Droga5 Seized the Moment by Embracing Change with Accenture

It’s always been tricky to encapsulate everything that Accenture does. Of the top 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 ranking, Accenture works with 89 of them. That’s on top of roughly 9,000 others all around the world. The scale and diversity of the company’s work is staggering, which – while virtuous in many ways – makes for a tricky marketing challenge. 

How can you take a brand that’s so complex and multifaceted and distill its work into a coherent message? How can you do that in a sector where your competitors are outspending you, in some cases by a factor of thirteen times? How can you take that campaign and make its central message work in every one of the countless international markets in which Accenture operates? And how can you make such a campaign truly effective? 

Those are the kinds of questions which might keep any marketer awake at night. But for the team at Droga5, they were an opportunity. The resulting work, ‘Let There Be Change’, was a sweeping brand campaign (Accenture’s biggest in a decade) which reframed the company by redefining the concept of change itself. Rather than an intimidating risk or an unknown variable, ‘change’ was presented as the essential fuel of progress and growth. It’s an idea that’s at once understandably simple and disruptive enough to stand out in its category. And the results speak for themselves – brand salience rose 23 points, favorability by 20 points, and sales opportunities by 52%. That all added up to a Silver Effie win in the Business-to-Business category last year. 

“At its core, Accenture is about change, and the changes facing the business world today are happening at such an immense speed and scale that only a company like Accenture can harness it”, says Droga5’s ECD Kevin Brady. “We settled on the line ‘Let There Be Change’. It felt optimistic, but it also allowed us to speak to the tangible realities of the business world today. It framed all the change in the world not as a risk to be feared, but as an opportunity.”

The ads take that concept of celebrating ‘change’ and run with it. We see flowers blooming to life, water surfaces broken by plunging divers, and entire cities grow. The imagery is arresting, something that the team were keen to ensure came across clearly. 

“Since Accenture often does embrace change at such a large scale to create value, we wanted to portray those bold, transformational changes in our ads”, says strategy director Graham Jones. “So, every ad upended industry norms and portrayed seismic change in bold, unexpected ways. But that was only part of it. We also took special attention to the sound of our ads with unique, positive and bold compositions. This distinctive combination of visual language and magical music became our calling card and reinforced change as something exciting, not intimidating.”

At the time the Droga5 team started work on the campaign, ‘change’ was a concept they’d been getting familiar with themselves. It was 2020 – a moment of great change all around the world – and on top of that, the agency had recently been acquired by Accenture themselves. “So we lived this mindset,seeing change as uncertainty, but also as an opportunity”, adds Graham. “We reframed change as a catalyst for growing value, not a risk to be managed. ‘Let There Be Change’ positioned all those changes opportunistically not just for businesses, but also for ourselves as an agency. In a world of constant movement, we championed optimism, showing leaders that embracing change,big or small,propels progress.”

With all that being said, there remained the challenge: taking this idea and making it relevant across multiple international markets in a truly global campaign. 

“The key to a cohesive global campaign is balancing consistency with local relevance. ‘Let There Be Change’ was a single idea, but we adapted it through transcreation, collaborating with local teams to refine messaging”, explains group communications strategy director Courtney Bernstein. “We used culturally specific production choices, flexible assets like narration over on-screen dialogue, and authentic storytelling from diverse markets. Our media strategy was nimble, optimising placements by region. This ensured our campaign felt both globally unified and locally resonant across languages and cultures.”

As previously mentioned, the fact that the brand was simply being outspent within the category also added to the challenge. “To overcome this, we had to first make ads that were so bold and unique that they would break through the clutter. Then, we built a communications strategy around three principles: be seen, be understood, and be favoured”, Kevin tells LBB. “We structured content into brand-level ideas, capability assets, and client stories, ensuring clarity and consistency. By pulsing our paid media in high-visibility moments and focusing on breakthrough creative, we maximised exposure, making Accenture’s presence feel significantly larger and more influential.”

Ultimately, the campaign’s positive impact vindicates the bold and simple approach. “We couldn’t be happier with how it worked out, and only became more bullish with our creative approach over time”, surmises Courtney. “As the campaign grew, we saw how creative risk paid off. If we had the time again, I’d push for even bolder executions earlier. That said, the journey itself was invaluable, and every challenge shaped the campaign’s success and forthcoming work.”