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Pittsburgh Utters a Collective ‘Meh’ About Its Accounting Firms

What do we know about City of Pittsburgh? It has lots of bridges, 446 to be precise. Andy Warhol was born there. Carnegie Mellon University, a decent school, is located there. Its professional football team is popular with the residents. 

Pittsburgh, like any American city, has its fair share of successful businesses. It's home to U.S. Steel, PNC Financial Services, PPG Industries, Heinz, Dick's Sporting Goods, and is major hub for other companies like BNY Mellon, Alcoa and Bayer. And, of course, where you find businesses of this caliber, you will find Big 4 accounting firms.

What's interesting and not-at-all surprising is that Pittsburgh's level of interest in accounting firms is precisely the opposite of the Steelers. A  tipster pointed us to a survey that's been running on the Post-Gazette's site that illustrates just how few fucks are given about accounting firms:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our tipster sums it up pretty well:

[T]he moral of the story is that of the over 17,000 people who’ve clicked through this, 4 of 5 don’t give a shit.  It’s interesting that EY has more votes than PwC considering PwC has a stranglehold on the [Pittsburgh] marketplace and has two to three times the number of associates of any other firm.   

To elaborate just a bit — accounting firms suck at branding. Yes, even only-second-to-Lego-in-a-recent-poll PwC. If 80% of the businesses in Pittsburgh can't discern one accounting firm from another, that means they suck at branding. OR! OR! The profession has managed to commoditized itself into a metric asston of mediocrity. Or it's both. Whatever.  

If there are any enterprising CPAs out there named Bradshaw, Greene, Harris, Ward, or Roethlisberger, I suggest teaming up and moving to Pittsburgh. There's an opportunity to be had.