‘Song is changing Accenture’: CEO Ndidi Oteh on media, M&A and ‘Big Four’ agency rivalry

Ndidi Oteh, the new global chief executive of Accenture Song, discussed navigating change and scale, plans to expand in media buying, and how the agency arm of consulting giant Accenture compares to the big holding companies.

On stage at Campaign Live in London for her first UK interview, Oteh was asked if Accenture Song will become part of a new “Big Four” in the agency sector in competition with WPP, Publicis and the “new Omnicom” after the latter’s planned acquisition of IPG.

“The industry gets to determine that [whether there is a new “Big Four”], but that’s not our North Star,” Oteh said, adding that Accenture Song’s competitors are “everyone and no one”.

Accenture Song reported revenues of $20 billion (£15 billion) in the 12 months to August, up 8% year on year, according to annual results last Thursday (25 September). That put it on a par with Omnicom’s $16 billion, Publicis’ €16 billion($19 billion) and WPP’s  £15 billion ($20 billion), based on 2024 headline numbers, and it has recently been pitching against that trio in a four-way fight for Jaguar Land Rover’s global integrated marketing account.

However, compared to the top agency holding companies, Accenture Song’s media operation is “very small today”, Oteh acknowledged, although it has begun making moves, winning Optus’ media account in Australia and hiring Dimitri Maex from IPG Mediabrands to be its global marketing practice lead.

Oteh said Accenture Song was navigating the media opportunity carefully, hinting that artificial intelligence and other technological changes are going to disrupt the market rapidly. “The model and the way that media [planning and buying] exists today, will not exist in two years,” Oteh predicted. “We want to make sure that we are building, borrowing and partnering and buying towards the future, not necessarily the past.”

She declined to say yet what the next chapter of media will look like for Accenture Song, but said: “We are building something for the future.”

Accenture Song has expanded through dozens of acquisitions of smaller agencies in the last decade and Oteh was asked about her future M&A strategy and whether she could “go big”, following recent speculation linking Accenture with WPP and Dentsu's international operations.

She said Accenture Song looks to understand what it can “build” and what it can “borrow”. Its acquisition strategy is based on building talent through hiring and upskilling. But in terms of large-scale acquisitions, rather than bolt-on businesses, Oteh suggested that Song’s strategy is more likely to be to “borrow” through partnerships. “We are doing more partnerships than ever before,” she said, referencing tech companies such as Meta and Salesforce.

Oteh explained that she doesn’t believe in the strategy of having every capability in-house or using capital spend to acquire certain companies. “Partnerships will be a path to growth in a different way,” she explained.

UK acquisitions have helped Song to evolve

Oteh, who grew up in St Louis, Missouri, started her career in retail before joining Accenture in 2011 and did not have a background in agencies. She moved to Accenture Song to lead the Americas at the end of 2023, working for David Droga, the then global CEO, who announced in May of this year that he was handing over to her on 1 September.

Oteh said she felt “unleashed to do more” since taking charge and praised Droga, the founder of Droga5, as a “visionary” for bringing together Accenture Song’s capabilities and 50-plus agencies with a combined offer for clients.

She said the acquisitions of UK agencies such as Fjord in 2013 and Karmarama in 2016 had been pivotal because they helped to drive the early evolution of Accenture Song. “That [the UK] is where we learned” about the importance of capabilities such as design and creative and “what the future could look like” for its then-nascent agency operations.

Asked if Accenture Song was more likely to become more like “Big” Accenture, the main consulting business, in two years’ time, Oteh suggested Song would remain distinct, adding it has already shown it can influence the wider Accenture business. “I think two years from now, Accenture Song looks more like Accenture Song, and I hope that ‘Big’ Accenture also looks different. I think that driving impact and change [within Song] means that Song also helps to change Accenture.”

Oteh recalled how the acquisition of design agency Fjord, in particular, had a catalytic effect as it brought design thinking into the wider organisation. “Fjord changed Accenture,” she said – a significant comment given she worked at the main consulting business, rather than the agency division, at the time, during her first decade at Accenture.

Accenture Song is now a significant part of Accenture’s operations as it now represents about a quarter of the parent company’s revenues.

“What we are doing with Accenture Song is changing Accenture,” she said. “The line might become a little bit blurrier [between Song and the rest of Accenture], but that will be because Accenture Song led that change.”

She added, “I would expect that we will continue to have new capabilities. You'll see a shift in where we focus some of our work. It also means we should be doing bigger things and things that we couldn't have ever done before, because we have more capabilities.”

“We have work to do” to make Accenture Song’s positioning clearer

Oteh said Accenture Song has had “a good year” – she was speaking a day before the annual results showed Song’s growth of 8% – and is seeing “increased demand” from clients. “Every CMO that we have a conversation with is saying, ‘I want to be known for growth again. I don't want to be known as a cost centre.’”

She maintained that Accenture is well placed because it “has always been a technology company”. However, when asked, Oteh conceded Accenture Song could be clearer about its market positioning – because it encompasses a broad mix of agency, consulting and other services.

She turned to the audience of around 80 advertising and marketing professionals in the room at Campaign Live and asked them: “How many of you feel as if you know for sure what Accenture Song is and the capabilities of Accenture Song?” Only a small proportion of the room raised their hands. “So I have work to do. We have work to do,” she acknowledged.

However, Oteh was adamant that Accenture Song has a unique offer for clients because it helps them “to actually own the customer journey” – with capabilities across commerce, design, digital products, experience, sales and “end-to-end customer service”, including “the last mile” right up to the point of delivery to the consumer.

“What I think was amazing about David [Droga]’s vision is that he was really clear, four or five years ago, that the industry was shifting. It would no longer just be about ‘I created the best brand, I created the best ad, everyone's talking about it, everybody knows about it’. It was no longer just about that.

“You had to be able to drive realised, durable impact [across a client’s whole business] and Accenture Song is actually able to do that. We’re able to take creative/advisory [services] across the whole customer channel and make sure that those experiences, that were so siloed before technology, no longer have to be siloed.”

She added she spends a lot of time talking about how to “create harmonised customer experiences”, explaining: “I say harmonise for a reason because, for a while, there has been this language [in some parts of the industry] about, ‘Everything needs to be the same [for a brand]. Every channel, every experience, needs to be the same.’ 

“What we have found is customers aren’t asking for that. They're asking for connections. They're asking for an understanding – for you to know who they are from a personalisation, and I would say, from a specificity, perspective. 

“But they actually just want it all to rhyme together. They want it to feel the same. It doesn't have to be the same. And one of the ways that you do that is knowing, ‘What do you need to scale?’ and ‘What do you need to make sure is local and specific?’”

Diversity and talent

Accenture Song itself has faced some of its own client challenges in the UK after Transport for London removed the shop from its creative agency review earlier this year, following the US parent company’s decision to drop its global diversity and inclusion goals.

Oteh did not directly comment on TfL’s decision but maintained Accenture Song was committed to supporting diversity of talent. “Of course, we’re in a challenging position, but I will tell you it doesn’t change who we are,” she said. “Diversity has to be at the core of what we do.” 

It is “critical” for Accenture Song “to have people of different backgrounds, of different experiences, to be part of [a company that is] an ‘industry of one’. That’s what it means to be both local and global [by employing a diverse mix of talent]. So we are not moving away from that,” she said.

She added that “it is not difficult for us to get great talent at all” – “I have the opposite challenge” because “there is phenomenal talent out in the market right now” amid wider industry disruption.

“I want to build a culture of shape shifters, of individuals who want to build the future. If you are an individual who is very, very nostalgic about ‘what was’ and want to create back ‘what was’, Accenture Song is not the place for you. If you want to be an individual who is going to create the future, this is the place to be.”

In a sign that the parent company is moving quickly to reshape its workforce, Julie Sweet, the global CEO, said on its earnings call that it is “investing in upskilling” staff and “exiting on a compressed timeline” employees when reskilling is not “a viable path”. Accenture’s global headcount has fallen by about 20,000 from about 800,000 to 779,000 in the last six months.