"CEOs and board members, who have been pushing Chief Marketing Officers hard for growth and for more effective marketing efforts, are frustrated by the difficulty of finding chief marketers with the full range of necessary skills. Turnover rates for CMOs are therefore high relative to those of their C-level peers, and CMOs are in short supply. (Just ask any executive recruiter about the number of difficult CMO searches he or she has under way.)"
So observes McKinsey in The evolving role of the CMO, but I suggest if you substitute "managing partner and executive committee" for "CEO and board members" you’d have an accurate description of the law firm landscape in this precinct at the moment.
While the half-life of CMOs at law firms had been notoriously short, a glimmer of improvement appeared to be on the horizon in the last few years as firms became more comfortable with the marketing function, and as CMOs imported from other industries got their sea legs and began to understand how to apply their own form of professional discipline to our idiosyncratic industry.
This "meeting of the minds" between senior firm management and CMOs has so far been a two-way street, with CMOs in law firms acclimatizing themselves to the law firm environment, and executive committees realizing marketing is an indispensable component of a high-performing firm.
Now, let’s up the volume.
Two trends that are playing out in the consumer sector (as McKinsey reports) are finding their analogs or mirror images in law-firm land. The first trend is the increasing reliance of consumers on the Internet to research everything from cars to electronics to prescription drugs online before making a purchase. And "research" online, need I remind you, includes unvarnished opinions from untraditional sources as well as consumer manufacturing and packaged goods’ companies’ classic push marketing efforts. Your firm’s reputation is no longer yours to control. (Well, it never really was, but the velocity of potential commentary has increased dramatically.)
The second trend is even more germane to our industry: One of the most powerful components of fallout from increased access to information is to accelerate the trend—seen across a myriad of industries—towards a bifurcated industrial structure, with a low end and a high end, but very little middle. As McKinsey puts it:
"But the change in consumer buying habits is broader. The proliferation of distribution touch points and the more rapid growth of the low and high ends of the market at the expense of the middle are forcing marketers to take low-cost, time-saving, “facts-only†sales approaches and, at the same time, higher-value, more service-oriented approaches."
To paraphrase, clients’ law firm selection process has changed. You can offer them two value propositions: The "low-cost, time-saving," direct, commodity approach, or the "higher-value, more service-oriented" track. Beware being neither.
But to get back to marketing: What does the increasing availability of information, from traditional and unconventional sources, mean for a law firm trying to manage its reputation?
Traditionally, there has been a divide between marketing, focused on customers; public relations, targeting the press; and, where needed, regulatory affairs, targeting state or other regulatory bodies with jurisdiction over a firm or influence over its activities. And, traditionally, these functions reported to different people or were independent in how they acted and didn’t necessarily communicate about or coordinate their efforts.
This must change. Increasingly, all intersect with each other and require an integrated response.
Where, you may be asking right about now, are the partners in all of this?
They’re at the heart of it.
First, by embodying and exemplifying the principles, reputation, and values of the firm, and projecting those characteristics every hour of the day with every client and prospect, every associate, staff member, and potential lateral.
Second, by being the living, breathing manifestation of the firm as you strive to win new business and to cement connections with current clients. The firm can spend itself blue in the face on marketing efforts, but, if the partners cannot deliver the professional, intellectual, and empathetic human connections required to persuade a client to entrust an engagement to the firm, all is for naught.
And what can the firm chair or managing partner and the senior firm leadership do to advance the marketing cause?
- Make sure you truly and deeply understand how clients and prospects view your firm. The image you’re trying to project may not accord with the perception being received. Understand what influencers, traditional and otherwise, may be saying about your firm, and bring them to the table. It perhaps cannot be said too often that the primary task of firm leadership is to communicate—to internal and external constituencies.
- Ensure the CMO is connected to the people who matter within your firm. Make sure the CMO is included whenever senior firm leadership comes together. After all, they can’t project a progressive and accurate image of your firm unless they’re getting today’s news.
- Lastly and most importantly, think through the marketing effort with the CMO. As McKinsey puts it, be a "thought partner." If you truly want your marketing organization to mirror the excellence of your firm, your CMO—and more importantly, the audiences your marketing department is addressing—deserve no less.
