Everything in this report was read from ACT-ON GROUP's own public surfaces, the website, the manifesto, all nine LinkedIn pages, the published references, on the date above. Figures are the baseline frozen at the start of the engagement; any claim we make in ninety days is measured against them.
Your manifesto is the only place a buyer hears the President speak. It takes 1,100 words to arrive at a hashtag.
Every other page describes what ACT-ON does. This one says what ACT-ON believes, signed by Philippe Ferry, and it is where a serious buyer goes to decide whether you think like them. We read it as that buyer, then rewrote it. The rebuilt version is below, ready to copy and paste.
4/10score
Says something a competitor could not sign2
Arrives before the reader leaves1
Written in a human voice5
Commits to something checkable2
Leads anywhere next1
Sounds like the President, not the brand4
Read out loud
The convictions are real. They are buried under four screens of throat-clearing about a world in transformation.
What the page actually says, in the order it says it
read from actongroup.com/manifesto, 20 September 2026
| Section | Its message | What a buyer does with it |
|---|
| 1. A paradoxical world | The world is changing on every level, and denial is no longer possible. | Nothing. Every consultancy opens here. Three paragraphs before ACT-ON is mentioned. |
| 2. Opportunity or necessity | Companies must reconcile opposing forces and transform themselves. | Still nothing about you. A buyer who already knows they must transform is being told they must transform. |
| 3. Three priorities | Organisational, digital, cultural. Three levers of performance. | The first useful content, and the only part a buyer can place themselves inside. It arrives at roughly 60% of the page. |
| 4. The word from the President | People and technology are inseparable. Technology alone is nothing, it needs human buy-in. Activating both turns a project into performance. | Genuinely worth reading, and the only human voice on the whole site. Then it ends on “this is what we call #HumanTech” and turns a conviction into branding. |
| 5. The close | “We stand as the leading #HumanTech player”, then the four practices. | A self-awarded title, a made-up category, and four links. The one page that could commit to something closes by claiming a rank nobody gave you. |
What is great, protect it
There is a real thesis here, and one paragraph of it is the best writing you own.
- “Seule, la Technologie n'est rien.” (their words: technology alone is nothing) Five words, a position, and a competitor selling licences cannot sign it. This is the sentence the whole firm should be built on.
- The President signs it in the first person. On this page, where his leadership team says nothing in its own voice, he publishes a conviction. That is the raw material for every partner profile we will write.
- Three priorities, named plainly: organisational, digital, cultural. A buyer can locate their own problem in that list, which is more than the practice pages let them do.
- It exists at all. Most consultancies of your size have a values page. A manifesto signed by the President is rarer and worth more.
Is the USP clear?Partly
The conviction is real. The page turns it into a hashtag before a buyer can use it.
Strip the page back and the argument is: technology fails without people, so treat both together. That is defensible, it is yours, and it is the reason your programmes hold when other firms' do not.
Then the page names it #HumanTech and claims to be the “leading player” in it. A category you invented has no competitors, no search volume and no buyer asking for it, so leading it means nothing, and it is exactly the phrase your sales director now carries as his own headline.
The failure is structural, not stylistic. A buyer reaches the President's conviction at roughly three-quarters of the page, after four sections about a world in transformation that would sit unchanged on any competitor's site. The best content is behind the most generic content.
What needs improving
- Open on the conviction, not on the world. “Technology alone is nothing” in the first line does the work that four sections currently attempt.
- Put a cost on the belief. A conviction a buyer can check is worth ten a buyer must take on faith: no day-rate bench, no vendor commission, salaried consultants. Those are refusals with a price tag, and they are already true.
- Keep the first person and extend it. The President says “nous”; let him say “je”, and let it read like a person who has watched programmes fail.
- End on one next step. The page currently ends on four practice links, which is a menu, not an invitation.
What needs dropping
- Sections 1 and 2 entirely. Roughly 400 words establishing that the world is changing. Your buyer knows. Every competitor says it.
- “The leading #HumanTech player.” Self-awarded rank, invented category. It is the single most damaging sentence on the site because it is the one the algorithm reads.
- “Symbiotiques.” (their words: symbiotic) The vocabulary of a brand deck. Nobody briefs a payroll programme in these terms.
- The stacked one-line poetry layout. Short centred lines make a short text feel long and a serious argument feel like a slogan.
What is missing
- A single thing you refuse. A manifesto that refuses nothing commits to nothing. Yours has three refusals available and uses none of them here.
- Evidence. 23 years, 290 clients, 650 salaried consultants, 225 named references. A belief supported by a track record reads as judgement; a belief alone reads as marketing.
- A failure he has seen. One sentence about a programme that went wrong for human reasons would make the whole argument concrete.
- Anywhere to go. No diagnostic, no conversation, no first step. The most persuasive page on the site is a dead end.
The honest summary
You wrote a conviction and published a preamble.
The President's paragraph is the strongest positioning material ACT-ON owns, stronger than anything on the four practice pages, and a buyer meets it only if they read 800 words about a changing world first. The rebuild below adds one thing their page does not have: a story. It opens on a Friday evening when a payroll would not run, so that his sentence is earned rather than asserted, puts a price on the conviction, keeps their three fronts, restores the four practices as the places a programme gives way, has him sign it in his own name, and ends on a form instead of a slogan.
Your manifesto, cloned and rebuilt · the real page, not a mockup
the only page we redesign
Both versions below are real pages built in your design system: AvenirNext, your #141720 ink and #F2F3F5 light, your gradient hairline, your gradient headline treatment, your three bordered cards, your outlined hero title, Philippe Ferry's own portrait. Live today is your current page, cloned. Rebuilt is the same page told as a story. Both pages, side by side puts them next to each other with every change annotated, and Export the rebuild as HTML downloads one self-contained file your web team can open with no server and no assets folder.
The two pages are delivered as files, not as a picture
Your manifesto cloned from actongroup.com in both languages, and the same page rebuilt in your own design system: AvenirNext, your ink and light greys, your gradient hairline and headline treatment, Philippe Ferry's own portrait. Open them in a browser, compare them side by side, and hand them to your web team.
acton/manifesto-before-en.htmlacton/manifesto-after-en.html
A page you can hand to their web team. Cloned from actongroup.com/notre-manifeste and /en/manifesto on 21 September 2026, in both languages, using their own font files and images. Every sentence we wrote is built from something already published on their site: the President's own conviction, the refusals from the Technology page, and the numbers from the group page.
What the rebuild changes, section by section
same design, different order
| Section | Live today | Rebuilt |
|---|
| First screen | An outlined title over a stock photo, then 400 words on a world in transformation. | A scene: one Friday evening, a payroll that will not run, eleven thousand people at risk, and one decision everybody assumed somebody else had taken. A buyer who has lived it cannot stop reading. |
| Sections 1 and 2 | Roughly 800 words establishing that companies must transform. | Cut. The argument is carried by the story instead, then priced: 650 salaried consultants, no day-rate bench, no vendor commission, and the briefs they refuse. |
| The President | Two columns of reflection at roughly 75% of the page, ending on a hashtag. | His sentence is the turn of the page, and it lands second, once the scene has earned it. Then he signs the page in the first person and takes the consequences himself. |
| Three priorities | Organisational, digital, cultural, presented as a list of capabilities. | Kept, in the same bordered cards, reframed as where programmes actually give way, and tied back to that Friday evening. |
| Four practices | STRATEGY, HRIS, DATA, TECHNOLOGY as four links in the close, a menu. | Restored, but as the four places a programme can give way, each with an accountable partner. This is the bridge from the company page to the partner phase. |
| The close | “We stand as the leading #HumanTech player”, then four practice links. | A question, “What is your Friday evening?”, and a working form: name, company, work email, deadline, three lines. It says what you get, what they ask, and that a partner will also tell you when they are not the right firm. |
#HumanTech does not appear once in the rebuild. That is the only removal worth arguing about, and the argument is on the LinkedIn screen: a category with no competitors, no search volume and no buyer asking for it cannot be led, and the algorithm reads it as nothing. The form is live in both languages, it validates, it answers in place, and it is the only conversion point on the page, because a manifesto that moves someone and then offers them nowhere to go is a brochure.
One sentence needs his approval, not ours. “In 23 years I have never seen a programme fail because of software” is the load-bearing line. It should be true in his mouth before it is published. If he wants it softer, everything else still stands.
Why this page and no other. We are not redesigning your website. This is the one page where positioning is stated rather than described, so it is the one page worth rebuilding, and every other surface then quotes it. The LinkedIn company page carrying the same positioning is at step 10, Rebuilt pages, so it is shown once, in one place, next to what is live today.
Not a blocker. The rebuild is a draft with one named owner: the President. It does not wait on the four practices, and partner onboarding does not wait on it.