Long undervalued by lawyers, marketing and press relations have been recognised with their own category in the rankings this year (click here for rankings). Firms have been asked to demonstrate imagination or unusual success, either in a specific marketing or PR campaign or in their general approach. The result was highly competitive and closely fought, to the point where assessors were unable to make a choice between the two stand-out firms.
It has been notoriously difficult for seasoned marketing professionals to achieve results in law firms. Lawyers do not understand the discipline and it can be hard for marketers to exercise their talents and deliver value when they have so many bosses.
“Each partner is not just a boss, but also a shareholder and the product as well,” says Meirion Jones, executive director for clients and markets at Reed Smith Richards Butler. He is a marketer who has spent his career with accounting and law firms.
Andrew Hedley, a legal strategy consultant, says that successful marketing in law firms requires skills in understanding the specific dynamics of such companies and how to get things done. Mr Jones argues that law firms are fairly simple, have a straightforward organisational structure and a product that is easy to understand. “Nevertheless,” he says, “marketing experts coming in from outside the professional services industry flounder. They have fantastic expertise in complex organisations and brilliant ideas but they have not developed skills in change management, influencing and rapport building with a group of highly intelligent and sceptical partners. Having marketing expertise is secondary to having the ability to change behaviour, often by stealth.”
Against all the odds, the winners have been able to demonstrate that if these difficulties are overcome, marketing and publicity can have a real impact on business development. Linklaters and Eversheds, the two stand-out entries, were very different.
Eversheds responded to the BBC television series “The Apprentice” by commissioning research on attitudes towards different styles of management among its UK employees. The firm’s press office identified the findings on bullying bosses as having strong media appeal. By tying it in with the final episode of “The Apprentice”, the report generated more than 100 pieces of coverage across national, trade and regional media, as well as in Canada and Japan.
The campaign tied in with the firm’s respect@work product and highlighted its value as being “a great place to work”. The assessors were impressed that the firm identified the issue itself and then used thought leadership to position itself at the centre of the discussion. Eversheds was bold, thought out of the box, created the topic and received substantial coverage. The campaign generated advertising value equivalent of £250,000, a 25-fold return on investment.
“A lot of the partners woke up to the value of PR,” says David Gray, the firm’s chief executive. “It demonstrated how, with a little investment and some original thinking, you can get a return that would normally cost you thousands in advertising.”
In contrast to Eversheds’ one-off campaign, Linklaters used a complete suite of tools, including marketing, events, publishing and PR, to promote its “Corporate Mobility in Europe” team. This comprises experts in corporate, tax, banking, capital markets, employment law, European law and accounting.
Lawyers from all its European offices compiled a book, co-published with the European Commission, to provide practical answers to the challenges brought about by European company law. It was the first book to summarise and analyse corporate forms in all 25 European Union member states.
The firm distributed more than 1,000 copies to selected clients across Europe. This was supported by client seminars, press campaigns, client newsletters, articles, commentaries in legal journals and speaker slots at seminars. Linklaters.com came fourth in Google searches on “mobility in Europe”, just behind three public authority sites.
“The knowledge developed for the campaign enables us to present a more complex, comprehensive solution to clients than would otherwise have been possible,” says the firm. The assessors were impressed that Linklaters had worked hard and demonstrated “joined-up thinking” to extract the maximum possible value from its new team.
The commended firms represented a wide range of approaches. Allen & Overy’s alumni programme was seen as much better than those of other firms. It has created a community of 600 staff and 1,500 former employees in 52 countries. Such schemes are valuable in the professions, as alumni can become future clients.
Ashurst’s “Beyond the Headlines” seminar series invited pre-eminent thinkers to address a large audience drawn from the bar, the civil service, management consultants, accountants, city law firms, senior clients employees and the media. Topics such as terrorism, constitutional reform and being European have associated the firm with key issues outside the legal environment and helped it to make new contacts. The assessors were impressed with the quality of the topics and speakers, but would have liked to have seen more evidence of proven client development.
Eversheds’ research into planning for the new age discrimination regulations impressed the assessors. With uncertainty surrounding the law, it gave the media the hard data they needed and positioned the firm as a leading employment law authority. It achieved an advertising value equivalent of £150,000, representing a 25-fold return on investment. It is a topic that most firms covered, but Eversheds planned ahead and beat its competitors.
“International Business Attitudes to Corruption 2006”, a Simmons & Simmons report co-sponsored by Control Risks, a risk consultancy, highlighted the high cost of corruption to business. It secured 150 pieces of coverage in 17 countries and raised the profile of the international dispute resolution practice in anti-corruption codes and compliance programmes.
The objective of Taylor Vinters’ campaign for the charities sector was to raise understanding of the commercial imperatives arising from the introduction of the Charities Act. Partnering with a local accountancy firm, a regional conference attracted more than 100 delegates and was followed by a series of master classes led by industry gurus. It was geared around strategic priorities, not legal issues, thereby providing thought leadership.
Mr Hedley advises firms to invest in helping their lawyers to understand what good client development and selling is all about and making them much more “user friendly” in engaging the client as if they too were business people. “Some firms are now presenting themselves as business advisers who happen to be lawyers,” he says. “But the truth is that most lawyers haven’t a clue about real business because they operate in a rarefied atmosphere where they don’t have much connection to business people.” However, the fierce competition in this new category shows that those who can connect achieve excellent results.
