Some corporate names arrive by slow committee. Accenture arrived by stopwatch. In 2000, an arbitrator ruled that Andersen Consulting had to surrender the name it had carried for decades. What followed was an 80-day naming sprint involving 65,000 employees, roughly 2,500 submissions and a deadline with all the charm of an approaching train. Teresa Poggenpohl helped lead the team through it.
The winning suggestion came from Kim Petersen, a manager in the firm's Oslo office. “Accenture” carried the idea of an accent on the future. It was invented, pronounceable and available, three qualities that seldom enjoy lunch together. Poggenpohl later remembered the name as only half the assignment. The global organization then had to build and launch an entire brand in 147 days.
That compressed transformation is the cleanest introduction to her career because it contains nearly everything that came after: research, coordination, an appetite for change and an insistence that a brand must do business work. Twenty-five years later, she publicly called the Accenture launch a pivotal transformation on a nearly impossible deadline. Corporate memory often sands away the panic. Her numbers put the clock back in the room.
A career built behind the billboard
Poggenpohl's work at Accenture was never confined to the reveal. Across a 33-year career, she created the company's first global research function, established a European marketing and communications operation while based in London, and moved through increasingly senior brand roles. She became global brand and image leader, responsible for strategy, advertising, research, digital marketing, trademarks, agencies and brand support for acquisitions. Her last Accenture post put her in charge of marketing and communications across North America.
The assignments traced the widening borders of B2B marketing. In 2003, she established Accenture's “High Performance Delivered” advertising and integrated marketing campaign. By 2007, the work included wall-sized interactive screens in airports, where executives could check weather, news and sports alongside Accenture material. It was digital experience before every waiting room had a touchscreen and every screen wanted to become a store.
Her advice from that era feels less dated than the hardware: define the objective, track awareness, consideration and preference, and return to management with the evidence. “Many marketing people have a fear of measurement,” she said, “however, one can always find success and opportunity.” The sentence has the unfussy cadence of someone who knows the budget conversation will eventually arrive.
“My advice is to clearly define what you are trying to achieve, then measure the impact of what you can achieve.”Teresa Poggenpohl, 2007
Recognition followed. B-to-B Magazine named her a Best Marketer five times. The Internationalist included her twice among its 100 Influential Marketers. She received an American Business Award for Executive of the Year and an Outstanding Role Model honor from Accenture's Women's Mentoring Committee. Her universities also called her back: the University of Illinois, where she earned an MBA, gave her a Distinguished Alumnus Award; the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she earned a business degree, named her an Alumni Master.
The old company and the new sentence
After leaving Accenture, Poggenpohl founded a consulting firm in 2020. A year later, Unisys offered a different sort of naming problem. The name was staying. The perception needed work. She joined in May 2021 as senior vice president and chief marketing officer, calling the chance to tell the stories of a revered brand at an inflection point “a once-in-a-career opportunity.” It was a curious phrase from someone whose previous once-in-a-career assignment already had its own anniversary articles.
Unisys had legacy in abundance: roots extending into the nineteenth century, a modern portfolio spanning cloud, applications, digital workplace and enterprise computing, and a reputation that did not always place those things in the same mental frame. In late 2022, the company launched a new brand platform under “Keep Breaking Through.” The visual system used layers, texture and transparency. The verbal idea connected technical endurance with forward motion.
Poggenpohl later wrote that she hoped the launch would spark a cultural transformation, not merely repaint the stationery. An all-employee meeting marking Unisys's 150-year heritage became, for her, evidence that the work had entered the company rather than sitting on top of it. This is the difficult part of a rebrand: getting thousands of people to use the promise as a decision, not a decoration.
The through-line
The promise needs receipts
The most revealing evolution came in the client stories. Unisys's “Behind the Breakthroughs” campaign puts customers and outcomes at the center. In one, Omnicom's technology organization moved from a labyrinth of teams and platforms toward a standardized model. In another, Benjamin Moore migrated core applications to Azure on an urgent timeline. Poggenpohl described the breakthroughs as sometimes elegant and small, sometimes massive transformations. The scale changes. The editorial shape does not: tension, work, result.
Her public line on the matter is crisp: “Brands have to be lived, not labeled. A promise only matters if you're willing to prove it over time.” It explains why her posts linger on uptime, incident reduction, savings and what customers can do next. The prose may open the door. Delivery has to walk through it.
“Brands have to be lived, not labeled. A promise only matters if you're willing to prove it over time.”Teresa Poggenpohl, 2026
At Unisys's June 2026 investor day, Poggenpohl supplied the receipts for marketing itself. Digital ads were producing click-through rates three times the industry average. Web visitors were up 54 percent year over year. Asset downloads were up 52 percent. A campaign built around Benjamin Moore had drawn more than 73,000 visitors; those visitors stayed four times as long. After the ads had run for only a few weeks, another company in the same industry contacted Unisys to ask what it could do for them. One story had become an inquiry.
AI enters the machinery
Poggenpohl now calls AI a “force multiplier” for marketing. Her formulation is more practical than mystical. Unisys gathers intent signals from activity on its site and across the web. If several people at one company begin researching application modernization, that cluster becomes a clue. The team can target relevant material, adjust the website journey according to what a visitor has already seen and use predictive analytics to focus on accounts showing the strongest buying intent.
One signal becomes a useful conversation
Detect intent
Target precisely
Personalize journey
Predict next move
AI assists with research, writing, ads and campaign optimization. The business objective still comes first.
The company's AI chatbot completes the loop. It answers specific questions, directs visitors to material and can book a meeting with a specialist. Poggenpohl said it has become a meaningful lead-generation channel. For all the machinery, the design principle is almost courteous: make it easier for an interested person to take one sensible next step.
There is continuity here with the research function she built decades ago. New tools allow marketers to see intent sooner and distribute material more precisely. They do not relieve anyone of deciding what deserves to be said. A multiplier still needs something to multiply.
A public career with civic edges
Poggenpohl's professional map runs through Nebraska, London and Chicago. She is a native Nebraskan, sits on university business advisory groups in Nebraska and Illinois, and has served as president of the Chicago Business Marketing Association. She is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and remains on the board of the Chicago Children's Museum, an institution built around the meeting of play and learning. In 2026, she also served on Gartner's executive judging panel for its Marketing and Communications Awards.
These affiliations add a useful coda to a career spent translating institutions. Universities preserve knowledge. Museums turn curiosity into participation. Brands, at their best, make a complicated organization legible without making it childish. The common task is to invite attention and then reward it.
Poggenpohl's career offers no magic word, despite having helped invent a famous one. It offers a system. Find the organizing thought. Build the evidence beneath it. Distribute the story where the right audience is already looking. Measure what changed. Then begin again, because the future keeps requiring a fresh accent.