Now that marketing has become an ingrained function at firms and no longer either an exotic foreign import or an isolated archipelago, it might be time to re-examine how the world’s most sophisticated marketing organizations—consumer packaged goods companies—are re-inventing marketing in the 21st Century.
Booz Allen & Hamilton’s strategy + business has just such an article, The New Complete Marketer.
Given that we’re temporarily in the land of consumers, let me first provide their bullet points and then attempt to translate them into our world. Based on Booz Allen’s research, five themes emerged identifying characteristics of the best CMOs. (OK, they actually list six themes, but one of them, about partnering with a multi-media savvy ad agency, is a bit off point for us.) Quoting, they:
- Put the consumer at the heart of marketing
- Make marketing accountable
- Embrace the challenges of new media
- Recognize the new organizational imperative
- Remain adaptable
Swell. Now let’s interpret what this means for law firms.
Clients first
Focusing on clients means viewing the service your firm provides from their perspective and ensuring it’s aligned with what they really anticipate, need, and expect from a premier law firm. At Procter & Gamble, it means getting into laundry rooms at customers’ homes and "really, really hitting on that [the information gleaned]," says Jim Stengel, P&G Global Marketing Officer. At FedEx it means that
a key part of marketing’s job is “speaking up on the customer’s behalf and ensuring that what we have to say is taken seriously,†according to Mike Glenn, executive vice president of market development and corporate communications.
This isn’t necessarily easy. Even at P&G, once again known as a nimble organization after a decade or so in the doldrums of comfortable market leadership, "it took nearly a decade to reposition to reposition the client at the heart of our business."
But we’re starting. More and more firms—particularly the ones that have a tradition of innovative approaches to their business—are launching "client relationship" programs, distinct from conventional marketing efforts.
Accountable Marketing
The ROI of marketing has long been a thorny issue and I confidently predict it will remain so for at least the rest of the careers of most of you reading this. Booz Allen found that 90% of its marketing respondents identified it as "a major challenge, and the leading factor, by more than a two-to-one margin, that brings marketers under increased pressure from management."
So there is no magic bullet.
But that’s not to say judgment cannot be exercised and inferences drawn. I suggest you approach evaluating marketing’s impact in two ways: First, are prospective clients more predisposed towards your firm than they seem to have been in the past? And second, how do existing clients evaluate their satisfaction with your service?
The first—prospects’ predisposition—speaks to your firm’s overall reputation in the marketplace, which is or ought to be influenced by your overall marketing efforts. Recently The Wall Street Journal had a rather devastating article (devastating, at least, if you live in Detroit) detailing that fully 54% of US car buyers would not consider a domestic car. (22% would not consider an import, and the remainder would consider both.) Detroit finally realizes, as Rick Wagoner of GM put it, that "just building a great product and putting it out there isn’t enough."
If you’re building a great product and no one is paying attention, you need marketing to change perceptions.
Second, how existing clients view your firm is less the purview of marketing than, I suggest, client relations. That’s why this emerging specialty should be on your radar if it’s not already.
The Challenges of New Media
In consumer packaged goods land, new media can mean SMS’ing from your cellphone the secret code that changes the Times Square billboard display.
That’s not what we’re talking about.
But we are talking about finding your clients where they really are—be it on the online home page of The Wall Street Journal or in the shuttle lounges at Reagan National, LaGuardia, and Boston Logan. And, increasingly, it could be communicating with them through the medium of a firm-sponsored blog on issues of specific interest to them. If you try this, my advice is:
- Keep it highly focused: Inbound project finance to China, for example, not "your corporate practice."
- Edit it with a very light touch. It must have a tone of voice, a true character, and not be a PR or jargon-laden mouthpiece. Hypocrisy will be detected in a heartbeat.
- Encourage feedback and even push-back; freely acknowledge corrections; respond promptly to inquiries.
Does all of this sound high-maintenance? Well, yes, it is; but the potential connections you make can be invaluable. Just don’t go into it underestimating the demands for regular maintenance and feeding of the beast going forward.
Organizational Imperatives
Primarily, this means that marketing can no longer be an island. To paraphrase Richard Nixon about Keynesians, "we’re all marketers now." If marketing is just viewed as "help with the RFP" or "get closer to the client" support, you’re wasting their time and talents and you should face the fact that you probably in your heart of hearts don’t believe in any of this and just want to be left alone to practice law.
That’s a fine and worthy choice. Just don’t expect to build, or sustain, a great firm down that path.
So what does it mean to "embed" marketing in the firm?
Booz Allen probably describes it best (emphasis supplied):
"Marketing does much better when it’s incorporated into the greater business, say these thought-leading CMOs [from P&G, Yahoo, and Foster’s beer]. It can drive growth more quickly if it is fully integrated with the different functions, and it can do so in a way that previous CMOs never realized was possible. For a CMO to be fully effective, all of senior management must have clarity about the marketing mission. The high degree of turnover in marketing leadership — and, indeed, among the subjects interviewed in this book — demonstrates the fragility of that shared understanding. "
Remain Adaptable
It’s a truism that the market environment is ceaselessly changing and our firms must adapt to it—just ask a private equity hotshot how the world changed over this past summer in the wake of the subprime meltdown’s spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt throughout worldwide credit markets. But that type of adaptation is fundamentally uninteresting: It’s reactive and dictated by external events.
The interesting type of adaptability is that we initiate from within our firms, sensing the beginnings of a shift in the market winds, being attuned to clients’ emerging needs, or—better yet—to needs they haven’t even been able to articulate.
Is it realistic, or even desirable, for your marketing or client relationship people to have a voice in charting the course of the services your firm provides?
I believe that, if you think those folks truly understand your clients’ desires for service (and if they don’t understand, we need to have a different conversation), then you’d be crazy not to take advantage of that perspective. This example, of the evolution of P&G’s famous Pampers brand, may seem beside the point to law firms, but I believe there’s a serious message about the discipline of drilling down from a superficial, appearances-mostly, view of what clients want to a far more fundamental understanding of what they’re truly concerned about, what motivates them to action, and how you can demonstrate that you profoundly "get it":
"Several years ago, Procter & Gamble’s disposable diaper division was organized around the science of fluid absorption. “We had an entire R&D organization focused on fluid absorption, its speed, [its effect on] skin health, and so on,” explains Jim Stengel. The most important question on the table for P&G’s diaper scientists was, How can we make diapers stay drier longer? Yet under the tutelage of marketing leaders like Stengel, the company realized that the primary value it offered to parents wasn’t technological — it wasn’t limited to dryness or containment. Consumers were looking to Procter & Gamble for improvements in the overall development and health of babies. “That creates all sorts of new needs,” he says. “Babies wear a diaper 24/7 for almost three years…. But when you ask, ‘How do we know we’re better for a baby’s development than our competitors?’ — that means your competitive set changes, your market share changes, what you’re looking for in your equity changes.” The R&D lab and marketing team had been close before; now they became inseparable as they tackled innovative approaches to diaper fit and feel. And with a question on the table about baby development, the brand began a new round of market growth."
I leave the analogies to your practice and your clients to your own insight into their industries and the strategic, financial, and marketplace challenges they’re facing.
But if nothing else, you should take away this lesson: Your firm does not provide "collateralized debt obligation" structures, or "employment litigation defense" or "executive compensation counsel."
If you’re good, you provide insight into the evolving landscape of your clients’ businesses, and the legal architecture—always informed by strategy—best suited to your clients’ posture tomorrow.
