Beyond the bottom line;

              / / Beyond the bottom line"
by Charles G. Steele, Managing Partner
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As many people associated with our firm are already aware,
Deloitte Haskins & Sells has begun to advertise. Our firm's
message will be appearing in such important national periodi­cals
as the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Business
Week, Time, Harvard Business Review and Dun's Review.
We are conducting our campaign under the guidance of
Needham, Harper & Steers, a respected international adver­tising
agency. The campaign theme is "Beyond the bottom
line,™" our way of serving clients that involves more than
just technical competence. It also requires sound business
judgment, together with an innovative application of the skills
of our profession.
Our move to advertising represents a sharp break with our
past practice of maintaining a relatively low visibility. Accord­ingly
it is important that we make clear why and how the
decision was made. In addition, I wish to explain how the
theme of our campaign relates to our firm and our people.
All of us in public accounting recognize that the profession is
in a period of rapid and profound change. Many of the prac­tices
to which we became accustomed over many years are
being questioned. Government officials, legislators, stock­holders,
corporate officers and even the general public have
become interested as never before in us, the services we
offer and our responsibilities.
The increased public attention has caused both clients and
potential clients to look more closely at us. There is a growing
interest among corporate board members in the nature of our
work, and the services, in addition to the audit itself, that we
provide. An important indicator of this heightened awareness
of the client-auditor relationship is the increasing prominence
of audit committees. Every year more audit committees are
appointed by the boards of publicly held companies, and
these committees are becoming increasingly active. They
want to know more about what we are doing for the client
and how we do it.
Increased visibility has led inevitably to greater competition
among the firms. Competition has always been there, but
now it is more intense. All firms have responded to these
changed conditions and have become more aggressive.
Operating in an environment of open competition is now a
fact of professional life.
Organizations in both the private and the public sectors of
the economy are less likely than before to engage an
accounting firm without doing some comparative analysis.
Our firm is often called on to make a proposal for service
in situations in which several other firms are also asked to
propose. We thrive on this competition, and it is important
for us to maximize our opportunities to demonstrate our
qualifications.
Traditionally our firm has kept a low profile and has been
somewhat conservative in projecting itself. Image-building
has not been our style; we have assumed that the excel­lence
of our professional performance speaks for itself.
While we, and many of our peers within the profession,
have long been aware of the excellence of our profes­sional
services, we have not done an adequate job of
telling others of our capabilities. Indeed, a national opinion
poll that we sponsored showed that none of the CPA
firms in the survey ranks higher with its clients — those
that know a firm best — than ours does. But it is impor­tant
that we become better known to the business world
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