PwC's brand expression was anchored in its accounting and audit heritage at a time when the firm was aggressively expanding its consulting and advisory capabilities. The existing identity failed to communicate the firm's evolved mandate — and perceptual mapping revealed that PwC was seen as complex and inaccessible relative to strategic ambitions.
Vivaldi conducted perceptual mapping and behavioral insight research to understand how decision-makers perceived PwC versus competitors. The findings informed a repositioning strategy that moved PwC toward a positioning centered on clarity, accessibility, and confident advice — better aligned with the firm's consulting growth ambitions.
The repositioning strategy aligned PwC's global brand expression with its expanding professional services mandate, improving client-facing clarity and laying the foundation for the firm's growth in advisory and consulting markets.
PwC partnered with Vivaldi to reposition its global brand and align its identity with the firm’s expanding consulting and advisory mandate beyond its audit heritage. Vivaldi’s perceptual mapping and behavioral research informed a repositioning centered on clarity, accessibility, and confident advice, providing a foundation for PwC’s growth in advisory markets and improving client-facing brand expression worldwide.
PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) is one of the world’s largest professional services networks, operating in 151 countries with over 370,000 employees and annual revenues exceeding $53 billion. One of the Big Four accounting firms, PwC provides audit, tax, and advisory services to the majority of Fortune 500 companies. The firm is headquartered in London and is consistently ranked among the most trusted professional services brands globally.
Vivaldi developed a global repositioning strategy that moved PwC toward a brand expression centered on clarity, accessibility, and confident advice. The work aligned PwC’s global identity with the firm’s expanding consulting and advisory mandate and provided the foundation for stronger client-facing positioning across audit, tax, and advisory markets.
Vivaldi combined perceptual mapping with behavioral insight research to understand how decision-makers actually perceived PwC against its Big Four and consulting competitors. The mapping revealed that PwC was seen as complex and inaccessible relative to its strategic ambitions, which gave the repositioning a precise gap to close rather than a generic aspiration to chase.
The firm was aggressively expanding into consulting and advisory at a time when its brand expression was still anchored in its accounting and audit roots. Without repositioning, the existing brand told prospects and clients a story that was several strategic steps behind the actual capabilities the firm was building, which constrained the premium PwC could command in advisory engagements.
Professional services brands often lag the firm’s strategic direction by years because audit and advisory traditions are slow to update, and that gap is expensive in categories where buyer perception drives selection. The PwC case shows that repositioning works when it is grounded in how decision-makers actually see the firm relative to competitors, then translated into a brand expression that resolves the perception gap rather than papering over it.
