Law Firm 4.0 Blog

What law firms can learn from Dyson's (think vacuum cleaners) anti-branding slur.

British industrial designer, Sir James Dyson, is best known for his iconic bagless vacuum cleaner that he peddles on television. And among frequent travelers who wash their hands in airport restrooms, for the Dyson Airblade, which dries your hands as would the edge of a tornado.

But after a recent comment in which he said he didn't believe in branding - "We're only as good as our latest product. I don't believe in brand at all." - he is now famous for being the anti-branding guy.

Matt Straz, blogger of MediaPost's Online Spin, wrote yesterday, "Like a cat coughing up a hair ball, Dyson's comment caused a loud, involuntary response from the advertising world."

Let me give you some context: Dyson was speaking at Wired magazine's "Disruptive by Design" conference earlier this month. He responded to the question, "Does brand make the product or does product make the brand?" He said that "Brand was the only word that was banned at his company," then concluded with the statement above.

A Forbes.com article about his statement said, "A remarkable comment from someone who has stood in front of a camera for the last decade or more on behalf of creating his own eponymous brand of vacuum cleaners, and spending millions in the process."

The Forbes article suggests that Dyson may not understand what "brand" or "branding is, and it goes on to describe what it is. It talks about how successful brands create new rituals:

"Powerful brands have rituals. Much as Starbucks changed how we have coffee in the morning, and Ikea has changed how we interact with newly-purchased furniture, Dyson has changed the ritual of how we interact with our vacuum by handing us one that can be snapped together (or unsnapped) much like Lego blocks. The rollerball changes the way we move across the floor. The quick-open canister lets us dump right into the garbage can, rather than unleashing those nasty vacuum bags. And if you really want to get into it, there’s the ritual of innovation–and creating 5,127 prototypes, and more innovation."

I asked friend and colleague Norm Rubenstein, Partner and branding expert at the Zeughauser Group, about his take on Dyson's slur - and whether law firm leaders with an anti-branding bias might have new fodder to dispute its efficacy.  Norm says:

"There is profound irony in Dyson’s claim 'I don’t believe in brand at all.' Dyson’s company is reminiscent of Apple, a company whose followers buy products, often products they don’t need, because of their elegant marriage of form and content. In creating his high-end vacuum cleaner, Dyson has made it the ultimate status symbol: what greater triumph of brand recognition than to invest in a luxury good that lives in a closet with one’s cleaning supplies as opposed to on a desk or adorning one’s person? And once people got on the Dyson bandwagon, reinforced through traditional advertising that always has extolled the product’s innovative technology and consumer benefits, they suddenly found a need for Dyson’s chic fans, and one suspects, will require his future products in the same way as they are introduced."

Online Spin also points to Nike, who has significantly reduced its investment in traditional branding pillars, such as advertising.

"Having relied for years on mass branding messages like 'Just do it,' the company has now dramatically scaled back its investment in traditional branding. Nike has also reduced its emphasis on big brand athletes like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and Lance Armstrong. Instead, the company has focused on creating software and gadgets like its new Fuel wristband that measures athletic output. Instead of marketing products, Nike is using products to market itself."

To that, Norm says,

"The truth is that brand development and brand maintenance, decidedly different stages in a product’s life cycle, are opportunities to employ different tools and tactics for reinforcing brand awareness and loyalty. Products and services require significant marketing focused on developing and raising visibility in their infancy: in their adolescence, assuming they come to enjoy unaided top-of-mind recognition as both Dyson and Nike have done, they can rely on satisfied customers to help sustain their brand equity."

Social media has changed the branding landscape in ways we couldn't have imagined even four years ago. It supports both mass customization and engagement at the most powerful of all levels - person to person. And the dollar investment is a fraction of the cost of traditional broadcast and print advertising.

Norm agrees,

"The emergence of social media makes it possible for a company like Nike to shift the extent to which it has to rely on traditional branding tools. In its previous marketing, which always has been advertising-intensive, Nike has made its 'swoosh' synonymous with the achievements of admired athletes. By creating ongoing demand for its products and aligning them with a promise of quality and performance, Nike now enjoys the benefit of extensive brand equity. As the marketplace shifts and consumers now have become their own product reviewers/marketers, the company theoretically can take advantage of marketing that shifts its focus away from admired role models (who often disappoint in real life) and place it on the traditional—might one say, the average, buyer—the buyer whose endorsement in the Zagat world in which everyone’s opinion counts—can begin to redefine its approach to the marketplace."

So, what does this mean for law firms? It's challenging for law firms, even the largest of the AmLaw 100 firms, to defend their brand positions as unique among all their competitors. Is it possible? Yes, absolutely, but it requires research, rigor and patience, plus a significant and consistent investment of time and money. Law firms can take advantage of all the media that Dyson, Nike and Starbucks use - but they often don't have the stomach for it or the budget to sustain it. It also requires leadership and vision constancy - meaning, firms whose Chair and Managing Partner positions are up for grabs every two or three years will have a harder time than those firms who invest in the same leaders year after year.

Norm concluded our interview by saying,

"... For a law firm to follow the lead of a Nike and begin to shift its marketing focus, say by taking greater advantage of new media as a critical component of its marketing mix, it needs to assess the brand equity it already enjoys, and if it is not an acknowledged market leader in the spaces for which its seeks to be known (defined not by the firm, but by the market), it will need to maintain or to develop a robust strategy that well may continue to require extensive use of traditional marketing tools (e.g., thought leadership and credentialing)."

I'd say that Dyson is all about branding, even if he doesn't call it that.

 

Columbia Business School study proves that ROI is an elusive partner to marketing departments

Senior law firm marketers have been seriously talking about ROI since at least the mid-1990s. Believing in its relevance and importance to financial decision-making, this "proof" has frustratingly been like a mirage in the desert. For years we have relied on anecdotal data and stories - an RFP or pitch that was won, a lawyer who cross-sold another practice, a client interview that resulted in new work.

We have always coveted the sound financial management that corporate-America marketers have had. Well, until now. According to a just-released Marketing Measurement in Transition study by Columbia Business School Center on Global Brand Leadership and the New York American Marketing Association called "Marketing ROI in the Era of Big Data," it appears that our perception of how rock-solid corporate marketers are in their ROI tracking and management is skewed.

The researchers interviewed 253 marketing executives from large corporations and were hoping to "gain a better understanding of changing practices among large corporate marketers in the following areas: data collection and usage, marketing measurement and ROI, and the integration of digital and traditional marketing." Among others, they asked the following questions:

1. Which organizations believe that they are doing well with respect to measuring marketing ROI?
2. What are they doing that allows them to succeed in measuring marketing ROI?
3. What are some of the barriers organizations face in measuring marketing ROI?
4. How does knowing their marketing ROI affect how they view and use metrics?

The headline for the ROI section of the report is this: ROI – Marketers Know They All Need It, But Can’t Even Agree What It Is

Here is an excerpt from the results:

Marketers think that they should be measuring their marketing ROI …

Marketers know that they need to justify their decisions financially. 70% say that their marketing efforts are under greater scrutiny than ever. 39% go so far as to say that they consider it important to spend only on marketing activities where the financial effects can be measured.

…but many managers aren’t measuring marketing ROI either consistently or effectively.

Only 43% of organizations are establishing their marketing budgets based on marketing ROI analysis. By contrast, 68% base their marketing budgets in part on “historical spending,” and 28% on “gut instincts.” When it comes to specific marketing spending decisions, 21% are using financial metrics for little or none of those specific decisions, and 7% are making all or most of those spending decisions with no metrics at all.

Instead of marketing ROI, managers continue to use many traditional metrics such as recall, brand favorability, purchase intention, and willingness to recommend. Of those using some kind of universal metric, 22% make all or most of their marketing decisions with brand awareness alone.

What organizations are satisfied with their measurement of marketing ROI?

Overall, 45% of the organizations surveyed are satisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI. Those most likely to be satisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI are large organizations (55.5%) - sales of $25 billion or more - and service organizations (48.8%).

Only 33.1% of consumer product organizations and only 26.1% of industrial product organizations are satisfied with how they measure marketing ROI. Satisfaction depends on your viewpoint: 54% of CMO’s are satisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI, but only 43% of those below the vice president level are satisfied – perhaps because they are closer to the problem of determining how to most effectively measure marketing ROI.

A call-out says, “37% of respondents did not include any mention of financial outcomes when asked to define what “marketing ROI” meant for their own organization.” The Advertising Age report of this study says, "...57% don't establish their budgets according to ROI measures."

The report goes on to say:

To what extent is marketing ROI used for decision-making?

Among the roughly half of marketers that are very or somewhat satisfied with their ability to measure marketing ROI, 57% use marketing ROI for their budget decisions and 59% use financial metrics to evaluate their marketing spend. 54% go as far as to say they consider it important to try to spend only when they have financial metrics.

Understanding what marketing ROI is

In the organizations surveyed, however, managers do not appear to have a consistent understanding of what marketing ROI is. When asked to define marketing ROI, 37% of the respondents did not mention financial effects and 82% did not mention that ROI consists of both financial return and spending. 31% think that just measuring the audience you reach is “marketing ROI.” Even when prompted, 19% do not think that “measuring the financial impact of our marketing” is marketing ROI.

In place of marketing ROI, many traditional measures are used. 37% of the respondents claimed that they used brand awareness as a universal metric to make marketing decisions. More troubling, of those using brand awareness, more than 60% said it was their only marketing ROI measure. To be useful, brand awareness must be coupled with some measure of brand perception. Brand awareness by itself is a lagging indicator of brand strength. Using it as the sole or main measure to make marketing decisions is truly managing by looking in the rear view mirror.

So, how do you have "ROI" without financial outcomes? You may have "return on something," but it's not ROI. (Think about your brokerage accounts. How would you like it if your stock portfolio advisor measured returns other than financial ones?) There are plenty of valid "returns" on marketing investments - things that can be measured, and thus managed. But don't call them ROI.

I'll report on how these corporate marketers are integrating digital and traditional marketing in a future post.

 

What is the dollar cost of directory referrals to your law firm website? And are the visitors worth it?

Senior marketers have been questioning the value of Martindale-Hubbell listings with increasingly loud and passionate voices. For AmLaw 100 and 200 firms, the cost ranges from a bare-bones listing in the $20,000-40,000 range to a comprehensive contract that costs well into the six-figures. And many firms have eliminated it altogether, saying “Enough is enough.” In fact, in a meeting in Houston last Friday, an AmLaw 200 executive director said, "nearly everyone on my ALA listserve across the country have dropped Martindale."

Martindale costs serious money, and it’s no wonder that the skepticism of marketers about return on investment is mounting. Martindale has never done a good job of aligning its offerings with the changing face of legal marketing and business development – especially for large firms. (As an aside, it recently eliminated the most popular and successful large firm program, Counsel to Counsel, because, I was told, Martindale executives are "focused on small law." More on this development in another post.)

Interestingly, when Chambers and Partners fully entered the U.S. market with its directory last decade, it had credibility out of the box. (According to its website, Chambers has been researching the U.S. legal market since 1999, but the U.S. directory followed later.) Because of Chambers’ solid methodology, numerous interviews with buyers of legal services about lawyers, practice groups and law firms that started in the U.K. in 1989, senior marketers and law firm management of U.S.-headquartered global firms approved the Chambers’ expenditures (and enormous investments of time each year by the marketing team - time commitments that are amebically growing) – almost without a second thought.

Last month, I participated in an American Lawyer Media webinar moderated by Elizabeth Lampert about the value of surveys, directories and rankings, which included speakers from Chambers, Best Lawyers and Morrison & Foerster. My part in the webinar was to give the corporate counsel perspective, and answer the question, “Do corporate counsel pay attention to these rankings and use the directories?”

In our world of business, we understand the rules of supply and demand. When there is market and client demand, it’s good to increase the supply of services to meet that demand. It’s a simple maxim. We now have a supply of 150 to 450 (or more) annual law firm surveys and rankings. Mine isn’t a perfect list (on the low end of that range), but I counted 38 experience or practice-based rankings, 17 lawyer rankings and directories, and 90 surveys sponsored by magazines, publications, the NLJ, ALA, ABA, NALP, Corporate Board Member and many other organizations.

What demand suggested that we needed this blizzard of statistics? A need by clients for more information? More transparency? Or do they actually cloud the true picture of a firm?

Of these 150-plus rankings and surveys, I am told by marketers that Amlaw 100-200 firms respond to an average of 25-50 requests each year. These include surveys measuring substantive experience like the Thomson League Tables and American Lawyer, feel-good surveys such as Best Places to Work and Working Mother magazine type submissions – practice and lawyer elevating ones, such as Chambers, Best Lawyers and SuperLawyers – and that is just scratching the surface.

What good are they to the law firm? At the Marketing Partner Forum last month in Miami, one leading consultant posed to the audience, “What’s the ROI on this investment of money and time on all these surveys and rankings?”

And I ask:

• Do they boost the reputation of the firm in the eyes of clients?
• Do they attract new business from prospects?
• Do they grow revenue or increase profits?

Firms typically have two diverging approaches to the individual lawyer rankings: “We will build a campaign around it and ensure that as many lawyers as possible are noticed and ranked.” Or, “Hell no – it’s frivolous and not worth the paper they’re written on.”

Most firms fall in the middle – choosing those that best elevate core practices and boost the reputations of top lawyers.

Can anyone reading this post claim that the Martindale, Chambers and other surveys and rankings have driven new clients to your firm? Or that a prospect chose your firm over another one because you had a top ranking and they didn’t? (Please post a comment if you have such a story to tell.) Note that I am not including the Thomson League Tables reporting here - I think buyers of legal services of those financial transactions do pay attention to those lists.

Ask yourself this: Do your clients and prospects read your website press releases about your 40+ lawyers ranked in this directory or that? Your website analytics will reveal how often those pages have been visited and you may be able to tell how long your visitors lingered on those pages.

How far is the divide between what lawyers want when it comes to rankings - and what buyers of legal services care about?

I first asked the questions of corporate counsel in 2007, when I interviewed more than 60 counsel in global companies around the world about how they use law firm websites. I specifically asked whether they use Martindale, Chambers and other rankings in evaluating outside counsel.

Then I asked “Do you notice law firm posts about rankings on their websites?”

In the 2007 survey, corporate counsel were using Martindale occasionally to evaluate firms and find new ones in new cities or regions where they hadn’t done business before, but no respondents said they used Chambers to find or evaluate counsel. Since 2007, conversations and interviews have suggested that after these in-house lawyers have created their short list of lawyers or firms, they may validate the referrals or seek supplemental information from Martindale and Chambers, in particular. But they also seek it from the law firm website, a Google search and LinkedIn.

In the last four years, I have had three-dozen or more discussions with corporate counsel about how they use law firm websites and what they notice on the home pages, lawyer bios and practice pages. Chambers is getting noticed only incrementally more and no one has ever mentioned Best Lawyers.

Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan LLP wanted to test the referral traffic from these three directories to their website so the marketers could make smarter investment decisions – Sutherland wanted to know, are these directories producing any tangible return? Andrea Christman, Director of Communications, ran a calculation (that she calls “unscientific,” but in my view, it’s directionally correct) of the total cost of the directory listings divided by the number of visitors referred during calendar year 2011. This resulted in a cost per website visitor (or RFI - Referrals from Investment - instead of ROI). Then she determined the cost for each ten seconds that visitors spend on the Sutherland site based on how many total minutes they stayed on the site.

I have always said that Martindale is consistently a high referrer of qualified traffic to law firm websites – even AmLaw 100-200 firms. Read my January 4, 2010 blog post called, “The Efficacy of Martindale.com as a Referrer to your Website.”

Christman found this to be true. Martindale’s per visitor cost to the firm was $12 and the cost per ten seconds of page-viewing cost the firm 52 cents.

The per visitor cost of Best Lawyers and Best Law Firms was $61 and $5.00 per ten seconds.

And the per visitor cost of Chambers was $538 and $17 per ten seconds.

Interestingly, the Martindale visitor stayed on Sutherland.com 2.8 times longer than the Google-referred visitor, and the Chambers-referred visitor spent almost 5 times longer on the site than Google.

Sutherland now has one more metric on which to evaluate its directory investments beyond what corporate counsel have said in interviews.

Any ROI calculation should be weighed against the political and cultural preferences of your partners, your reputation management goals and other factors that have nothing to do with ROI. But if you want to answer the simple question, “What are we getting for our investment of money and time?” – You now have one way of getting to a simple answer.

Mobile apps or mobile websites: What's a law firm to do??

When my company, Content Pilot, last conducted the AmLaw 100 Websites: Ten Foundational Best Practices research in Q2-3 2010, there were only four of the country's largest law firms that had mobile apps.  A few more had mobile websites, which were typically poorly designed, bare-bones renditions of their big site.  (Learn more about the Ten Foundational Best Practices by keyword searching on this blog.)

We will conduct the research again this summer, and I expect we'll see more of both.  (More on our upcoming research study and the findings about mobility and the other Foundational Best Practices later.)

Jakob Nielsen, the Internet expert on usability, writes in today's Alertbox: 

"Mobile apps currently have better usability than mobile sites, but forthcoming changes will eventually make a mobile site the superior strategy."

On its face, this is great news for law firms, which don't have the multi-million dollar Internet marketing budgets like major corporations.  The skeletal apps that we first saw from law firms had budgets estimated at $30,000 - 75,000.  I wonder if those firms think they got their money's worth - other than being among the first to bring "cool" to market.  As app development and expectations for user experience have matured, that cost is going higher and higher.  Remember, one app doesn't fit all devices - if you want your app to reach everyone, you need to design it for iPhones, Androids, BlackBerrys, and all forms of tablets (iPad, Kindle Fire, Samsung, etc.). 

If your law firm has an actual application that it wants to push to buyers of legal services, design an app.  If you simply want visitors to have a great experience with your website on a mobile device, then design a highly usable mobile website.

Nielsen says that today, apps perform better in usability testing:

"As of this writing, there's no contest: ship mobile apps if you can afford it. Our usability studies with mobile devices clearly show that users perform better with apps than with mobile sites. (Mobile sites have higher measured usability than desktop sites when used on a phone, but mobile apps score even higher.)

The empirical data is really all you need to know. It's a fact that apps beat mobile sites in testing."

Nielsen continues though, and says:

"In the future, the cost-benefit tradeoff for apps vs. mobile sites will change.

Although I just said that computers will become 100 times more powerful, this doesn't necessarily mean that the iPhone 14 will be 100 times faster than the iPhone 4S. It's more likely that hardware advances will be split between speed and other mobile priorities, especially battery lifetime. So, a future phone might be only 10 times faster (but will be thinner, lighter, and able to run much longer between charges), whereas download times will be cut by a factor 57.

The expense of mobile apps will increase because there will be more platforms to develop for. At a minimum, you'll have to support Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Furthermore, many of these platforms will likely fork into multiple subplatforms that require different apps for a decent user experience."

Jakob Nielsen advocates up to three mobile websites for optimal usability - one each for Smart Phones, mid-sized tablets and for larger tablets.

"It's only realistic to expect even further UI diversity in the future. This will make it extremely expensive to ship mobile apps.

In contrast, mobile sites will retain some cross-platform capabilities, so you won't need as many different designs. High-end sites will need 3 mobile designs to target phones, mid-sized tablets (like Kindle Fire), and big tablets. Using ideas like responsive design will let you adapt each of these site versions to a range of screen sizes and capabilities. The same basic UI design will work for both a 6.8-inch tablet and a 7.5-inch tablet if you simply shrink or stretch things a bit. (A 5-inch phone would require a different design, with fewer features and abbreviated content.)"

So - today, my advice to law firms that want to optimize access of their websites and can afford to invest in mobility is to design the best mobile website for the highest used devices.  According to the website analytics that we follow, iPhones and iPads are still a low percentage of visitors to law firm websites.  But those visitors have steadily increased, and we believe this traffic will grow exponentially.  So - design mobile sites for Smart Phones and large tablets.

For law firms that don't have Internet mobility locked into your budget, then ensure that your current website is "mobile friendly."  Every website launched today should, at a minimum, be designed for easy access on a mobile device.

A final piece of advice about mobile website design:  Don't let a developer take your current desktop site and simply scale it back.  Those sites are typically ugly, don't perform well or deliver what visitors want, and developers are not invested in what buyers of legal services are looking for from your firm.  Hire a designer who understands buyer behavior and the plusses and minuses of website mobility and user experience.

 

The strongest law firm brands - a 2012 brand survey by Acritas

"Brand" and "branding" were words that were nearly eliminated from our lexicon during the recession.  A respected stalwart in corporate strategic business planning, law firms, when slicing initiatives and the budgets that supported branding the last two - three years, quickly erased those line items.  There was almost no looking back . . . until now. 

Acritas, a leading legal research company based in Newcastle, England that conducts credible law firm brand research studies, recently released its "U.S. Law Firm Brand Index - 2012."  You can request a copy of the free report by clicking on the link on the Acritas home page. Every law firm wants to be on a list like this, but few firms rise to the top. 

This is the article by Aric Press, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, ALM.  My favorite bottom-line in this post is, "Clients can't hire law firms they haven't heard of."

The Strongest Law Firm Brands in the Land

Posted by Aric Press

Which law firms have the strongest brands in the United States, the world's largest legal market? According to a study released this week by Acritas, the brand research company, Skadden, followed by Jones Day, Kirkland & Ellis, Sidley Austin, and Wachtell, lead the big firm pack.

Acritas compiled its list based on answers to phone interviews with 902 clients, 667 headquartered in the U.S. These are big clients: 58 percent report revenues of at least $1-billion. They answered the following inquiries:

        • What are the first five law firms that come to mind?

        • Which three firms do you feel the most favorable toward?

        • Which firms are you most likely to consider for major M&A work ?

        • Which firms are you most likely to consider for bet-the-company litigation 
            matters?

        • Which firms do you use most for "high value" work?

        • And for overseas clients: which firms do you use most in the U.S.?

Each mention was worth a point on the Acritas ranking except for the top-of-mind question.  On that question firms earned five points for being mentioned first, four for second, etc.  Skadden has the most first mentions—40—followed by Jones Day (24); Sidley (16); Baker & McKenzie (14); Mayer Brown (13) and Hogan Lovells, Kirkland & Ellis, and Sullivan & Cromwell (12).

The fame and favorability rankings were similar but not identical.  On that ranking Jones Day placed first with 45 mentions followed by Skadden (39), Sidley (33), Morgan Lewis (32), Baker & McKenzie (30), DLA Piper and Fulbright & Jaworski (25), Hogan Lovells (24), Kirkland (23), and Gibson, Dunn and Wachtell (22).

A list of the top 25 ranked firms is included at the end of this story.  Acritas is a leading legal research company based in Newcastle, England. Much of its data is collected by phone interviews each year with general counsel and their deputies around the world.  Full disclosure: ALM Legal Intelligence sells the Acritas suite of products in the United States.  Both The American Lawyer and ALM LI are part of ALM Media. For a copy of the Acritas US Brand Index, go to www.acritas.com or request one by email from research@acritas.com

Law firms have brands, the only question is whether they are strong or weak.  That truism is not universally recognized however. "At the most basic level, strong brands have the power to help firms win business, build client loyalty and generate client referrals," says Lisa Hart Shepherd, the chief executive at Acritas. "Why would a law firm ignore an easily accessible aid to securing these important growth factors? Yet so many do so."

Norm Rubenstein, a partner at the Zeughauser Group, specializing in branding and marketing, is another interested party. In his view, clients are "finally objecting to the seeming fungibility of [law firm] marketing and law firms are awakening to the importance of differentiation. Firms that effectively communicate their strengths ultimately can earn the new holy grail: the short-listing advantage of unaided, top-of-mind name awareness." Or, to put it a bit more simply, clients can't hire firms they haven't heard of.

Not all clients are created equal and the Acritas rankings vary a bit based on their size. For instance, among the 122 clients interviewed with revenues greater than $6 billion, the top-of-mind order was: Skadden, Sidley, Kirkland, Gibson,Dunn and Jones Day (tied), Cravath, and Morgan, Lewis.

For all the effort and talk about building national—and international—firms, some old regional differences continued to be seen in the answers. In the western region, for instance, Gibson, Latham & Watkins, and Morrison & Foerster scored the highest, while in the south, three Texas firms—Baker Botts, Fulbright & Jaworski, and Vinson & Elkins—vied with Skadden and Jones Day for most mentions.  And traditional powerhouses showed up in certain practice areas. Most likely to be considered for big-ticket litigation: Skadden, Kirkland, Jones Day, Gibson, and Sidley. Most likely to be considered for major merger and acquisition work: Skadden, Wachtell, Jones Day, Sullivan, and Latham.

The report also underlines, again, the splintered nature of the big firm legal marketplace. The clients were asked to name three firms they’ve used for "high value" work. Together the top five—Skadden, Kirkland, Baker & McKenzie, Jones Day, and Sidley—were mentioned by only 12 percent of the clients.  That leaves a lot of clients to go around, assuming, that is, they know your name.

The Leading US Law Firm Brands 2012

1. Skadden

2. Jones Day

3. Kirkland & Ellis

4. Sidley Austin

5. Wachtell

6. Latham & Watkins

7. Baker & McKenzie

8. Morgan Lewis

9. Gibson Dunn

10. Sullivan & Cromwell

11. DLA Piper

12. Mayer Brown

13. Hogan Lovells

14. Fulbright & Jaworski

15. Cravath

16. Weil Gotshal

17. Baker Botts

18. Shearman & Sterling

19. K&L Gates

20. Vinson & Elkins

21. White & Case

22. Morrison & Foerster

23. Davis Polk

24. Wilmer

25. Simpson Thacher

One of the next big things in law firm websites: Video done right.

Everyone who knows Adam Stock, the Director of Marketing and Business Development at California law firm Allen Matkins, understands that he is an early adopter of most things technology.  He’s a capable developer, program and website designer and, in his spare time, he is Chair of the upcoming 2011 Legal Marketing Technology Conference in San Francisco – September 15, 2011.

I wanted his opinion about a new product we are launching – a mobile app (“Velocity”) that facilitates cross-selling and relevant conversations with prospects and clients just-in-time – in restaurants, bars, at conferences, meetings or in cabs.  Content Pilot is formally launching Velocity at the SF LMA Tech conference – you can read our release here.

But this blog post isn’t about Velocity, it’s about the extraordinary video strategy and campaign that Adam has created and led over the last year.  Allen Matkins’ website is not exemplar and Adam would be the first to admit it.  (The firm is in the middle of a redesign, which will be designed around video.)  View the videos on today’s site as diamonds in the rough.

In the 2010 AmLaw 100 Websites: Ten Foundational Best Practices research sponsored by Content Pilot and conducted one year ago, 28.5% of the AmLaw 100 firms then had video on their websites.  This research didn’t grade the quality of the video, just whether firms had it - and you can see that few did.  With a handful of exceptions, the videos showed lawyers talking about a development in the law, lawyers talking about firm culture or firm leaders talking about their commitment to diversity, their communities or how nice their people are.  The production value ranges from quite terrible to pretty good – but they are mostly not compelling and not differentiating. Most of the lawyers – even those with the best and enthusiastic intentions – come across as boring and dry. And the videos are always too long.

Adam says, “None of our videos show attorneys speaking into the camera – no talking heads.” 

How does one find the time to script and shoot one video, let alone dozens?  The secret is leveraging your content - doing video versions of work that you are already doing, material that you are already publishing. He states that they create four categories of videos:

1. Centered around a legal alert announcing a change in regulation or law (they do written and video alerts)
2. Business tips and insight (frequently appearing in print on a blog)
3. Press releases (also found in print on the Allen Matkins website)
4. The firm’s involvment in their communities (also noted on the firm’s website and on Allen Matkins community blog).

Generally, he continues, “We focus on information that you didn’t know you needed to know.” Adam laughs and says, “What I love about this is – these are my products!  This is what my firm sells.”  He believes (as I do) that the connection between a lawyer and a buyer of legal services can happen so much faster in video – in video done right. Visitors to your website get a visual/audio preview of what it’s like to do business with you.

Here are links to examples of each of the four video types on the Allen Matkins’ site.

1. Legal alert: AT&T v. Concepcion Supreme Court Decision Upholds Agreements to Arbitrate and Avoid Class Actions
2. Business tips/insight: Green Commercial Buildings: Attracting Environmentally Conscious Tenants
3. Press release: Allen Matkins/UCLA Anderson Forecast California Commercial Real Estate Survey: Light at the End of Tunnel
4. Community involvement: Women's Leadership Roundtable merges networking, charity and fashion - Allen Matkins Women

Knowing the time and cost associated with video scripting and production, I asked Adam about his budget.  I didn’t get a number, but he said that they did an initial test with six videos.  “They performed really well.  We buy them in bulk to save time and money – we are on our third 20-video contract.”  Adam added, “They don’t need the highest production value.”  They have to be good, but they don’t have to be music-video good. 

Allen Matkins hires an outside professional who scripts and shoots the videos. Given that they have worked on nearly 60 videos together, the process and production is extremely efficient now – the cost is half what it would be if he were producing a single video.  Adam effectively serves as the producer and is a part of every shoot.

Other firms do it differently. Adam is speaking on several panels in the next few months with two other in-house marketers who are as committed to video on their websites, but where the execution differs.  Aden Dauchess, Director of Digital Media at Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, an AmLaw 100 firm, made the case for bringing the video resources and talent in-house (Womble’s YouTube Channel).  Graig Cortelyou, the CMO of Tully Rinckey PLLC (an employment firm headquartered in Albany, New York), works with local television news media, such as the CBS affiliate, to develop segments for the TullyLegal.com site.  There are dozens of videos on Tully’s YouTube channel.

Allen Matkins also hosts their videos on YouTube and the firm has also experimented with other distribution channels, such as releasing them on GlobeSt.com and sending them out as alerts. They track views, which typically range from 50 views on the low end to 500 for the most popular videos.

Law firms of all sizes can have a video strategy, but it must be done right. Remember that bad video is worse than no video. It might differentiate you, but not in the way you’d like.

Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web!

August 6, 2011 was the twentieth birthday of the first website being launched.  For the hundreds of millions of hourly web users across the world, the day came and went without so much as a piece of cake or a candle.  As Mark Giangrande noted in his August 10 Law Librarians Blog post, the anniversary "didn't have enough impact to justify a Google doodle." 

Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist or engineer at CERN, the European organization for nuclear research, started the "WorldWideWeb Project" in 1989.  I believe that the first known law firm website was Greg Siskind's VisaLaw site that he launched in June 1994, although, according to Wikipedia, Heller Ehrman launched the first law firm website in 1994 (no month noted).  Heller Ehrman is gone, but visalaw.com is alive and growing with more than 1 million hits per week from 150 countries.  If not the first law firm website, Visalaw.com was the first immigration site - and likely the first "boutique" or specialty practice website on the Internet at the time.

Greg Siskind wrote the ABA's first book about the Internet, called "The Lawyer's Guide to Marketing on the Internet, published in the late 1990s.  Greg, Rick Klau and I co-authored the second and third editions of this book, the latest being published in 2007 (and we're pleased to say, it's still selling).

Am I feeling sentimental about this anniversary?  A little.  What strikes me is how astoundingly far the web industry has come in these few years - especially with the now-ubiquitous Smart Phones - yet how many law firms are still doing the equivalent of tipping their toes in the water. 

Content Pilot publishes a new iist of Law Firm Website Ten Foundational Best Practices each year, a list of attributes that we started in 2005.  These are must-have characteristics and functionality, not the late-breaking, trendiest features that would only be embraced by early adopters.  In 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2010 we analyzed the AmLaw 100 websites, based on these Ten Foundational Best Practices. The last research we conducted was in the fall of 2010 - I've posted about the results several times on this blog.  Read more about the results here: 

1. http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2010/10/amlaw-100-websites-ten-foundational-best-practices-the-first-attribute-strategy-copy.html 
2. http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2010/12/lets-talk-about-lawyer-biographies-2010-amlaw-100-websites-ten-foundational-best-practices.html 
3. http://lawfirm4-0.typepad.com/law_firm_40_blog/2010/11/2010-amlaw-100-websites-research-ilta-sf-presentation.html

Given the following breakdown of total scores, America's largest law firms have a long way to go to fully exploit this now-twenty year old web.

Remember, these are foundational best practices.  Here is how the AmLaw 100 scored:

• Excellent - a score of 86-100.  1% (One law firm)
• Good - a score of 71-85.  52% (52 law firms)
• Fair - a score of 51-70.  46%
• Poor - a score of 26-50 - 1%
• Unacceptable - a score of 0-25.  0%

As we enjoy the dog days of summer and anticipate fall budgeting, take a fresh look at your website and how you can make it more compelling and consistent, and how you can create messages and stories about your firm that are more dynamic, relevant and engaging.

The tools are all there.

If you are planning a site refresh or redesign, consider a Ten Foundational Best Practices audit of your website.  Please contact me at mcmurray@contentpilot.net or 214.351.9690.  You'll have a detailed roadmap for practical and actionable improvement - a critical first step in your planning process.

Only 5 months left to meet your 2011 marketing goals

I received an email this morning from the CMO Council on its "Marketing Outlook for 2011." While the research study made more sense to report in Q1, it's worthwhile to use as a check-up as we edge into August 2011.

The Study reports that marketing budgets are on the rise, with 26% reporting an increase of 1 to 5% over last year.  As law firm marketers begin their 2012 budget planning, this is good information to have in your back pocket. (Note that this was a study of 750+ members of the CMO Council, not law firms.  Participants were drawn from each major region of the world and were representative of most vertical industry sectors and company sizes.  The Council website includes a PDF with more information.)

So, marketers, how are you doing with your 2011 strategic marketing goals?  You have five short months left in 2011 to make measureable progress.

The survey found that the key senior management mandate to marketers is to drive top-line growth (46% of the respondents) and market share (45%) while better defining the brand and value proposition (31%).  Law firm executive committees want the same thing.

Other senior management mandates were: 

• Improve customer insight and retention (25% of the responses)
• Lower costs and improve efficiencies (22%)
• Maintain high quality sales pipeline (20%)
• Access new markets and audiences (17%)
• Increase accountability and measurement (15)

I am surprised that increasing accountability and measurement came in at a paltry 15%.  This would be higher on the list of most law firm leaders I know.

The study also discusses the importance of "redefining the customer experience."  A large part of this is creating websites that are more engaging, personalized and differentiated.  This is where the ..."art of marketing and the science of analytics, measurement and process" can be married.  "Marketers need to better understand the impact marketing and technology integration can have in making customer experiences more gratifying and satisfying, thereby improving loyalty, retention and repeat purchase."

Another paragraph is worth including in its entirety: 

"Marketing admits they lack high levels of competency in extracting valuable insight and predictive analytics from the mass of customer data that continues to multiply inside and outside their enterprises. Yet, as we continue to engage with customers in instant, online social channels, gathering data from every impression, every search, every transaction, status update, or tweet can develop a more complete profile or the customer and must be integrated with off line data sources. Marketing has the opportunity to leverage this rich data repository to more fully understand, target, and serve customers in ways that improve response, drive repeat purchase, up-sell and cross-sell products, and inspire loyalty and attachment. Marketers must respond to the paradigm shift from BtoC to CtoB with reviews and reassessments of their marketing mix and allocation of spend. This includes greater use of localized marketing tools, adaptive merchandising systems, interactive self-serve technologies, mass-personalized messaging solutions, social media channels, mobile relationship marketing platforms, and corporate social responsibility programs (e.g. sustainability)."

Revisit your goals for 2011 - make sure they are achievable and relevant as you work toward the end of this calendar year.  And consider using this list as your starting point for 2012.

 

Commentary on Law360 Post, "How to Make it Rain by Marketing Individual Lawyers"

A legal marketing friend, John Eix, head of Regional Business Development - Texas for Hunton & Williams, sent me a June 24, 2011 Law360 article that I finally had a moment to read.  It covers the age-old question of, "Do clients hire law firms or lawyers?"  I have always insisted that they hire both, but this article leans more toward "they hire lawyers."

The article was written by two legal marketing industry veterans Steve Bell, the Chief Client Development Officer for Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, and John Hellerman, co-founder and partner of Hellerman Baretz Communications.

The article starts out like this:

Law360, New York (June 24, 2011) -- Successful rainmakers will tell you that when they get business, it’s usually a result of their own, individual marketing efforts. No surprise there; it takes a healthy ego to be a real rainmaker, after all. But underneath any braggadocio lies a truth: Individual lawyers, not law firm institutions, are what draw in clients. While the rationale behind using that truth to drive legal marketing is obvious for many lawyers, how exactly to execute it is not.

As we have heard repeatedly, general counsel say they “hire a lawyer, not a firm.” The cliché is backed up by research that Hellerman Baretz Communications LLC commissioned from BTI Consulting Group Inc., which shows that introductions based on individual relationships (namely, referrals and in-person meetings) are the most effective methods of securing new business. Other recent research indicates that personal bio pages and LinkedIn profiles are more visited than firms’ general home and practice pages.

The import of this research for law firm leaders, marketers and lawyers at large would seem to be obvious: If individual lawyers are the product clients are buying, they should also be the product you are marketing. The logic behind individualized campaigns is only becoming more forceful as communications tools grow more sophisticated and accessible. Whether through LinkedIn, Twitter, blog posts or another new medium, it is easier than ever for individual lawyers to make their presence known.

I agree with much of this, but not all of it.  The most successful rainmakers I know own their reputations.  Whether it's speaking, writing, blogging, tweeting and, of course, being a terrific practitioner and relationship manager, they don't rely on their law firm marketing departments to "do it for them."  Self-directed, motivated people always own their reputations, and I think many of us were born with this gene.  It wasn't something I learned.

Do clients hire law firms?  Of course they do.  Clients are buying the talent and intellect of the individual lawyer backed by a powerful, sophisticated, productive law firm machine. 

The article goes on to say:

Take, for instance, Howrey LLP. That firm’s big-ticket campaigns were all built around the marketing of the institution. Indeed, Howrey pioneered the art of marketing the law firm “brand.” It was the first national firm to run a print advertising campaign, called “The Human Side of Genius,” and even bought itself a product placement in the "Runaway Jury" movie.

To be clear, Howrey had an excellent marketing team, and its advertising campaigns were executed very well; as a result, it rightfully earned respect as a leader within the marketing community. But the firm’s approach had a conceptual flaw. Howrey was selling Howrey, when it might have been selling its top products: Sean Boland, Robert Abrams, John Talady and Alan Wiseman. As John Hellerman (an author of this article) wrote recently in an article about Howrey here in Law360, institutional brands are best sold to shareholders and potential shareholders (i.e., partners and laterals), while the shareholders (as expert talent) are best sold to clients.

Here's where I disagree.  I posit that the "top products" that Bell and Hellerman name, Howrey partners Boland, Abrams, Talady and Wiseman, were well regarded and frequently hired because they leveraged the natural gifts they had, invested countless hours in becoming experts in their fields AND they were backed by a venerable institution.  In this case, Howrey.  If Howrey had invested its considerable marketing dollars only in advertising and the brand development of these top partners, would it not have failed anyway?  Of course it would have.

Had these same lawyers been at a small, local firm, would they still have been considered board-safe? I don't think so.  In client interviews over the last 20 years, and in discussions with corporate counsel during Lexis-Nexis sponsored Counsel to Counsel forums the last ten years, some admit that selling great lawyers in lesser-known firms upstream is challenging.  The better known the law firm, the easier it is to sell the lawyer.

This supports my point that clients hire both law firms and lawyers.

The next point the article makes is this:

A significant factor in the shift to individual attorney branding is the evolution of expectations from clients themselves. Increasingly, corporate clients seek to “unbundle” legal services. Instead of relying on a single law firm, clients are shopping around on a piecemeal basis to get the best service for the best possible value.

This unbundling of services places the focus squarely at the attorney level, not the firm level. Law firm marketing efforts should match that expectation.

The corporate world already has taken notice of the individual brand-building trend. One need only use names like “The Donald,” “Oprah,” or “Lil Wayne” to understand how far individual branding concepts have progressed. Or just look at how important Steve Jobs has been to selling the Apple brand.

This comparison with Oprah, Trump and Lil Wayne (really?) holds only for those iconoclastic lawyers who have built firms to support them, their reputations, clients and work.  David Boies is one who comes to mind.  There are a dozen or more that we could name without resorting to Internet research.  Steve Jobs gets to be Steve Jobs because he and his team built Apple to execute and support his vision. 

Major law firms are blessed if they have partners who are revolutionary thinkers with the charisma and intelligence to become name-brands (without entirely disrupting the law firm).  How many of those lawyers could sustain the same level of notoriety without the well-oiled infrastructure, budgets and client base of the top law firms?

So my advice partly contradicts that of my friends and colleagues, Steve Bell and John Hellerman.  Take advantage of today's numerous individual reputation-enhancing online and offline tools available.  Own your reputation - no one else will.  But, consistently invest in your law firm's brand, too.  Billions of dollars of revenue are attributable to thousands of partners who aren't front-and-center, but who benefit from the reputation and brand of the law firm, and are clearly important to the health of the partnership.

Finally, here is excellent advice from the article:

For firms and lawyers that recognize the need to structure their efforts around the individual, the question becomes: Now what? The following are some concrete steps that individual attorneys can take to help themselves.

1) Define what you offer.

The first and most necessary step in any marketing campaign is to identify exactly what you offer. Attorneys should consider the specific need they fill for their clients, and what makes their service superior to others.

2) Ask for referrals.

Referrals are the most effective marketing technique for lawyers, and also the simplest. When a lawyer is doing good work, her clients will often be eager to give referrals. The hardest part may be getting over the reluctance to ask, but when done respectfully it’s not an awkward conversation.

3) Obtain referral-equivalents through PR campaigns.

To get referrals, of course, you need influential referrers. If you lack those in your Rolodex, don’t worry: that’s exactly what individual-based PR campaigns are made to remedy. BTI’s research shows that obtaining just three mentions from respected media outlets (industry trades, respected national publications, personal contacts), have nearly the same trust-building effect on prospective clients that personal referrals do.

4) Create content in your area of practice.

Thought leaders stand out. Creating valuable content about your area of practice will get you noticed quickly. Whether distributed through traditional outlets (e.g., trade publications) or “self-published” through blogs, social networks or e-newsletters, Internet-based sharing tools will get valuable content to the people that care about it.

5) Speak in small-group settings.

While a speaking engagement at a large conference may look nice on the resume, smaller-group environments are more conducive to relationship building. Unlike addresses to large audiences, which must have broad appeal, settings such as practice seminars are more likely to be focused on the attorney’s specific area of expertise and have a business-oriented atmosphere.

6) Become a point of contact.

Making yourself a “water-cooler” stop for those in your field pays dividends and can be accomplished in any number of ways — creating an online gathering place through a successful blog, founding an association for a specialized industry that you service, and hosting an annual happy hour at an industry conference are just a few examples.

7) Communicate what makes you successful.

Clients might be impressed by an Ivy League education. What will truly impress them — and what they really want to know — is how a lawyer can help their business. This is what case studies do. A powerful story about how a specific lawyer helped a client brings that attorney’s skills to life and allows clients to imagine how the lawyer might help them, as well. All lawyers should have case studies.

8) Create powerful introductions.

If your professional bio is anything like most in the legal industry, it does not convey a powerful enough impression — or tell readers much about you. Enhancing your bio with an enticing narrative or short video can tell visitors a lot about your service and your personality. Enriched bios give those who don’t know you a much more significant glimpse at your professional persona and make it easier for prospective clients to pick up the phone and call.

9) Repurpose your efforts.

These previously listed tips aren’t one-off activities — they can pay repeated dividends. The work that went into writing an article can be repurposed for a speaking engagement. A speech can be transformed into a blog post or client alert. All of these activities can be referenced as auxiliary materials on a bio, and any of them can provide the basis for an introduction to a reporter. “Recycling” in this way helps lawyers get a maximum PR benefit from their invested time.

10) Share content.

For the same reasons they should “recycle,” lawyers and their firms should actively share the content that emerges from PR campaigns. Social networking tools, especially, make it extremely easy for lawyers to share their media quotations, articles and other PR material with their online networks and personal contacts, who in turn may pass it to their own networks. In this way, lawyers become influential voices and build their presence within communities rich with business development potential.

"Why does marketing have to be so damned hard?" Asks Pat LaPointe (Metrics Insider Blog)

I have quoted Pat LaPointe in past blog posts about metrics and marketing.  Pat is Managing Partner at MarketingNPV -- specialty advisors on marketing metrics, ROI, and resource allocation, and publishers of MarketingNPV Journal.

He starts out today's post like this: 

Fact: Failure rates in marketing are astronomically high.  Only a small fraction of new marketing initiatives succeed in achieving their intended objectives.  If marketing were a baseball player, it would NEVER have made the major leagues.  If marketing were a horse, you'd need 10:1 odds at least (and even then you'd be best served to box your bet across win, place, and show). If marketing were a bridge, you'd certainly not want to drive across it on a windy day.

Why?  Why is it so damn hard to make marketing work consistently and reliably?

As law firm marketers are working to get their 2011 budgets approved as submitted, I know that they are answering this question from law firm leaders.  Because there is no perfect answer to the, "why is it so damned hard?" question - we do the best we can to guide the discussion in positive ways with the data and instincts that we have. 

Changing markets, fluctuating economies, uncertain budgets, changing leadership (and thus goals and strategies) in firms, all inhibit marketing consistency, which, in turn hinder marketing success.

LaPointe thinks there are two factors more likely at work:

  1.     Marketing involves integrating the left and right brains -- something that very few people are capable of.  It requires an ability to think conceptually and unencumbered by the present realities, yet being able to evaluate critically in a rigorous way.  Without the former, we fail to innovate; without the latter, we fail to focus.  Moreover, it takes more than one person in an executive committee who can actually do this two-brain thing to notice and approve a good idea when one hits the table. Odds of there being a quorum of such people in any one boardroom are long indeed, given that executive committees normally include strong left-brainers from finance, IT, and manufacturing/operations.  No judgment here, just an observation.

2.     Marketers tend to be more right-brain than left-brain. They enjoy concepts and creativity and innovation and inspiration, but not the repetitive types of analysis that tend to extract true insights from the cacaphony of marketplace response. Many don't have the patience for disciplined experimentation and continuous improvement, preferring to "try new things" and make a name for themselves within their industry.

The most successful senior marketers I know have brains that are right and left brain balanced.  And they can instantly tap into one hemisphere over another when work demands it.  If we aren't born with this balance, I think it's incumbent upon us as marketers to diligently work to develop the brain-side that is recessive.  We can learn from colleagues, countless resources available online by major business schools, and more.  LaPlante continues:

Fortunately, there are tools to help us overcome our fundamental limitations (personal or organizational) and learn from the collective experience of others.  For example, in 2009 the Marketing Science Institute published a book edited by Professor Mike Hanssens of UCLA's Anderson School called "Empirical Generalizations about Marketing Impact," which clearly lists 16 categories of collective learnings from hundreds of academic studies of marketing impact over the last few decades.  For example, did you know that:

• Gains in market share do not often lead to gains in profitability in either short- or long-run.
• Changes in pricing have approximately 26 TIMES the impact on sales as changes in advertising spend levels.
• Changes in sales budgets have more than 3 TIMES the impact on sales compared to changes in ad spending.
• If advertising doesn't work in the short term, it will NOT work in the long term with more exposure.

And he concludes: 

When we get marketing "right", we make it really HARD for OTHERS to imitate. That's why the big marketing victories are so transformative for companies (and careers).  If we got just a little better at standing on the knowledge shoulders of our marketing forefathers (and mothers), we might actually get it "right" more often, and make it harder for THEM to catch up with us.

And I believe getting it "right" is absolutely possible.