new tag for the consultants is the latest in a long list of unusual jargon that big businesses have foisted on their staff; some tech workers are referred to as “ninjas”, “growth hackers” and “evangelists”.
Curious job titles are also popular in the media and entertainment industries, including at Walt Disney, where technical experts who design and build its theme parks are referred to as “imagineers”.
The WPP founder, Martin Sorrell, took on the moniker of “senior monk” when he engineered the takeover of the digital creative company MediaMonks, where staff are called “monks”.
Apple’s expert in-store tech helpers are called “geniuses”, while the London-based ad agency Mother, which has clients including KFC, has the title “mother” for executives that oversee the running of projects between clients and staff.
The “reinventor” push from Accenture comes as it moves to sharpen its focus on its AI capabilities. Sweet told investors in September that the consultancy would “exit” employees who were not getting the hang of using AI at work.
The New-York based group said it was training staff in generative AI fundamentals, but employees for whom “reskilling, based on our experience, is not a viable path for the skills we need” would be shown the door. As part of a restructure, it laid off 11,000 staff to leave a workforce of 791,000 staff.
The consultancy has also reportedly built a version of its internal human resources website where the staff are called “reinventors” rather than “workers”, according to the Financial Times.
Embarking on a rebrand in an effort to radically alter the perception of a traditional company can be fraught with risks.
Jaguar discovered this when it announced its move into the electric car market with a polarising Miami Pink concept model last year, a marketing strategy dreamed up by none other than Accenture Song.
Gonzalo Brujó, the global chief executive at Interbrand, said introducing such a large-scale job title change would create confusion for staff used to knowing the hierarchy and career progression path at Accenture.
“I would be careful with this type of name, I totally understand why they want to do it, but it does not apply to all 800,000 employees,” he said. “At Apple you have geniuses, they are really techy and well-versed at what they do. And Disney’s imagineers do have the call to action to ‘make you dream’.
“To be a real reinventor is really a name for just a few people. Maybe this is a cool thing when interviewing in the fight to find new talent. But then I see a pushback internally from employees maybe overpromised what it means to be one. The reality is everyone has different roles and very few will be true reinventors.”
Accenture, which was spun out of Arthur Andersen, the now-defunct accountant, in 1989 and later rebranded, works with thousands of companies around the world, offering IT and business strategy consulting and outsourcing.
The company benefited from huge demand for tech consulting in the aftermath of the pandemic but its shares, which are listed in New York, have suffered this year after Donald Trump ordered US government agencies to review their spending with large consultancies.
The consultancy reported a 7% annual rise in revenue to $69.7bn (£52.7bn) for its financial year ended in August, but warned investors that US federal spending cuts will probably slow its growth next year. It has lost more than a quarter of its market value so far this year, which stands at $155bn.
Accenture was approached for comment.
