Grant Thornton - award winning, challenging advertising

Well done to Grant Thornton on its recent of the "Best B2B brand awareness campaign" at the recent B2B Marketing Awards 2006 in London. We thought its campaign innovative and - in a sector reasonably new to advertising - exciting, challenging the Big 4 on their market leader positions.

So why was it so good?

Grant Thornton - a 'second tier' firm - has been competing against the Big 4 for some time to provide financial advisory services to large corporates, intermediaries and city institutions. But their client interactions and research showed that key audiences often remained unaware of their achievements.

So this campaign was aimed at sending a strong message to that market that Grant Thornton had something different to offer from the Big by challenging existing viewpoints about the leading accountancy firms.

The campaign strapline – Think beyond convention. Think beyond the Big 4 – embraced that challenge and provided an answer through a series of intriguing headlines.

How the adverts work...

The headlines present four identical statements (denoting the Big 4) that represent a convention that at some point has been challenged and overcome. So, in this case, the Big 4 are denoted by the 'unclimbable mountain', Everest while Grant Thornton is denoted by the man who challenged and overcame that convention: Sir Edmund Hillary.

And there have been others in the 'historical' series, including the Moon (Armstrong), Earth (Galileo), Goliath (David) and Bridge (Brunel), each of which adds an interesting sub-message: the Big 4 are denoted either by static objects (the moon, the earth or a bridge) or an overbearing monster (Goliath), while Grant Thornton is a human figure who exemplifies bravery and intelligence or nous.

Combined with these ‘historic conventions’ are executions that clearly deliver a statement about Grant Thornton’s own ability, such as:

...along with the other 'ability' conventions being worldwide (worldwise), OK (oh good), Literal (lateral), Familiar (fresh) and Equals (adds).

What's been the result of this campaign?

There have been reports of extremely positive feedback from clients, staff, contacts and targets. Three independent market research studies have shown awareness levels double among some of Grant Thornton's target audience, and the firm is being included in (and winning) more pitches that would normally have been reserved for the Big 4.

It's not easy to challenge the status quo by taking a bold risk like this in the professions. Well done to Grant Thornton for challenging advertising dogma.

the Heresiarch
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