August 18, 2025 • 37 mins
On this episode of Count Me In, host Adam Larson sits down with Mike Jones, CEO and Managing Partner at Resound, for an eye-opening conversation about branding in the accounting industry. Mike shares his journey from helping his first accounting firm client rebrand to building the Remarkabrand index that tracks how firms stand out—or don’t. The two get into why brand differentiation matters way beyond just picking a nice logo or color scheme, and Mike breaks down the real business impacts, from pricing flexibility to client loyalty and successful mergers and acquisitions. With insights on branding pitfalls (hint: acronyms and too much blue) and the impact of private equity on firm identities, Mike offers practical advice that’s both actionable and inspiring. Whether you’re in a solo practice or part of a big firm, you’ll pick up fresh ideas on telling your firm’s story, attracting new talent, and setting yourself apart in a crowded market. Buckle up for a unique take on accounting marketing you probably haven’t heard before!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Adam Larson (00:21):
Hey, everyone. Adam Larson here, and welcome back to
Count Me In. Today, I'm joinedby Mike Jones, CEO and managing
partner at ReSound, an agencyknown for helping firms build
standout brands. In thisepisode, Mike shares how he got
started working with accountingfirms and the insights he's
gained from building theRemarkabrand Index, a tool that
measures how firms differentiatethemselves in the marketplace.
(00:43):
We dig into why branddifferentiation is so important,
how it impacts things like firmvalue, client loyalty and
pricing, and the biggestbranding mistakes he sees across
the industry.
Mike also offers practicaladvice for firms looking to
stand out and explains howbranding comes into play during
mergers and acquisitions, andwhen private equity gets
involved. So if you want freshideas on branding and real
(01:05):
strategies to help your firmtell its story, this episodes
for you. Let's get started.
Well, Mike, I'm very excited to have you on the
podcast. Thank you so much forcoming on. And I figured we
could start off just talking alittle bit about your background
and kind of what inspired you tohelp, especially accounting
(01:25):
firms.
Mike Jones (01:26):
Yeah, really. The my my story with accounting firms
as a marketing agency ownerreally began in, like, twenty
sixteen, seventeen. We actuallygot our first accounting firm
client, and we helped themrebrand. And that kind of
introduced me to the industry ina more formal way of, like, oh,
there's there's accountingfirms, which I knew, but just
how do they think? How do theywork?
(01:48):
I got really involved in acouple associations,
particularly the association foraccounting marketing. And as me
and my team just got moreinvolved in the industry,
started picking up more clients.Really just started noticing
that, like, while brandsmattered to accounting firms,
there was just kind of a a lackof understanding of, like, the
(02:08):
value that brand can bring tothe table for an accounting firm
or for an advisory firm orsomething like that. And just a
trepidation, right, to to takethe risk to say, hey. We're
going to really improve ourbrand in the marketplace.
And not just not just, like, thelook and feel, but also just,
you know, what do we say? Who dowe say that we are? What's our
(02:30):
position? How do we bring ourculture more to bear? I think a
lot of accounting firms are veryculture based.
They really think about theirculture a lot, but they don't
always think about how do we howdo we tell that story to
potential clients? How do wetell that to the market? And so
we kind of went all in and said,hey, let's really help this
industry as much as we can. Andthat led us really to start
(02:53):
doing a lot of data gatheringand start putting out what is
now our Remark brand index andsay, hey, how can we really
showcase where this industry isat from a brand perspective?
Let's set the bar and establishthat for firms and then maybe
encourage them to raise theirbar and see where they can go.
And and it's been really fun. Ithink the last three years that
(03:15):
we've been running this indexyear over year, we've seen
improvements from lots of firms.Firms are really, I think,
starting to see that they needto invest in their brands in
some way, shape or form. Thatdoesn't always mean a rebrand,
but really improving theidentity of who they are,
telling their story better,being clear about their
position, about why they do whatthey do, the value that it
(03:36):
delivers. And I think there's alot of other things in play too.
Private equity has gotten reallyinvolved in the industry. I
think they're forcing a littlebit of some identity crisis for
some firms, both on theacquisition side getting
acquired by private equity, thenalso for firms that wanna remain
independent, and they reallywanna leverage that independence
as a key differentiator in themarket and have how do we tell
(04:00):
that story better for thosefirms? So that's kinda the the
back history in a nutshell.There's lots more details there,
but that gives you kind of thetwo minute version.
Adam Larson (04:10):
Yeah, for sure. And I definitely want to dig into
that index a little bit more.But this concept of brand
differentiation, why is it soimportant to differ? I mean,
obviously, there's someobviously like, why is it so
important to differentiate fromother brands? Because you want
people to figure out who youare.
But I think it goes more thanthat.
Mike Jones (04:26):
Yeah. Way more than that. I was actually just having
this conversation this morningwith a group of accounting
firms. But like, I think there'sthere's three real big ones that
are easy for a lot of people tograsp, and that is
differentiating your firm,particularly through your brand,
right, through the identity ofyour firm, that story that
you're telling, who you help,how you deliver value. One
actually produces greater valuefor your firm.
(04:47):
And I you know, I'm just talkingto base a lot of people who are
who are very focused on numbersand rightfully so. And when you
can say, like, hey. This isactually an investment in your
firm that's going to have actualreturn. Right? So the the value
of your firm itself, it'sestimated that about 20% on
average, 20% of yourintellectual property value of
(05:09):
your business is your brand.
So if you're investing inintellectual property, which I
would hope that you are at somelevel, why would you not be
investing in your brand? Becauseit actually delivers value to
your business should you chooseto do an acquisition. When you
have two firms coming togetherin a merger, one of them has to
win from a brand perspective. Ifyours is the more valuable,
(05:31):
differentiated, clear brand,you're gonna be able to command
a little bit more value at thetable, either directly, the
actual cash value, or indirectlythrough how you can, how you get
to control that experiencemoving forward. There's some
other big ones, price.
Brand differentiation allows youto have a lot more flexibility
of not being stuck in cost basedpricing, but really being value
(05:55):
based priced and having a lotmore opportunity to increase
prices, command higher priceswithout people asking a whole
lot of questions, right? We'veseen that over and over with
clients that we work with wherewhen they're really clear about
the expertise they deliver,particularly when they have
industry expertise on top of aservice level expertise. They
(06:15):
win more deals, they win higherprice point deals, greater
margin, and a lot fewerquestions. Those deals happen a
lot faster. And then there'salso this thing of loyalty.
And I think a lot of firms, whenwe think of loyalty, we think of
like, oh, our best clients whomake all these referrals for us.
And I you know, that's great.Like, that's what we should be
(06:36):
all be aiming at is building abrand that has a great client
experience to such a degree thatour clients want to actually
make referrals for us. But atanother level, like one tier
down from that, your clientsshould want to continue to do
business with you and dobusiness across service lines.
And brand, when you tell thatstory really well of like how
(07:00):
you deliver value, how you'redifferent than everyone else in
your, you know, in yourindustry, how you can deliver a
specific value to certain typesof clients, you actually get an
opportunity to earn not justthat one time or that one
service, you get an opportunityto earn all the possible
(07:20):
business that you could givethem.
We've actually seen firms wherelike when they're doing mergers
and acquisitions and they'rethinking cross service lines, so
they're like, okay, traditionalaccounting firm, we do tax, we
do some audit, maybe we'restarting to do some advisory.
And they're thinking like, oh,maybe we should add a cyber
group, right? Maybe we shouldadd wealth management. Those
opportunities become much easierto cross into and start offering
(07:45):
to all of your clients whenyou're really clear about the
total value that your brandbrings. You can see this
reflected in, like, consumerproduct brands.
This is an easy example that wecan all think about and know of.
It's like how many SKUs doesNike have? Thousands? Tens of
thousands? Is Nike the best ateverything that they put out in
(08:07):
the market?
Are they the best basketballshorts? No. They're not.
Arguably, probably not. Right?
And yet customers buy all ofthese cross products. Right? And
it's because they're not buyingthe product first and foremost.
They're buying the brand.They're buying a relationship of
trust that they already have,and they're extending it beyond
(08:28):
the one product line thatthey've already bought.
And, you know, another goodexample from Nike of this is
when they entered the golfmarket, they had zero products
in golf prior to that. Withinten years span, they were the
highest grossing golf productcompany in the world. And that's
that's brand to me. I'm like,how do you do that any other way
(08:50):
than just have an amazing brand?And when you put that logo on a
pair of golf clubs, people arelike, great, I'll take it.
Now they figured some thingsout, you know, the whole like,
hey, we're gonna, you know,sponsor an athlete like Tiger
Woods, right, or Michael Jordanin basketball, like that model
has really worked well for them.That's accelerated that brand
(09:11):
trust that they try to gain innew markets. But when you take
those kinds of examples andyeah, they're consumer product
goods and we could say, hey,there's there's aspects of that
that don't translate intoaccounting and advisory firms.
Absolutely, right? But when youthink about the strength of
brand that Nike has, thatabsolutely translates to any
(09:32):
company in any industry.
And I would argue for accountingfirms, your brand is one of your
best tools in your toolbox forcreating really loyal customers
who are gonna stick with you along time and who are going to
grow with you in terms of theservices and the different lines
that you're gonna offer themover time. So as your firm grows
(09:53):
and you add more service lines,you have great opportunities to
have those clients grow with youif you have a really strong
brand. If you don't have astrong brand, what they'll end
up doing is they'll silo you,they'll position you as a
service provider of one type ofservice. So whatever I bought
the first time from you is all Iknow about you. Your brand was
so specific to a service linethat I can't wrap my head around
(10:17):
how you offer something else.
Right? And that's where, like,thinking about your brand is
beyond a service. Right? More inline of we have a particular
audience that we serve, maybeit's industry niche, or we have
a particular way of doingbusiness, or we have certain
types of clients we are bestsuited for. And that's part of
our brand, right?
(10:38):
Maybe it's like, hey, saying,hey, we're the accounting firm
for small businesses between amillion and 5,000,000. Right?
Okay. Maybe you could have a fewdifferent industries in there,
but there's, like, particularchallenges that businesses have
between those two numbers, andwe're really good at solving
those. If that's part of yourbrand, you're gonna have a a
really great opportunity tobuild really long term
(10:59):
relationships with those typesof clients.
So there's lots more you couldtalk about. Just the value of,
like, saying you're differentand looking different, sounding
different, making a choiceeasier for a client. You know,
one of the fascinating aspectsof the human brain is that it's
actually wired to conservecalories, and decision making
(11:20):
costs Us calories. Okay. So thelonger a decision make the
longer it takes to make adecision, the more our brains
start to actually look forshortcuts.
How can I get out of thisdecision making cycle faster?
And if you don't have anydifference of choice, right, all
these choices look the same tome. One of the easiest shortcuts
(11:43):
that our brains look for isprice. Mhmm. And that's why,
like I mean, just think aboutlast time you were in a cereal
aisle and you didn't have aplan, didn't have a preference.
And you go in and you're like,oh my goodness. There's like a
million choices. I don't knowwhat to pick. Right? What do you
gravitate towards?
Most people gravitate towardsthat little red or yellow tag on
(12:03):
the on the, you know, displaythat shows me that I'm I'm
getting a deal. Right? I couldpick from all of these, but I'm
gonna go pick the one that'scheapest. Right? And start
looking for, like, a price perounce.
So if you wanna be in cost,lowest cost, that's the way
you're gonna differentiate,great. But I don't think I know
too many firms that wanna dothat. And so if you really wanna
(12:25):
not have cost be the issue, youneed to differentiate through
other things. Yeah. You need tolook at how your brand can
really allow the client to makea decision faster.
Adam Larson (12:35):
Yeah, I think your explanation has been really
insightful and you've definitelylearned a lot by building this
index. So talking about theindex, what exactly does it
measure and why build an indexin the first place? Those are
the two things I wanted to askyou.
Mike Jones (12:48):
So the measurement is differentiation. So it's not
a total like, I think somepeople have thought, oh, it's a
total score of my entire brandexperience. And I would argue,
no, it's probably not that.Because there's things that I'd
wanna see that I can't knowunless we have a conversation.
For someone to say, oh, youknow, I wanna put a value on my
(13:10):
brand or I wanna put like aranking on my entire identity as
an organization.
Well, things like values startto come into that conversation.
What's the personality, thebehavior, traits? What are some
of those, like, kind of lesstangible aspects of brand? But
one thing that we can definitelymeasure from the outside for
(13:32):
almost any brand is what does itlook like? What does it sound
like?
And then there's some digitalmetrics that tell us whether
they're getting exposure, right,reach. And so that's what we've
tried to do is collect data onaccounting firms. We have almost
1,400 sorry, almost 1,500accounting firms. And we're now
in our third year. We'll haveour new index.
(13:54):
We've we've collected over 40data points on each one,
everything from logo, colors,fonts, taglines, website
experience, some more, like,data driven pieces of of
information, like page speedscores for how fast the websites
are, which is an amalgamationof, like, what the experience is
(14:15):
like. Some some search engineoptimization scoring around
domain authority, which isactually a third party score
from a a firm called Maz that weuse, as well as off-site links.
So who's linking back to you?How much authority do they have?
Which is an amalgamation oflike, hey.
Do you have reach with yourbrand online? And are those
credible sources that are thatare, you know, talking about you
(14:38):
or publishing about you? There'sa few other data points. We
started collecting a lot of dataover the last two years on
social media. So particularlyLinkedIn, because I think that's
where a lot of accounting firmsare focused.
And the data backs that up. Whenwe look at, you know, just
follower counts, even looking atlike things like follower count
per employee. So really tryingto take the size out of the
(15:02):
equation a little bit. Size doesmatter, but it also doesn't
matter for great brands. I thinkthere are fantastic brands out
there.
You don't have to be, you know,one of the big four to have a
fantastic brand. Now, granted, Iwill get let you in on a little
secret. The the big four are thetop four in our index, And some
of that comes down to theirreach is so great. Yeah. And
(15:24):
because that's still a part ofour scoring.
But our score is really tryingto it is trying to point out how
you're different. Right? Sobetween reach and identity. So,
like, how different are yourcolors? How different are the
fonts that you use in yourcollateral?
How different is your yoursocial media following? And some
even words used in your tagline.So we do some analysis around
(15:45):
that. And that's really whatwe're trying to do is put out
there a score that maybe ishelpful for firms to know, like,
how different are we? Are we arewe able to kind of cut through
and create a sense ofpersonality and difference from
our competition in themarketplace.
And then on top of that, like aswe study that data and we look
(16:06):
at the top ranked firms in thedata, what are they doing that
we can learn from that maybe canbe extrapolated down for other
firms that wanna wanna maybeimprove that that different
score? So that could be thingslike you know, one of the things
we found was top firms don't useacronyms anywhere near as much
(16:27):
as lower ranked firms. Theyinvest in SEO and search engine
optimization. We've even startedcollecting data. We don't this
won't be public for anothercouple months, but we started
collecting data this year onwhat technology stacks from a
marketing perspective do allthese firms use and particularly
interested in in the top firms,the top 20% of our index.
Adam Larson (16:50):
Mhmm.
Mike Jones (16:51):
What are they using? So we have some really
interesting data still comecoming out this year. Yeah.
That's that was kind of the thepreface of it. And some of it
was just, hey.
Let's start measuring and put ameasurement on these things, and
then now firms can benchmarkthemselves.
Adam Larson (17:05):
Mhmm.
Mike Jones (17:06):
And not only benchmark themselves across the
industry, but we can benchmarkourselves to a number from last
year to this year to the nextyear. Are we seeing improvement?
Adam Larson (17:15):
Yeah. And I could see the possibility of somebody
looking at the index andnoticing that, hey, that firms
across town. Wait, we havesimilar colors. We have similar
this.
Mike Jones (17:24):
Yep.
Adam Larson (17:24):
How can I differentiate myself from my
competition in my local area?And it could be a way to kind of
help build yourself up and andlearn about yourself in a way.
Mike Jones (17:32):
Yeah. And we actually interesting enough, we
use this data with a lot of ourclients, too.
Adam Larson (17:38):
Okay. So
Mike Jones (17:39):
when they asked us to do competitive research, the
first thing we do is go pull alltheir competitors from the
index. We'll do some additionaldata gathering because there's
things that you can't measure aseasily.
Adam Larson (17:50):
Yeah.
Mike Jones (17:50):
Some more qualified analysis. You know, one of them
that we have yet to solve yet,I'm excited. I'm hopeful that I
think maybe next year we'll beable to solve, which is, you
know, how does each firm kind oftalk about the industries and
the services that they offer andhow different is that from other
firms. And so, you know, evenjust like looking at like
(18:10):
saturation of industries andthat kind of thing, I think
would be some really interestingdata for a lot of firms to look
at. We do that more on aqualified basis.
Adam Larson (18:20):
Yeah.
Mike Jones (18:21):
But hopefully we can start to track that on a more
quantifiable basis. That wouldbe really cool.
Adam Larson (18:27):
That would be really cool. So you've been
learning a lot and you've beensharing a lot. Are there some
maybe you could share some maybecommon branding mistakes that
you've seen, especially with allthe data you've been gathering.
Mike Jones (18:38):
Yeah. I alluded to one already. Acronyms. Yep. This
is a really big one.
I I get it. I understand whyfirms trend towards acronyms.
It's just easy. You know, you'vegot a you've got a name built
out of four, you know, foundersor four partners that have been
senior in the, and they'reprobably all gone, right?
They're all out of the business.
And it's just easier politicallyin the firm to just do the
(19:02):
acronym. It's probably alreadyhappened without you even
knowing it or really consciouslydeciding to do it. Everyone
wants to shorten down longnames. And so one way to shorten
a name is to make an acronym outof multiple words. The problem
is acronyms are just, they justdon't live in someone's head in
an ownable way unless they spellsomething.
(19:23):
Yeah. So you think of like greatacronym names like NASA or
GEICO. Those are fantasticbecause they actually are
pronounceable names. They don'tnecessarily mean anything. You
infuse that meaning over time,but they're still a word
essentially.
Right? It creates a new word, aninvented word. But when you just
have three or four randomletters smashed together, that's
(19:43):
really hard for people toremember and to put meaning,
like apply a meaning to that. Itcan happen, you know? The big
four are a good example of that.
You spend a long enough amountof time and enough money with
enough reach, you can kind ofovercome that.
Adam Larson (20:00):
But
Mike Jones (20:01):
what we're seeing is that acronyms for the most
differentiated brands are goingaway. They're finding new names.
I think Apprio is a greatexample of that going to, you
know, a new name that thatreally is doesn't really mean
anything, and that's fine.Inventor names are great, but,
you know, somethingpronounceable, something
ownable, something short. Sonames names are one.
(20:22):
We also see, like, I mean, thiswon't be a surprise to anyone,
but blue is, like, the heaviestused used color across the
industry. I mean, it's, like,order of magnitude higher than
any other color. So if you arerelying on you know, blue is
your primary brand color.There's just you're probably
(20:43):
gonna have a hard timedifferentiating through your
color. And so we've been lookinga lot at, like, what are other
colors?
Like, surprisingly, even greenis not used as much as I would
have thought in an industry thatdeals so much with finance and
money. So there's opportunitythere, you know, bright, vibrant
colors with energy, orange andred. I think for maybe the wrong
(21:06):
reason have been shied awayfrom. I think, you know, when a
lot of people think accounting,they think, oh, I want to be
compliance driven, risk averse,safe. And I think a lot of
people gravitate towards bluewhen they start thinking about
what they're trying tocommunicate as a firm because
that seems like a really safecolor.
But the reality is, customer,and specific just your clients
(21:28):
in general, all have verydifferent subjective views to
color. So to say like you havethis overarching, like this
color, like, red always meanspower. I don't know that that's
you can make that grossgeneralization. And especially
in kind of the the hyperculturally aware fractured
digital world that we live in,where every color can kind of be
(21:53):
subsumed in almost any way, Ithink you have an opportunity to
take any color that fits you.You know, it has some level of
meaning, but go grab somethingthat's different, that's
interesting, and own it.
And then you infuse it with themeaning that you wanna give it
over time. You know, a littlebit of a stretch there. I don't
know that red's always gonna be,like, the safe color. But if you
(22:13):
wanna, like, have some energyand and utilize that as part of
your differentiation, like, hey.Maybe we have a a more
personable, relational aspect toour brand.
Red's a great color for that.Orange is a great color for
that. So we're kinda getting theweeds now, but that's the stuff
I live and breathe. So yeah.
Adam Larson (22:31):
Yeah, you could tell that's a I've never thought
so much about that color couldaffect so many things, you know,
and I kind of chuckle to myselfwhen you're saying red. Not a
lot of accounting firms use red,but, you know, reds red could be
negative to them because, know,in the in the Excel spreadsheet
red a is a negative number. Thatcould be why people shy away
(22:51):
from it. You know, I don't know.That's just a theory.
Don't have any No.
Mike Jones (22:55):
It's probably a good one. I like it. And again, like
that comes back to like how youuse it too. Yes. Like Yes.
Maybe if you have red, don't puta bunch of red numbers on your
website, right? Use a differentcolor when communicating
numbers, knowing that. Butthere's a way to use red. I
mean, are firms that use it, andsome higher ranked firms in our
(23:15):
index too. So I wouldn't saythere's a color that's like, oh,
no one's using it.
And therefore you have anopportunity. Probably on the
spectrum of color, like purple'sa big one that there's So in
terms of fewer firms using it,purples and pinks, that kind of
color, somewhere in there.Yellow is a little bit less
used. I know Ian Y uses it. Someof that also has to do with just
(23:36):
functionality.
Yellow is a harder color to see.And so how you apply it gets a
lot trickier. Yeah, those arejust a couple. I think our last
report from last year, we had, Ithink, 16 different insights
that we pulled, and I'm sure wecould have pulled even more and
published. And we're workingright now on our 2025 edition of
(23:59):
the index.
We've we've got all the data.We're sifting through it right
now and and doing some analysis,and and we'll have our new
report here in about a month onMay 12. So that'll be just
access that on your website?They can. If they go to
remarkabrand.com, that's thebest and easiest way to go find
that report.
It'll be really clear rightthere. And you can even sign up
(24:21):
now if people wanna go check itout and get on the the
prerelease list. And then youcan also get access to last
year's report when you sign up.So so I encourage everybody to
check
Adam Larson (24:30):
a link in the show notes to check out that to check
out that report. I wanted tocircle back to something you
mentioned. You talked a littlebit about mergers and
acquisitions, and, you know,that's a that's a big that's
happening a lot now with the waythe markets are going. A lot of
companies are getting swoopedup. You know, can we talk a
little bit about what thatimpact is on a brand's identity
and what you should considerwhen you're going in that if
(24:50):
you're going down that road?
Mike Jones (24:52):
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. A lot of people
concerned about that in variousways, right? I think one is if
you're the acquiring firm. So Iwant to take that kind of
perspective for a moment first.
Your brand is the one that'sgonna win, right? Like you're
acquiring them, they're gonnaroll up most likely into your
(25:14):
brand. And so there's likequestions around like how
closely aligned are theyalready? So I'd be evaluating
things like, you know, what aretheir core values compared to
yours? Where are theirdifferences in how they live
those out behaviorally?
So it's one thing to say, oh,our core value is excellence,
and their core value isexcellence. But what does that
(25:35):
mean, and what does that reallylook like on a day to day basis
for those two firms? Becausewhen you merge them in, they're
now need to live by your set ofvalues and your personality and
your style and your behavioralsystems of your firm. And if
they are so drasticallydifferent that there's gonna be
a lot of friction in thatprocess, you're gonna see a ton
(25:57):
of turnover. It's it'sestimated, like, on average in
other industries, when you do anacquisition or a merger, 80% of
the staff will turn out in threeyears from the acquired firm.
Adam Larson (26:09):
Wow.
Mike Jones (26:10):
And so, like, if you don't have a plan beforehand,
even as you're in conversationswith another firm about
acquiring them or merging themin, about really how different
are we. And doesn't that doesn'tmean don't acquire them. It
doesn't mean, like, don't mergethem. The numbers might all make
sense. It might be the rightplay, but know what the work is
(26:31):
gonna look like on the back endso that you can realize as much
of the talent as possible.
I mean, the expectation isprobably never that you're gonna
keep a 100% of everybody.
Adam Larson (26:39):
Of course.
Mike Jones (26:40):
That just never happens and probably for good
reasons. But maybe shoot for80%, right? Or at the very least
know like, hey, to go in andtell the acquired firm, things
are gonna be different. Youknow, We're not polar opposites
from you, but there's somedifferences in how we do things.
Let's talk about that so youhave the best and easiest
(27:02):
transition possible.
We'd love for you to continue towork here and be a part of what
we're doing. So let's make thatas easy as possible. It's gonna
be different though. There'sgonna be some change. And when
we get into the weeds of whatthose things look like from a
behavioral cultural standpoint,which really is an expression of
your brand, right?
I know. I think sometimes wethink brand is just, oh, that's
(27:23):
just the stuff that goes on thewebsite. It's the stuff that,
you know, the logo on thebuilding. And I argue like brand
starts with your culture. Itstarts with what you believe,
the vision that you have ofwhere you're going, the purpose
that you have as anorganization, and then how you
communicate that and build thatover time.
And that should obviously flowout into your marketing, but it
(27:43):
really starts inside with yourculture. And so that's a big
one, I think, for a lot of firmsis just how do we align our
cultures and then be truthfulabout it. Like, I think there's
a lot of acquisitions andmergers where the acquiring firm
is like, Oh no, it'll be great.It'll be easy. You guys are the
same as us.
(28:04):
It's like, yeah, maybesuperficially, maybe at a
certain level you are, but whenyou get in the weeds, nope, it's
different. And honestly, you'reprobably gonna have a much
better transition period ifyou're just honest about what
the transition's gonna look likeas much as you can, as much as
you can know. People areaccepting of change as long as
it's communicated well Mhmm. Youknow, for the most part. So the
(28:28):
change management is a big is abig portion of that.
You know, lots of questionsaround, like, you know, you do a
merger, less of, like, a trueacquisition, but you're doing
kind of like, we're gonna mergethese two firms together, stock
exchange rate or whatevershareholder exchange of of
value. There's no cash on thetable. Then you get into
questions like which brand wins,which brand kinda becomes the
(28:50):
brand moving forward. And I seea lot of firms struggling with
that. Some of them will just,like, put the two names
together.
And there's just big challengesI have with that. One is like, I
get it, I understand it. There'sequity in both brands. You don't
wanna lose that. But the realityis within three to five years,
only one of those is gonna beleft.
Like this happens in everyindustry over and over and over
(29:10):
again. You mash two brandstogether, one name ends up
winning because at the end ofthe day, it's the law of
simplicity that wins out.Clients, customers, your
prospects, they can't remembertwo names as well as they can
remember one. And so probablywhichever name you were inclined
to put first is the actual nameyou should just do. Now there's
(29:33):
a communication plan that'srequired.
Maybe that does take a littlebit of time to phase that in.
But this whole, like, oh, we'rejust gonna, like, split it down
the middle and keep both brandsalive somehow, I think is a it's
very inefficient. You're justdelaying the inevitable, which
is that one of you is gonna winout. And it has to because it
(29:55):
needs to be simple. There's awhole another scenario that I've
been talking a lot about latelyand thinking about and working
with some clients on, and thatis for independent firms that
don't wanna be acquired byprivate equity and maybe want to
leverage that independence as avalue against private equity.
They might still be doingmergers and acquisitions. So all
those things I just said storyon play, but I think there's
(30:17):
this other layer now in theaccounting industry,
specifically with just so muchprivate equity getting dumped
into the industry and being soactive that there's actually an
opportunity for a lot ofindependent firms to create some
really winning strategies.There's a lot of concern on the
client side of firms beingacquired by private equity or
(30:37):
being acquired by big firms whoare owned by private equity.
Because they look at it and theygo, man, I'm gonna lose all the
relationship. I'm gonna lose allthis great client experience
that you've been able to developand deliver for me.
It's gonna become transactional.That's the fear. And I think if
you are still independent andyou can deliver a
nontransactional relationshipdriven client experience, you've
(31:01):
got some really cool opportunityin the next five years to
probably leverage that in yourbrand and in your marketing in
such a way to really make thecase that you shouldn't stick
with the big firm that you're atnow, client. You need to come
over and work with us because wecan really take care of you and
we can really develop a longterm relationship for you.
Something that they probablywant and want delivered.
(31:23):
The other challenge too isprivate equity firms, a lot of
them are doing roll ups. Sothey're gonna roll up tons of
firms in the next five years.And all those firms are gonna
have different niches thatthey're in. And so the main
brand, the platform brand thatthey're rolling everybody up
into is gonna lack specificity.It's just going to be like,
(31:47):
yeah, we do these things.
We do these accounting services.What's the value to the end
client? How does it help them intheir particular situation? Is
there any like, oh, you've gotdeep expertise in my industry.
You really understand businessesjust like mine because you've
done it over and over and overagain.
And the people on my accountreally understand this industry
(32:08):
really well. And nine times outof 10, I think the answer is no,
they don't. And then I thinkanother kind of key challenge
for private equity backed firmsis going to be recruitment.
Yeah. And that actually justcame up on a call I had today
with a bunch of accounting firmsof I think that's a great
opportunity actually forindependently owned firms to
(32:30):
really say, hey.
We can create an experience foryou as someone on staff. And if
you're on partner track, you'vegot a great opportunity to to
have some good financial winsare gonna be a lot harder to
find if you're going to a reallybig firm that's private equity
backed. And, yeah, it'll beinteresting. Really interesting
(32:50):
to kinda see where this industrygoes over the next five years.
It keeps keeps me excited, keepsme thinking.
Lots of opportunity foreverybody to kind of keep keep
trying things, innovating,changing. There's nothing
static, which is great. So Ilike it, at least. Not a
Adam Larson (33:07):
good Yeah, for sure. It'll be interesting to
see if you can add, like,something to the index about,
like, you know, impact on newthe new generation coming in and
how much reach they can get tothose that new generation.
Because, you know, obviouslywhen you're in the accounting
industry, you know, you hearabout the big four. Those are
names that we all know, But youwon't know number, you know,
seven twenty seven on your listbecause it's probably some mom
(33:29):
and pop shop or some name withlike three names or whatever.
And so it's it's it's it'seducating the next generation
that there's more than justthose big four.
Mike Jones (33:37):
Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of firms have
a ton of opportunity to investin channels from a marketing and
recruitment standpoint thatmaybe they've been afraid of.
Adam Larson (33:48):
Yeah.
Mike Jones (33:49):
You know, it's it's one of the reasons why I think
podcasts are booming so muchwithin the accounting industry.
And then beyond that, I thinkYouTube's another big channel
that's up and coming, and I'mseeing some smaller firms really
getting a ton of leverage out ofYouTube, both from from a
marketing, you know, a clientacquisition standpoint and from
a recruitment standpoint. Whenyou think about younger
(34:10):
generations and like where theygravitate towards finding
information, learning aboutthings, where their kind of
social networks lie in a digitalfirst world, you know, it's not
even places like LinkedInanymore, as much as I love
LinkedIn and I tell my clientslike invest there. But if you're
looking at like, you know, theyoungest generations that you're
(34:32):
gonna be starting to recruit,they don't have LinkedIn
profiles yet. You have to teachthem how to do that.
They're gonna be, you know,they're gonna be on TikTok.
They're gonna be on otherplatforms. Even interestingly
enough, like even Reddit isprobably a place I think a lot
of firms need to start thinkingabout.
Adam Larson (34:49):
Yeah. Interesting.
Mike Jones (34:52):
If you look at even just like Google rankings,
they've been, like, marching upthe rankings for lots of
questions that people ask. Andthen as we get into this AI
driven world where AI is gonnadrive a lot of discovery. Right?
You know, hey. I'm I'm lookingfor a job, chat GPT.
What are, like, the bestaccounting firms for me to go
talk to that are in my city?Like, that's an interesting
(35:14):
question, right? If you're notprepared for being in those
results and how to get there, Ithink firms are gonna have a
hard time. You know, I think itwas estimated that like the the
fastest growing search enginesin the world are now AI tools,
like ChatGPT and Claude andCopilot. So and, know, right now
(35:36):
they're still piggybacking offof, you know, Google search and
other things like that, butthey're building their own
indexes as well.
And so I think pretty quicklywe're gonna see a lot of things
shift into, you know, like, youknow, it's like Apple integrates
AI into Siri. You know, how manypeople are going to be searching
with Siri moving forward? And itwon't run through a traditional
(35:58):
search engine. It'll run throughsome AI index. So it's going to
be really it's an interesting,fun, fun world we live in right
now.
Adam Larson (36:07):
It really is. And Mike, thank you so much for
coming on the podcast. It's beenreally interesting talking
through this, and it's notsomething that we always talk
about is finance and accountingprofessionals, but it's
something that we need to beaware of and be mindful of,
whether you're within anorganization who is just an
accounting firm and you'retrying to brand that or you're
in a larger corporation thatdoes a lot of other things. We
(36:27):
need to be aware of how ourfirm's identity is out there
into the world and so we can getnew clients and all those
things. So I really appreciateyou sharing your insights today.
Mike Jones (36:36):
Thank you, Adam. Thanks for having me. This was
fantastic. Really
Announcer (36:47):
accounting and finance profession. If you like
what you heard and you'd like tobe counted in for more relevant
accounting and financeeducation, visit IMA's website
at www.imanet.org.
Hey, everyone. Adam Larson here, and welcome back to
Count Me In. Today, I'm joinedby Mike Jones, CEO and managing
partner at ReSound, an agencyknown for helping firms build
standout brands. In thisepisode, Mike shares how he got
started working with accountingfirms and the insights he's
gained from building theRemarkabrand Index, a tool that
measures how firms differentiatethemselves in the marketplace.
(00:43):
We dig into why branddifferentiation is so important,
how it impacts things like firmvalue, client loyalty and
pricing, and the biggestbranding mistakes he sees across
the industry.
Mike also offers practicaladvice for firms looking to
stand out and explains howbranding comes into play during
mergers and acquisitions, andwhen private equity gets
involved. So if you want freshideas on branding and real
(01:05):
strategies to help your firmtell its story, this episodes
for you. Let's get started.
Well, Mike, I'm very excited to have you on the
podcast. Thank you so much forcoming on. And I figured we
could start off just talking alittle bit about your background
and kind of what inspired you tohelp, especially accounting
(01:25):
firms.
Mike Jones (01:26):
Yeah, really. The my my story with accounting firms
as a marketing agency ownerreally began in, like, twenty
sixteen, seventeen. We actuallygot our first accounting firm
client, and we helped themrebrand. And that kind of
introduced me to the industry ina more formal way of, like, oh,
there's there's accountingfirms, which I knew, but just
how do they think? How do theywork?
(01:48):
I got really involved in acouple associations,
particularly the association foraccounting marketing. And as me
and my team just got moreinvolved in the industry,
started picking up more clients.Really just started noticing
that, like, while brandsmattered to accounting firms,
there was just kind of a a lackof understanding of, like, the
(02:08):
value that brand can bring tothe table for an accounting firm
or for an advisory firm orsomething like that. And just a
trepidation, right, to to takethe risk to say, hey. We're
going to really improve ourbrand in the marketplace.
And not just not just, like, thelook and feel, but also just,
you know, what do we say? Who dowe say that we are? What's our
(02:30):
position? How do we bring ourculture more to bear? I think a
lot of accounting firms are veryculture based.
They really think about theirculture a lot, but they don't
always think about how do we howdo we tell that story to
potential clients? How do wetell that to the market? And so
we kind of went all in and said,hey, let's really help this
industry as much as we can. Andthat led us really to start
(02:53):
doing a lot of data gatheringand start putting out what is
now our Remark brand index andsay, hey, how can we really
showcase where this industry isat from a brand perspective?
Let's set the bar and establishthat for firms and then maybe
encourage them to raise theirbar and see where they can go.
And and it's been really fun. Ithink the last three years that
(03:15):
we've been running this indexyear over year, we've seen
improvements from lots of firms.Firms are really, I think,
starting to see that they needto invest in their brands in
some way, shape or form. Thatdoesn't always mean a rebrand,
but really improving theidentity of who they are,
telling their story better,being clear about their
position, about why they do whatthey do, the value that it
(03:36):
delivers. And I think there's alot of other things in play too.
Private equity has gotten reallyinvolved in the industry. I
think they're forcing a littlebit of some identity crisis for
some firms, both on theacquisition side getting
acquired by private equity, thenalso for firms that wanna remain
independent, and they reallywanna leverage that independence
as a key differentiator in themarket and have how do we tell
(04:00):
that story better for thosefirms? So that's kinda the the
back history in a nutshell.There's lots more details there,
but that gives you kind of thetwo minute version.
Adam Larson (04:10):
Yeah, for sure. And I definitely want to dig into
that index a little bit more.But this concept of brand
differentiation, why is it soimportant to differ? I mean,
obviously, there's someobviously like, why is it so
important to differentiate fromother brands? Because you want
people to figure out who youare.
But I think it goes more thanthat.
Mike Jones (04:26):
Yeah. Way more than that. I was actually just having
this conversation this morningwith a group of accounting
firms. But like, I think there'sthere's three real big ones that
are easy for a lot of people tograsp, and that is
differentiating your firm,particularly through your brand,
right, through the identity ofyour firm, that story that
you're telling, who you help,how you deliver value. One
actually produces greater valuefor your firm.
(04:47):
And I you know, I'm just talkingto base a lot of people who are
who are very focused on numbersand rightfully so. And when you
can say, like, hey. This isactually an investment in your
firm that's going to have actualreturn. Right? So the the value
of your firm itself, it'sestimated that about 20% on
average, 20% of yourintellectual property value of
(05:09):
your business is your brand.
So if you're investing inintellectual property, which I
would hope that you are at somelevel, why would you not be
investing in your brand? Becauseit actually delivers value to
your business should you chooseto do an acquisition. When you
have two firms coming togetherin a merger, one of them has to
win from a brand perspective. Ifyours is the more valuable,
(05:31):
differentiated, clear brand,you're gonna be able to command
a little bit more value at thetable, either directly, the
actual cash value, or indirectlythrough how you can, how you get
to control that experiencemoving forward. There's some
other big ones, price.
Brand differentiation allows youto have a lot more flexibility
of not being stuck in cost basedpricing, but really being value
(05:55):
based priced and having a lotmore opportunity to increase
prices, command higher priceswithout people asking a whole
lot of questions, right? We'veseen that over and over with
clients that we work with wherewhen they're really clear about
the expertise they deliver,particularly when they have
industry expertise on top of aservice level expertise. They
(06:15):
win more deals, they win higherprice point deals, greater
margin, and a lot fewerquestions. Those deals happen a
lot faster. And then there'salso this thing of loyalty.
And I think a lot of firms, whenwe think of loyalty, we think of
like, oh, our best clients whomake all these referrals for us.
And I you know, that's great.Like, that's what we should be
(06:36):
all be aiming at is building abrand that has a great client
experience to such a degree thatour clients want to actually
make referrals for us. But atanother level, like one tier
down from that, your clientsshould want to continue to do
business with you and dobusiness across service lines.
And brand, when you tell thatstory really well of like how
(07:00):
you deliver value, how you'redifferent than everyone else in
your, you know, in yourindustry, how you can deliver a
specific value to certain typesof clients, you actually get an
opportunity to earn not justthat one time or that one
service, you get an opportunityto earn all the possible
(07:20):
business that you could givethem.
We've actually seen firms wherelike when they're doing mergers
and acquisitions and they'rethinking cross service lines, so
they're like, okay, traditionalaccounting firm, we do tax, we
do some audit, maybe we'restarting to do some advisory.
And they're thinking like, oh,maybe we should add a cyber
group, right? Maybe we shouldadd wealth management. Those
opportunities become much easierto cross into and start offering
(07:45):
to all of your clients whenyou're really clear about the
total value that your brandbrings. You can see this
reflected in, like, consumerproduct brands.
This is an easy example that wecan all think about and know of.
It's like how many SKUs doesNike have? Thousands? Tens of
thousands? Is Nike the best ateverything that they put out in
(08:07):
the market?
Are they the best basketballshorts? No. They're not.
Arguably, probably not. Right?
And yet customers buy all ofthese cross products. Right? And
it's because they're not buyingthe product first and foremost.
They're buying the brand.They're buying a relationship of
trust that they already have,and they're extending it beyond
(08:28):
the one product line thatthey've already bought.
And, you know, another goodexample from Nike of this is
when they entered the golfmarket, they had zero products
in golf prior to that. Withinten years span, they were the
highest grossing golf productcompany in the world. And that's
that's brand to me. I'm like,how do you do that any other way
(08:50):
than just have an amazing brand?And when you put that logo on a
pair of golf clubs, people arelike, great, I'll take it.
Now they figured some thingsout, you know, the whole like,
hey, we're gonna, you know,sponsor an athlete like Tiger
Woods, right, or Michael Jordanin basketball, like that model
has really worked well for them.That's accelerated that brand
(09:11):
trust that they try to gain innew markets. But when you take
those kinds of examples andyeah, they're consumer product
goods and we could say, hey,there's there's aspects of that
that don't translate intoaccounting and advisory firms.
Absolutely, right? But when youthink about the strength of
brand that Nike has, thatabsolutely translates to any
(09:32):
company in any industry.
And I would argue for accountingfirms, your brand is one of your
best tools in your toolbox forcreating really loyal customers
who are gonna stick with you along time and who are going to
grow with you in terms of theservices and the different lines
that you're gonna offer themover time. So as your firm grows
(09:53):
and you add more service lines,you have great opportunities to
have those clients grow with youif you have a really strong
brand. If you don't have astrong brand, what they'll end
up doing is they'll silo you,they'll position you as a
service provider of one type ofservice. So whatever I bought
the first time from you is all Iknow about you. Your brand was
so specific to a service linethat I can't wrap my head around
(10:17):
how you offer something else.
Right? And that's where, like,thinking about your brand is
beyond a service. Right? More inline of we have a particular
audience that we serve, maybeit's industry niche, or we have
a particular way of doingbusiness, or we have certain
types of clients we are bestsuited for. And that's part of
our brand, right?
(10:38):
Maybe it's like, hey, saying,hey, we're the accounting firm
for small businesses between amillion and 5,000,000. Right?
Okay. Maybe you could have a fewdifferent industries in there,
but there's, like, particularchallenges that businesses have
between those two numbers, andwe're really good at solving
those. If that's part of yourbrand, you're gonna have a a
really great opportunity tobuild really long term
(10:59):
relationships with those typesof clients.
So there's lots more you couldtalk about. Just the value of,
like, saying you're differentand looking different, sounding
different, making a choiceeasier for a client. You know,
one of the fascinating aspectsof the human brain is that it's
actually wired to conservecalories, and decision making
(11:20):
costs Us calories. Okay. So thelonger a decision make the
longer it takes to make adecision, the more our brains
start to actually look forshortcuts.
How can I get out of thisdecision making cycle faster?
And if you don't have anydifference of choice, right, all
these choices look the same tome. One of the easiest shortcuts
(11:43):
that our brains look for isprice. Mhmm. And that's why,
like I mean, just think aboutlast time you were in a cereal
aisle and you didn't have aplan, didn't have a preference.
And you go in and you're like,oh my goodness. There's like a
million choices. I don't knowwhat to pick. Right? What do you
gravitate towards?
Most people gravitate towardsthat little red or yellow tag on
(12:03):
the on the, you know, displaythat shows me that I'm I'm
getting a deal. Right? I couldpick from all of these, but I'm
gonna go pick the one that'scheapest. Right? And start
looking for, like, a price perounce.
So if you wanna be in cost,lowest cost, that's the way
you're gonna differentiate,great. But I don't think I know
too many firms that wanna dothat. And so if you really wanna
(12:25):
not have cost be the issue, youneed to differentiate through
other things. Yeah. You need tolook at how your brand can
really allow the client to makea decision faster.
Adam Larson (12:35):
Yeah, I think your explanation has been really
insightful and you've definitelylearned a lot by building this
index. So talking about theindex, what exactly does it
measure and why build an indexin the first place? Those are
the two things I wanted to askyou.
Mike Jones (12:48):
So the measurement is differentiation. So it's not
a total like, I think somepeople have thought, oh, it's a
total score of my entire brandexperience. And I would argue,
no, it's probably not that.Because there's things that I'd
wanna see that I can't knowunless we have a conversation.
For someone to say, oh, youknow, I wanna put a value on my
(13:10):
brand or I wanna put like aranking on my entire identity as
an organization.
Well, things like values startto come into that conversation.
What's the personality, thebehavior, traits? What are some
of those, like, kind of lesstangible aspects of brand? But
one thing that we can definitelymeasure from the outside for
(13:32):
almost any brand is what does itlook like? What does it sound
like?
And then there's some digitalmetrics that tell us whether
they're getting exposure, right,reach. And so that's what we've
tried to do is collect data onaccounting firms. We have almost
1,400 sorry, almost 1,500accounting firms. And we're now
in our third year. We'll haveour new index.
(13:54):
We've we've collected over 40data points on each one,
everything from logo, colors,fonts, taglines, website
experience, some more, like,data driven pieces of of
information, like page speedscores for how fast the websites
are, which is an amalgamationof, like, what the experience is
(14:15):
like. Some some search engineoptimization scoring around
domain authority, which isactually a third party score
from a a firm called Maz that weuse, as well as off-site links.
So who's linking back to you?How much authority do they have?
Which is an amalgamation oflike, hey.
Do you have reach with yourbrand online? And are those
credible sources that are thatare, you know, talking about you
(14:38):
or publishing about you? There'sa few other data points. We
started collecting a lot of dataover the last two years on
social media. So particularlyLinkedIn, because I think that's
where a lot of accounting firmsare focused.
And the data backs that up. Whenwe look at, you know, just
follower counts, even looking atlike things like follower count
per employee. So really tryingto take the size out of the
(15:02):
equation a little bit. Size doesmatter, but it also doesn't
matter for great brands. I thinkthere are fantastic brands out
there.
You don't have to be, you know,one of the big four to have a
fantastic brand. Now, granted, Iwill get let you in on a little
secret. The the big four are thetop four in our index, And some
of that comes down to theirreach is so great. Yeah. And
(15:24):
because that's still a part ofour scoring.
But our score is really tryingto it is trying to point out how
you're different. Right? Sobetween reach and identity. So,
like, how different are yourcolors? How different are the
fonts that you use in yourcollateral?
How different is your yoursocial media following? And some
even words used in your tagline.So we do some analysis around
(15:45):
that. And that's really whatwe're trying to do is put out
there a score that maybe ishelpful for firms to know, like,
how different are we? Are we arewe able to kind of cut through
and create a sense ofpersonality and difference from
our competition in themarketplace.
And then on top of that, like aswe study that data and we look
(16:06):
at the top ranked firms in thedata, what are they doing that
we can learn from that maybe canbe extrapolated down for other
firms that wanna wanna maybeimprove that that different
score? So that could be thingslike you know, one of the things
we found was top firms don't useacronyms anywhere near as much
(16:27):
as lower ranked firms. Theyinvest in SEO and search engine
optimization. We've even startedcollecting data. We don't this
won't be public for anothercouple months, but we started
collecting data this year onwhat technology stacks from a
marketing perspective do allthese firms use and particularly
interested in in the top firms,the top 20% of our index.
Adam Larson (16:50):
Mhmm.
Mike Jones (16:51):
What are they using? So we have some really
interesting data still comecoming out this year. Yeah.
That's that was kind of the thepreface of it. And some of it
was just, hey.
Let's start measuring and put ameasurement on these things, and
then now firms can benchmarkthemselves.
Adam Larson (17:05):
Mhmm.
Mike Jones (17:06):
And not only benchmark themselves across the
industry, but we can benchmarkourselves to a number from last
year to this year to the nextyear. Are we seeing improvement?
Adam Larson (17:15):
Yeah. And I could see the possibility of somebody
looking at the index andnoticing that, hey, that firms
across town. Wait, we havesimilar colors. We have similar
this.
Mike Jones (17:24):
Yep.
Adam Larson (17:24):
How can I differentiate myself from my
competition in my local area?And it could be a way to kind of
help build yourself up and andlearn about yourself in a way.
Mike Jones (17:32):
Yeah. And we actually interesting enough, we
use this data with a lot of ourclients, too.
Adam Larson (17:38):
Okay. So
Mike Jones (17:39):
when they asked us to do competitive research, the
first thing we do is go pull alltheir competitors from the
index. We'll do some additionaldata gathering because there's
things that you can't measure aseasily.
Adam Larson (17:50):
Yeah.
Mike Jones (17:50):
Some more qualified analysis. You know, one of them
that we have yet to solve yet,I'm excited. I'm hopeful that I
think maybe next year we'll beable to solve, which is, you
know, how does each firm kind oftalk about the industries and
the services that they offer andhow different is that from other
firms. And so, you know, evenjust like looking at like
(18:10):
saturation of industries andthat kind of thing, I think
would be some really interestingdata for a lot of firms to look
at. We do that more on aqualified basis.
Adam Larson (18:20):
Yeah.
Mike Jones (18:21):
But hopefully we can start to track that on a more
quantifiable basis. That wouldbe really cool.
Adam Larson (18:27):
That would be really cool. So you've been
learning a lot and you've beensharing a lot. Are there some
maybe you could share some maybecommon branding mistakes that
you've seen, especially with allthe data you've been gathering.
Mike Jones (18:38):
Yeah. I alluded to one already. Acronyms. Yep. This
is a really big one.
I I get it. I understand whyfirms trend towards acronyms.
It's just easy. You know, you'vegot a you've got a name built
out of four, you know, foundersor four partners that have been
senior in the, and they'reprobably all gone, right?
They're all out of the business.
And it's just easier politicallyin the firm to just do the
(19:02):
acronym. It's probably alreadyhappened without you even
knowing it or really consciouslydeciding to do it. Everyone
wants to shorten down longnames. And so one way to shorten
a name is to make an acronym outof multiple words. The problem
is acronyms are just, they justdon't live in someone's head in
an ownable way unless they spellsomething.
(19:23):
Yeah. So you think of like greatacronym names like NASA or
GEICO. Those are fantasticbecause they actually are
pronounceable names. They don'tnecessarily mean anything. You
infuse that meaning over time,but they're still a word
essentially.
Right? It creates a new word, aninvented word. But when you just
have three or four randomletters smashed together, that's
(19:43):
really hard for people toremember and to put meaning,
like apply a meaning to that. Itcan happen, you know? The big
four are a good example of that.
You spend a long enough amountof time and enough money with
enough reach, you can kind ofovercome that.
Adam Larson (20:00):
But
Mike Jones (20:01):
what we're seeing is that acronyms for the most
differentiated brands are goingaway. They're finding new names.
I think Apprio is a greatexample of that going to, you
know, a new name that thatreally is doesn't really mean
anything, and that's fine.Inventor names are great, but,
you know, somethingpronounceable, something
ownable, something short. Sonames names are one.
(20:22):
We also see, like, I mean, thiswon't be a surprise to anyone,
but blue is, like, the heaviestused used color across the
industry. I mean, it's, like,order of magnitude higher than
any other color. So if you arerelying on you know, blue is
your primary brand color.There's just you're probably
(20:43):
gonna have a hard timedifferentiating through your
color. And so we've been lookinga lot at, like, what are other
colors?
Like, surprisingly, even greenis not used as much as I would
have thought in an industry thatdeals so much with finance and
money. So there's opportunitythere, you know, bright, vibrant
colors with energy, orange andred. I think for maybe the wrong
(21:06):
reason have been shied awayfrom. I think, you know, when a
lot of people think accounting,they think, oh, I want to be
compliance driven, risk averse,safe. And I think a lot of
people gravitate towards bluewhen they start thinking about
what they're trying tocommunicate as a firm because
that seems like a really safecolor.
But the reality is, customer,and specific just your clients
(21:28):
in general, all have verydifferent subjective views to
color. So to say like you havethis overarching, like this
color, like, red always meanspower. I don't know that that's
you can make that grossgeneralization. And especially
in kind of the the hyperculturally aware fractured
digital world that we live in,where every color can kind of be
(21:53):
subsumed in almost any way, Ithink you have an opportunity to
take any color that fits you.You know, it has some level of
meaning, but go grab somethingthat's different, that's
interesting, and own it.
And then you infuse it with themeaning that you wanna give it
over time. You know, a littlebit of a stretch there. I don't
know that red's always gonna be,like, the safe color. But if you
(22:13):
wanna, like, have some energyand and utilize that as part of
your differentiation, like, hey.Maybe we have a a more
personable, relational aspect toour brand.
Red's a great color for that.Orange is a great color for
that. So we're kinda getting theweeds now, but that's the stuff
I live and breathe. So yeah.
Adam Larson (22:31):
Yeah, you could tell that's a I've never thought
so much about that color couldaffect so many things, you know,
and I kind of chuckle to myselfwhen you're saying red. Not a
lot of accounting firms use red,but, you know, reds red could be
negative to them because, know,in the in the Excel spreadsheet
red a is a negative number. Thatcould be why people shy away
(22:51):
from it. You know, I don't know.That's just a theory.
Don't have any No.
Mike Jones (22:55):
It's probably a good one. I like it. And again, like
that comes back to like how youuse it too. Yes. Like Yes.
Maybe if you have red, don't puta bunch of red numbers on your
website, right? Use a differentcolor when communicating
numbers, knowing that. Butthere's a way to use red. I
mean, are firms that use it, andsome higher ranked firms in our
(23:15):
index too. So I wouldn't saythere's a color that's like, oh,
no one's using it.
And therefore you have anopportunity. Probably on the
spectrum of color, like purple'sa big one that there's So in
terms of fewer firms using it,purples and pinks, that kind of
color, somewhere in there.Yellow is a little bit less
used. I know Ian Y uses it. Someof that also has to do with just
(23:36):
functionality.
Yellow is a harder color to see.And so how you apply it gets a
lot trickier. Yeah, those arejust a couple. I think our last
report from last year, we had, Ithink, 16 different insights
that we pulled, and I'm sure wecould have pulled even more and
published. And we're workingright now on our 2025 edition of
(23:59):
the index.
We've we've got all the data.We're sifting through it right
now and and doing some analysis,and and we'll have our new
report here in about a month onMay 12. So that'll be just
access that on your website?They can. If they go to
remarkabrand.com, that's thebest and easiest way to go find
that report.
It'll be really clear rightthere. And you can even sign up
(24:21):
now if people wanna go check itout and get on the the
prerelease list. And then youcan also get access to last
year's report when you sign up.So so I encourage everybody to
check
Adam Larson (24:30):
a link in the show notes to check out that to check
out that report. I wanted tocircle back to something you
mentioned. You talked a littlebit about mergers and
acquisitions, and, you know,that's a that's a big that's
happening a lot now with the waythe markets are going. A lot of
companies are getting swoopedup. You know, can we talk a
little bit about what thatimpact is on a brand's identity
and what you should considerwhen you're going in that if
(24:50):
you're going down that road?
Mike Jones (24:52):
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. A lot of people
concerned about that in variousways, right? I think one is if
you're the acquiring firm. So Iwant to take that kind of
perspective for a moment first.
Your brand is the one that'sgonna win, right? Like you're
acquiring them, they're gonnaroll up most likely into your
(25:14):
brand. And so there's likequestions around like how
closely aligned are theyalready? So I'd be evaluating
things like, you know, what aretheir core values compared to
yours? Where are theirdifferences in how they live
those out behaviorally?
So it's one thing to say, oh,our core value is excellence,
and their core value isexcellence. But what does that
(25:35):
mean, and what does that reallylook like on a day to day basis
for those two firms? Becausewhen you merge them in, they're
now need to live by your set ofvalues and your personality and
your style and your behavioralsystems of your firm. And if
they are so drasticallydifferent that there's gonna be
a lot of friction in thatprocess, you're gonna see a ton
(25:57):
of turnover. It's it'sestimated, like, on average in
other industries, when you do anacquisition or a merger, 80% of
the staff will turn out in threeyears from the acquired firm.
Adam Larson (26:09):
Wow.
Mike Jones (26:10):
And so, like, if you don't have a plan beforehand,
even as you're in conversationswith another firm about
acquiring them or merging themin, about really how different
are we. And doesn't that doesn'tmean don't acquire them. It
doesn't mean, like, don't mergethem. The numbers might all make
sense. It might be the rightplay, but know what the work is
(26:31):
gonna look like on the back endso that you can realize as much
of the talent as possible.
I mean, the expectation isprobably never that you're gonna
keep a 100% of everybody.
Adam Larson (26:39):
Of course.
Mike Jones (26:40):
That just never happens and probably for good
reasons. But maybe shoot for80%, right? Or at the very least
know like, hey, to go in andtell the acquired firm, things
are gonna be different. Youknow, We're not polar opposites
from you, but there's somedifferences in how we do things.
Let's talk about that so youhave the best and easiest
(27:02):
transition possible.
We'd love for you to continue towork here and be a part of what
we're doing. So let's make thatas easy as possible. It's gonna
be different though. There'sgonna be some change. And when
we get into the weeds of whatthose things look like from a
behavioral cultural standpoint,which really is an expression of
your brand, right?
I know. I think sometimes wethink brand is just, oh, that's
(27:23):
just the stuff that goes on thewebsite. It's the stuff that,
you know, the logo on thebuilding. And I argue like brand
starts with your culture. Itstarts with what you believe,
the vision that you have ofwhere you're going, the purpose
that you have as anorganization, and then how you
communicate that and build thatover time.
And that should obviously flowout into your marketing, but it
(27:43):
really starts inside with yourculture. And so that's a big
one, I think, for a lot of firmsis just how do we align our
cultures and then be truthfulabout it. Like, I think there's
a lot of acquisitions andmergers where the acquiring firm
is like, Oh no, it'll be great.It'll be easy. You guys are the
same as us.
(28:04):
It's like, yeah, maybesuperficially, maybe at a
certain level you are, but whenyou get in the weeds, nope, it's
different. And honestly, you'reprobably gonna have a much
better transition period ifyou're just honest about what
the transition's gonna look likeas much as you can, as much as
you can know. People areaccepting of change as long as
it's communicated well Mhmm. Youknow, for the most part. So the
(28:28):
change management is a big is abig portion of that.
You know, lots of questionsaround, like, you know, you do a
merger, less of, like, a trueacquisition, but you're doing
kind of like, we're gonna mergethese two firms together, stock
exchange rate or whatevershareholder exchange of of
value. There's no cash on thetable. Then you get into
questions like which brand wins,which brand kinda becomes the
(28:50):
brand moving forward. And I seea lot of firms struggling with
that. Some of them will just,like, put the two names
together.
And there's just big challengesI have with that. One is like, I
get it, I understand it. There'sequity in both brands. You don't
wanna lose that. But the realityis within three to five years,
only one of those is gonna beleft.
Like this happens in everyindustry over and over and over
(29:10):
again. You mash two brandstogether, one name ends up
winning because at the end ofthe day, it's the law of
simplicity that wins out.Clients, customers, your
prospects, they can't remembertwo names as well as they can
remember one. And so probablywhichever name you were inclined
to put first is the actual nameyou should just do. Now there's
(29:33):
a communication plan that'srequired.
Maybe that does take a littlebit of time to phase that in.
But this whole, like, oh, we'rejust gonna, like, split it down
the middle and keep both brandsalive somehow, I think is a it's
very inefficient. You're justdelaying the inevitable, which
is that one of you is gonna winout. And it has to because it
(29:55):
needs to be simple. There's awhole another scenario that I've
been talking a lot about latelyand thinking about and working
with some clients on, and thatis for independent firms that
don't wanna be acquired byprivate equity and maybe want to
leverage that independence as avalue against private equity.
They might still be doingmergers and acquisitions. So all
those things I just said storyon play, but I think there's
(30:17):
this other layer now in theaccounting industry,
specifically with just so muchprivate equity getting dumped
into the industry and being soactive that there's actually an
opportunity for a lot ofindependent firms to create some
really winning strategies.There's a lot of concern on the
client side of firms beingacquired by private equity or
(30:37):
being acquired by big firms whoare owned by private equity.
Because they look at it and theygo, man, I'm gonna lose all the
relationship. I'm gonna lose allthis great client experience
that you've been able to developand deliver for me.
It's gonna become transactional.That's the fear. And I think if
you are still independent andyou can deliver a
nontransactional relationshipdriven client experience, you've
(31:01):
got some really cool opportunityin the next five years to
probably leverage that in yourbrand and in your marketing in
such a way to really make thecase that you shouldn't stick
with the big firm that you're atnow, client. You need to come
over and work with us because wecan really take care of you and
we can really develop a longterm relationship for you.
Something that they probablywant and want delivered.
(31:23):
The other challenge too isprivate equity firms, a lot of
them are doing roll ups. Sothey're gonna roll up tons of
firms in the next five years.And all those firms are gonna
have different niches thatthey're in. And so the main
brand, the platform brand thatthey're rolling everybody up
into is gonna lack specificity.It's just going to be like,
(31:47):
yeah, we do these things.
We do these accounting services.What's the value to the end
client? How does it help them intheir particular situation? Is
there any like, oh, you've gotdeep expertise in my industry.
You really understand businessesjust like mine because you've
done it over and over and overagain.
And the people on my accountreally understand this industry
(32:08):
really well. And nine times outof 10, I think the answer is no,
they don't. And then I thinkanother kind of key challenge
for private equity backed firmsis going to be recruitment.
Yeah. And that actually justcame up on a call I had today
with a bunch of accounting firmsof I think that's a great
opportunity actually forindependently owned firms to
(32:30):
really say, hey.
We can create an experience foryou as someone on staff. And if
you're on partner track, you'vegot a great opportunity to to
have some good financial winsare gonna be a lot harder to
find if you're going to a reallybig firm that's private equity
backed. And, yeah, it'll beinteresting. Really interesting
(32:50):
to kinda see where this industrygoes over the next five years.
It keeps keeps me excited, keepsme thinking.
Lots of opportunity foreverybody to kind of keep keep
trying things, innovating,changing. There's nothing
static, which is great. So Ilike it, at least. Not a
Adam Larson (33:07):
good Yeah, for sure. It'll be interesting to
see if you can add, like,something to the index about,
like, you know, impact on newthe new generation coming in and
how much reach they can get tothose that new generation.
Because, you know, obviouslywhen you're in the accounting
industry, you know, you hearabout the big four. Those are
names that we all know, But youwon't know number, you know,
seven twenty seven on your listbecause it's probably some mom
(33:29):
and pop shop or some name withlike three names or whatever.
And so it's it's it's it'seducating the next generation
that there's more than justthose big four.
Mike Jones (33:37):
Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of firms have
a ton of opportunity to investin channels from a marketing and
recruitment standpoint thatmaybe they've been afraid of.
Adam Larson (33:48):
Yeah.
Mike Jones (33:49):
You know, it's it's one of the reasons why I think
podcasts are booming so muchwithin the accounting industry.
And then beyond that, I thinkYouTube's another big channel
that's up and coming, and I'mseeing some smaller firms really
getting a ton of leverage out ofYouTube, both from from a
marketing, you know, a clientacquisition standpoint and from
a recruitment standpoint. Whenyou think about younger
(34:10):
generations and like where theygravitate towards finding
information, learning aboutthings, where their kind of
social networks lie in a digitalfirst world, you know, it's not
even places like LinkedInanymore, as much as I love
LinkedIn and I tell my clientslike invest there. But if you're
looking at like, you know, theyoungest generations that you're
(34:32):
gonna be starting to recruit,they don't have LinkedIn
profiles yet. You have to teachthem how to do that.
They're gonna be, you know,they're gonna be on TikTok.
They're gonna be on otherplatforms. Even interestingly
enough, like even Reddit isprobably a place I think a lot
of firms need to start thinkingabout.
Adam Larson (34:49):
Yeah. Interesting.
Mike Jones (34:52):
If you look at even just like Google rankings,
they've been, like, marching upthe rankings for lots of
questions that people ask. Andthen as we get into this AI
driven world where AI is gonnadrive a lot of discovery. Right?
You know, hey. I'm I'm lookingfor a job, chat GPT.
What are, like, the bestaccounting firms for me to go
talk to that are in my city?Like, that's an interesting
(35:14):
question, right? If you're notprepared for being in those
results and how to get there, Ithink firms are gonna have a
hard time. You know, I think itwas estimated that like the the
fastest growing search enginesin the world are now AI tools,
like ChatGPT and Claude andCopilot. So and, know, right now
(35:36):
they're still piggybacking offof, you know, Google search and
other things like that, butthey're building their own
indexes as well.
And so I think pretty quicklywe're gonna see a lot of things
shift into, you know, like, youknow, it's like Apple integrates
AI into Siri. You know, how manypeople are going to be searching
with Siri moving forward? And itwon't run through a traditional
(35:58):
search engine. It'll run throughsome AI index. So it's going to
be really it's an interesting,fun, fun world we live in right
now.
Adam Larson (36:07):
It really is. And Mike, thank you so much for
coming on the podcast. It's beenreally interesting talking
through this, and it's notsomething that we always talk
about is finance and accountingprofessionals, but it's
something that we need to beaware of and be mindful of,
whether you're within anorganization who is just an
accounting firm and you'retrying to brand that or you're
in a larger corporation thatdoes a lot of other things. We
(36:27):
need to be aware of how ourfirm's identity is out there
into the world and so we can getnew clients and all those
things. So I really appreciateyou sharing your insights today.
Mike Jones (36:36):
Thank you, Adam. Thanks for having me. This was
fantastic. Really
Announcer (36:47):
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what you heard and you'd like tobe counted in for more relevant
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