Q&A: DJH's CEO Scott Heath on shaping the future of mid-market accounting through brand

A strong brand is more than just a name or logo—it’s a promise of quality, reliability, and expertise. For firms operating in this space, branding plays a crucial role in differentiation, client trust, and talent attraction.

A well-crafted brand in professional services communicates a firm’s values, culture, and unique selling propositions. It serves as a shorthand for the firm’s reputation, helping to build credibility and foster long-term relationships with clients. Moreover, in an industry where talent is a key differentiator, a strong brand can be a powerful tool for attracting and retaining top professionals. As firms grow and evolve, particularly through mergers and acquisitions, their brands must often adapt to reflect new realities and aspirations. This process of rebranding, when executed thoughtfully, can reinvigorate a firm’s market position and internal culture.

Earlier this year, DJH (formerly DJH Mitten Clarke) unveiled a strategic rebrand. The transformation comes as the firm experiences significant growth, expanding to 10 offices across the Northwest and Midlands of England. Scott Heath, CEO of DJH, is at the helm of this change; Accountancy Age sat down with heath earlier this month to understand some of the nuances of navigating a firm through a rebrand, which turns out, takes more than just knocking a few names off the top of the door.

The Journey to Rebranding

The decision to rebrand from DJH Mitten Clarke to simply DJH was driven by several key factors. Heath explains, “We’ve always grown quite organically, but we’ve also been doing quite a lot of M&A and bringing other businesses into the group and into the family.”

This growth trajectory led to challenges with the firm’s previous name, DJH Mitten Clarke which Heath notes was not an easy name to ‘roll off the tongue’. The lengthy name created practical issues, particularly in day-to-day operations. “Giving you an email address out was always quite difficult,” he said.

The rebranding process was largely internal, contrasting with their previous branding exercise in 2019 which involved external agencies.  The focus was on simplifying the brand to better reflect the firm’s current position and future ambitions.

A key driver for the change was the organic shortening of the name that was already occurring in the market. Heath observes, “In the marketplace, our investors would call us DJH, new businesses that joined the group would say DJH. You just have to abbreviate it.” This natural evolution informed the decision to officially adopt DJH as the firm’s new name.

Aligning Brand with Company Culture:

At the heart of DJH’s rebranding effort is a desire to reinforce and propagate the firm’s unique culture across its expanding network. Heath emphasises the importance of a unified brand in creating a cohesive organisational culture: “The reason we ensure that everybody adopts the one name is it’s the only way you can create one culture.”

This culture is encapsulated in the firm’s ethos of “great things together,” a phrase that emerged from earlier branding discussions.

Heath recalls, “We were having sessions with our marketing team going down to London on the train with our agency at the time, and we basically told them ‘We love doing great things with our team. We love doing great things with the clients. We love doing great things with the business community.”

The simplified DJH brand is seen as a vehicle for reinforcing this collaborative spirit across all levels of the organization. Heath explains, “If you want all the team to feel like they’re part of something, the name above the door, the colour in the offices, the design of the offices, the material, the training materials, the training, the products we roll out to the team have all got to look and feel the same.”

This uniformity is not just about aesthetics; it’s about creating a shared sense of purpose and belonging. Heath stresses, “If we’re truly going to be one business and fully integrated, it’s really important that we’re just one brand.”

The firm’s commitment to its people-first culture is evident in its approach to growth and integration. “Our whole approach is around our team. If we look after our team and have passionate, ambitious team members who are teamwork players and want to work in their communities, and we all work together in an honest environment, that’s what will make our business excel,” he says.

This focus on people extends to how the firm views its brand in relation to client relationships. Heath notes, “Most of the customers and the introducers and the people we work with all want to know is if the people are the same. They often just say, ‘As long as the people are staying, that’s what I’m happy with.'”

By aligning its brand closely with its cultural values, DJH aims to create a more cohesive and motivated workforce, which in turn should lead to better client service and stronger business performance.

Impact on Business Strategy

The rebranding of DJH is more than a cosmetic change; it’s a strategic move designed to support the firm’s ambitious growth plans and operational efficiency. Heath views the simplified brand as a platform for future expansion: “We’re still going to add a lot more businesses to the group as we want to welcome more like-minded businesses to what we’re trying to build.”

The new brand is particularly crucial as DJH looks to expand beyond its current geographical footprint. Heath explains, “As we stretch further afield, the brand probably isn’t as known as it is in the heartlands of where we were based originally, like Staffordshire and Cheshire.” The simplified DJH name provides a clean slate for entering new markets without the baggage of regional associations.

Operationally, the unified brand facilitates more streamlined and cost-effective marketing and recruitment efforts across all offices. Heath highlights this advantage: “Things like marketing, attracting talent, recruitment… It’s much easier to do all over the Northwest under this one brand.”

The rebranding also plays a crucial role in the firm’s acquisition strategy. As DJH continues to grow through mergers and acquisitions, having a strong, unified brand makes the integration process smoother. Heath notes, “We’ve got 10 offices now across the Northwest in the Midlands and the reason we kind of ensure that everybody adopts the one name is it’s the only way you can create one culture.”

This cultural alignment is particularly important in a service-based industry where the strength of the firm lies in its people. Heath emphasizes, “What makes a brand is its people. As we’ve grown the business, our business is all about our people and we have what’s called a people-first culture.”

The rebranding also aligns with DJH’s strategy to position itself as a modern, forward-thinking firm capable of meeting the evolving needs of clients. Heath observes, “Clients have more sophisticated needs, more complex needs, or just different needs than perhaps was true a few decades ago.” By presenting a unified, contemporary brand, DJH aims to signal its readiness to handle these complex client requirements across all its offices.

Furthermore, the new brand supports DJH’s efforts to challenge larger competitors in the mid-market space. While Heath acknowledges that “in the mid-market space, fundamentally everyone’s roughly doing the same thing,” he believes that DJH’s unified culture and brand will help differentiate the firm in terms of how they deliver their services.

The Role of Private Equity

DJH’s rebranding initiative takes place against the backdrop of private equity (PE) investment in the firm. While PE backing has been instrumental in fuelling DJH’s growth, Heath is clear about the balance between PE influence and management autonomy in strategic decisions like rebranding.

“Our private equity partners have been very supportive of our rebrand position. Although PE’s in our business, we’re still the firm of accountants.” Heath states.

This approach reflects a carefully maintained balance between leveraging PE resources and maintaining the firm’s operational independence. Heath explains, “Yes, they’ll give you ideas and views and suggestions. But in reality, they give you the funding and the support to continue to grow.”

The PE investment has been crucial in supporting DJH’s rapid expansion. Heath notes, “We grew from 2019. We were doing £4 million and in 2022 we were doing £16 million. So we quadrupled in size.” This growth trajectory has continued post-PE investment.

For DJH, PE backing is not just about financial support, but about creating opportunities for the firm and its people. Heath explains, “If we stop growing, if we stop developing and adding new service lines or building the business, it creates glass ceilings for people.” The continued growth, supported by PE investment, “creates opportunities for promotions for new departments for development.”

When it came to the rebranding decision itself, Heath indicates that while the PE partners were kept informed, the process was driven by the management team: “We sent it to the board for sign off and it made sense, but it was the management team really that made the decision.”

Measuring Success

For DJH, the success of the rebranding initiative will be gauged through several key performance indicators. Heath outlines these metrics: “Continued organic growth, continuing to grow the business and hit the organic growth target that we have set for the business. For any business to be sustainable and continue, you need new clients.”

Equally important are retention rates. “”Continued high retention rates of the team and continued high retention rates of clients, those would be three drivers,” he says. These metrics are crucial as they reflect both the internal acceptance of the new brand and its external reception.

The firm also places significant emphasis on employee satisfaction, regularly tracking Net Promoter Scores (NPS) across all offices. Heath elaborates, “We track it all at different offices and it’s not tracked for any other reason than to give us information as a management team so we can do better.”

This data-driven approach allows DJH to monitor the impact of the rebrand across its network, ensuring that the new brand identity resonates with both employees and clients alike.

Future Outlook

Looking ahead, DJH sees its rebranding as a springboard for future growth and expansion. The simplified brand name provides flexibility as the firm considers moving into new geographical areas. Heath envisions opening the paper years from now and seeing “the brand is still there and it’s still going from strength to strength.”

The firm’s growth strategy continues to focus on both organic expansion and strategic acquisitions. With a unified brand, DJH is well-positioned to integrate new firms into its network, extending its ‘great things together’ ethos to new team members and clients.

Heath remains committed to the firm’s people-first approach, seeing it as key to future success. “If you’ve got great people, they will look after your clients,” he says.