EY’s shift to reshape its marketing around empathy, storytelling and confidence is helping the firm cut through with humor, build deeper trust with clients and redefine how a global professional services brand connects.
Toni Clayton-Hine, chief marketing officer for the Americas
EY has always been in the business of trust. For most of its 400,000 employees, that means audit reports, assurance statements and regulatory guardrails. But for Toni Clayton-Hine, chief marketing officer for the Americas, trust has taken on a different meaning. It’s no longer just something EY measures; it’s something it has to earn.
“B2B to B2H. Business to human,” says Clayton-Hine. She lets the phrase hang there. It sounds like consultancy speak until you hear what she means by it. “It’s about understanding not just what we sell, but how it impacts people – how those people impact the organization and what the overall benefit or outcome really is.”
In recent years, EY has quietly been reinventing its marketing around that principle. It’s part of a wider rethink across the professional services world: how do you build emotional connection in a category built on process? How do you inject warmth into a brand associated with audits, governance and tax?
For EY, the answer has been to get more human – and, occasionally, more humorous. “In the US, we focus a lot on humor,” says Clayton-Hine. “It helps us cut through and explain what we have to offer without a lot of consulting speak.”
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That idea sits at the heart of a new wave of research into how B2B brands build trust and confidence – and a new video series from The Drum and LinkedIn’s B2B Institute called The Science of Buyability. It explores how the world’s leading business brands, from tech to consultancy, are changing the way they sell, market and connect with buyers. EY’s story is a telling example.
Clayton-Hine’s approach shows up in the firm’s use of storytelling in unlikely places, including a recent golf sponsorship featuring comedian Keegan-Michael Key. “It was funny, it was creative,” says Clayton-Hine. “But more than that, it showed how our sponsorships drive client relationships – not just logos around a stadium.”
The firm leveraged the golf-sponsorship ties (including elite players and a connection to major tournaments) as the springboard for a branded TV spot featuring Key. The video, Shaping the Future of Sports with Confidence, shows Key in golfing environments and uses the sport’s competitive mindset as a metaphor for business transformation.
It’s easy to dismiss this as a soft power play. But behind the creative sits a hard-headed commercial logic that speaks directly to one of the toughest audiences imaginable: the CFO.
“We’ve got a lot of financial people in the business,” Clayton-Hine laughs, “so we have to do both – push ourselves creatively and bring back data from the market.”
That means using marketing not just to promote services, but to prove business relevance. “We bring the business what clients want to buy, not just what we want to sell. We show them what the market’s telling us – the opportunities, the threats, the dynamics – and then align that with what we have to say.”
That alignment between brand and demand sits at the heart of EY’s new global positioning, Shape the Future with Confidence. It’s more than a tagline – it’s a statement of how the firm wants to behave. “Confidence doesn’t come from control. It comes from understanding.”
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That philosophy also underpins the thinking behind The Science of Buyability: the idea that brands win not just by being visible, but by being trusted. It’s about recognizing that most potential buyers aren’t in-market today, but when they are, they’ll choose the brand they already believe in.
“The LinkedIn Buyability survey has been really powerful,” says Clayton-Hine. “It helps us as B2B marketers understand what it means to have category ownership, to be omnipresent in the market with a message. Buyability – helping people know who you are, what you stand for and how you help them make confident decisions – really resonates with us.”
The irony is that EY’s marketing transformation mirrors the same journey many of its clients are on. AI, automation and data are rewriting the rules of how trust is built. “We’re using AI internally to enable our people – to make them more efficient and impactful – but also to inform the kind of advisory services we offer. There are a lot of client-zero opportunities in that space.”
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Yet for all the talk of automation, what EY is really investing in is human intelligence – empathy, tone and timing. “These are big, consequential decisions. You can’t reduce them to a transaction. It still comes down to people – what they believe, what they fear and who they trust.”
Ask Clayton-Hine what separates the good B2B CMOs from the great ones and she doesn’t hesitate. “Curiosity. Always be curious – about your market, your clients, your own business.”
It’s a simple answer, but one that captures the spirit of EY’s marketing reinvention. Curiosity leads to empathy; empathy leads to trust; and trust, in the world of EY, is the most valuable currency of all.
Explore more in episode two of The Science of Buyability video series from The Drum, in association with Linkedin.
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