Exposing Accounting Stereotypes with the Remarkabrand Index Resoundcast - the branding podcast from Resound, a creative agency

Accounting firms are all the same, right? Nerdy, dad-joke-telling professionals who drive sensible cars and wear beige suits to work every day. Unless they’re feeling saucy, in which case they throw caution to the wind and go with the branded polo.



Of course, these accounting stereotypes come straight from the ’90s and, more recently, Parks and Rec.



But the industry isn’t exactly doing its job in busting that myth.



Most accounting firms:



Claim to be “more than just accountants.” 

Use blue and sometimes green in their branding. 

All on a mission to come across as a little more human than a calculator.



Of course, we know these stereotypes don’t reflect the people working in the industry. And we’d like to help.



https://youtu.be/GRal1TSGuGU

The Index

Here at Resound, we thought it would be interesting to see exactly how differentiated—or how homogenous—the industry actually is. So we grabbed 40 data points across 1,485 accounting firms, crunched a little data, and named it the “Remarkabrand Index for Accounting Firms.”



The index reflected our desire to give firms a measurable standard against which to judge their branding efforts. Basically, “Are we different, or are we undistinguishable from our competition?”



Why? Because differentiation is a real challenge. Accounting firms struggle to distinguish themselves in a competitive market. And until now, there was no quantitative, benchmarking tool to objectively measure brand differentiation. 



…until now.

So How Did We Collect the Data?

Tons and tons and tons of manual, sometimes painful, data entry (we're working on automation for this now).



But other than that, it was easy. We looked at 40 data points, including SEO scores, naming conventions, word-choice differentiation (e.g. in tagline), and color and logo style ratings, to name just a few.



The index revealed insights into effective differentiation strategies used by top firms.



Here’s an overview of the data collection:

SEO via Domain Authority Score

We used a standard measuring tool called Domain Authority from Moz, which acts as a good summary indicator of SEO strength. For additional context, we looked at inbound links as well.

Can Small Firms Compete?

Toward the end of data collection, we started asking what company size and revenue had to do with the index score. Surely, bigger firms by revenue and employee count would do better, right?



We’re glad we asked, because the results were a bit surprising, with many of the top-performing firms having fewer than 200 people.

Visual Was Huge

Through the Eyes of a Designer

Some of the data wasn’t so straightforward from an evaluation standpoint. After all, there’s no math formula we know of to evaluate the quality of a logo or even the decade that inspired it.



So we brought in the professionals.



And lest you think designers are kookie, impractical, blocky-framed-non-prescription-glasses-wearing artsy types with no grounding in reality, we’ll have you know…our designers are pros.



And it’s a good thing they are because we have deadlines.



We asked them to evaluate based on design and branding principles. They tagged the logos and websites, collected colors, and, yes, even estimated the decade of the logo based on style.

Does Accounting Look Old?

In addition to how firms differentiate, we wanted to know: is it time for a rebrand? Has there been deferred maintenance on the brand? Who needs a new brand makeover?