The new wordmark for the global management and technology consulting firm is comprised of the name Accenture in lower case letters accented with the numerical "greater than" sign. According to Andersen Consulting Managing Partner and CEO Joe W. Forehand, the wordmark "puts an accent on the future and illustrates the firm's intention to point the way forward and bring solutions to clients that exceed their expectations." The Accenture campaign will integrate offline and online marketing disciplines across 48 countries simultaneously to establish the new name and visual identity firmly in the minds of clients, employees and potential recruits worldwide. The campaign will leverage and integrate a variety of traditional and non traditional marketing channels. The firm will purchase advertising space in top newspapers and business journals in major media markets on six continents and will broadcast more than 6,000 television commercial spots in eight countries between January and March 2001. The company is also reaching beyond traditional business media to include leisure publications like Ronda Iberia in Spain and the English- language theatre magazine StageBill; wireless applications such as AvantGo; web sites such as sportsline.com; and new airport advertising in every major international airport that has a high business traveller concentration and allows advertising. According to James Murphy, global managing director for marketing and communications, "Over the course of the past decade Andersen Consulting has broken new ground in the marketing of professional services. We were the first to advertise on television. Now we will be the first to drive a fully integrated rebranding campaign simultaneously across six continents targeting our clients at home, at work and at leisure." The new name and visual identity embody the firm's new marketplace positioning as a market maker, architect and builder of the new economy. Accenture, a word coined by an Andersen Consulting professional in Norway, is a combination of "accent" and "future" that means to accelerate, to amplify and to exceed expectations. The visual treatment accentuates this aspiration by graphically expressing the way forward, a vision greater than today's limits, a partnership greater than individual efforts and a solution greater than expectations. The name change follows an independent arbitrator's ruling earlier this summer in favour of Andersen Consulting in its arbitration with Andersen Worldwide and Arthur Andersen. Under the terms of the ruling, Andersen Consulting was excused from any further obligations to Andersen Worldwide and Arthur Andersen, including any obligation to make termination payments, and given until December 31, 2000 to adopt a new name. In a separate piece of news, AC Ventures, the venture capital unit of Andersen Consulting, is making a US$5mn investment in FIRM Inc. (Future Information Research Management), a provider of online information and research management systems. The company is based in Norway, with American headquarters in New York City. FIRM's flagship application, confirmit, is aWeb-based information retrieval, processing and reporting system, which enables the collection and organization of information about customers, competitors and market sectors.