Defining moments - presenting professional services in full colour
When Withers decided to base a worldwide marketing initiative on clients alone, with no direct showcases for its lawyers and minimal mention of the firm, it was both innovative…and a risk. It, has though, proved enormously successful - and created several defining moments.
Exploring success is, perhaps, something to which we don’t afford sufficient prominence. Often, we learn from failure rather than from triumph – and that applies equally in business as it does in life.
Drawing on the firm's work with successful people around the world Withers’ marketing and PR team collaborated with the Financial Times on the Defining Moments series, using insights from high-profile subjects, and drawing on life-changing events, a fundamental challenge, or an extraordinary achievement. Duncan Miller and Paul Askew explain how they took a calculated risk - and reaped the rewards.
Question 1: How can businesses which offer intangible services persuasively capture and communicate these offerings and their benefits to clients?
Withers' marketing team wrestled with this challenge for some time, taking into account the additional issue that as a firm who predominantly advise private individuals and their organisations much of what we do for our clients is sensitive and highly confidential.
In an earlier initiative to address this, we turned a thematic exploration of family law subjects into a professionally produced podcast series on 'Modern Relationships' hosted by broadcaster Mariella Frostrup.
This series attempted to breakdown some complex and frequently misunderstood concepts and to present legal solutions in a client-friendly manner, providing clarity in a very noisy space, but it was still largely a case of our lawyers talking about their work, interspersed with first-hand accounts from clients and other professionals.
Question 2: Can professional services firms bring their clients into their marketing? And, if so, can those clients be high profile individuals?
Absolutely! At Withers, a new level of ambition was required, and this was how we arrived at the concept for the Defining Moments campaign. We decided that the best way to illustrate the services we provide our clients was to allow them to tell their own stories.
More to the point, if we gave our clients a platform to talk about the trajectories of their lives, how they have negotiated challenges and achieved the successes for which they are now well known, this would simultaneously capture the way we champion all of our clients, supporting them in good times and bad. At best, we hoped these stories would illustrate what Withers can do in a far more compelling way than anything we could say about ourselves.
Drawing up a long list of clients from around the world, we sought to capture a broad range of leading individuals working across cutting edge sectors. Just as important was identifying individuals with an interesting story to tell, and the ability to communicate it well.
Question 3: What are the right platforms for a broad-based campaign that runs across multiple jurisdictions for a year or more?
Before approaching any clients, we knew that we had to have a convincing and attractive structure in place.
After discussions with several media partners, we agreed upon a series of profiles in the Financial Times as the campaign's launch point. Initially this was a run of three pieces, starting in May 2021, featuring Dame Natalie Massenet, founder of Net-a-Porter and co-founder of Imaginary Ventures, Harriet Green OBE, former CEO of IBM Asia Pacific and Thomas Cook and Executive Chair of Mission Beyond, and Sandie Okoro, GC at the World Bank.
“Perhaps the biggest lesson to take from the Defining Moments campaign is that professional services marketing teams should not be afraid to think big. Before the campaign really got underway, we would have been extremely cautious about basing a worldwide marketing initiative on our clients alone, with no direct showcases for our lawyers and minimal mention of the firm in the content itself.”
Supported by a very active campaign on social media these were an immediate hit, generating high engagement from Financial Times readers and a wide social media audience, as proved to be the case throughout the series. In evaluating this success, one factor that shouldn't be underrated is the striking illustrations of our interviewees, produced by one of the excellent FT team's artists. These created real stand-out against other content on FT.com and our own online channels.
As noted, we wanted a broader range of mediums with which to tell clients' stories and, following the reception of our family law podcast series, we created a supporting podcast series titled Talking Success, hosted by broadcaster Aasmah Mir. Again, we sought out a broad range of clients from around our offices, creating a first series of six episodes touching on life sciences, fashiontech, philanthropy, wine production, sustainability and business leadership, interviewing clients from the US, Italy, Hong Kong and the UK.
This podcast series took us through to the summer of 2021, when we activated a new wave of content in Asia. This was split across the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and the Singapore Business Times in order to reach both important audiences and comprised more profile pieces in print, alongside podcast episodes as part of BT's Money Hacks series.
The subjects were an impressively varied set of founders and business leaders, from the worlds of AI, laboratory produced milk and meat, cryptocurrency, digital finance, apparel and even a mountain climbing philanthropist!
Our FT series came back in the autumn in full strength, featuring five more profiles of some of our most impressive clients. These included Sabrina and Idris Elba, a true power couple using their celebrity to campaign on a number of issues; retail expert Mary Portas talking about her commitment to sustainable business and conscious consumption; renowned design partnership Barber and Osgerby; venture capital pioneer and founder of LocalGlobe Robin Klein; and Ben Lovett, a member of Mumford and Sons and founder of Venue Group, which is building and creating new concepts for live music venues in the UK and the US.
As with all our features throughout the campaign these interviews were an excellent encapsulation of the entrepreneurial spirit that runs through so many of our clients and drives so much of our work with them.
This was an important element to capture because the reality of who we work for and what we do for them is quite unlike the stereotyped perception of private client firms managing landed estates and helping wealthy families. Whilst of course we do this work there is much, much more below the surface and we wanted to put forward clients who are really driving change in a wide range of areas across the world.
Coming up to the present, we have run a second series of the Talking Success podcasts, which include thoughtful conversations with more entrepreneurial individuals who have achieved more than their share of success in sports and broadcasting, financial services, cosmetics and skincare, technology and motor sports – and in the case of our second guest, Rinaldo Brutoco, an incredible range of sectors over his career, with a current ambition to combat climate change, reinventing air freight with hydrogen powered ships!
Question 4: What can be learned from a campaign like this?
Perhaps the biggest lesson to take from the Defining Moments campaign is that professional services marketing teams should not be afraid to think big. Before the campaign really got underway, we would have been extremely cautious about basing a worldwide marketing initiative on our clients alone, with no direct showcases for our lawyers and minimal mention of the firm in the content itself. But it has proved to be enormously successful in raising the firm's profile and presenting an exciting, realistic, and multi-faceted impression of our business.
It should also be added that we had engagement and support from the firm's management team from the moment that the concept was clear, and credit should also be given to their vision.
One might expect that well-known individuals, who have multiple opportunities at any one time to feature in the media, might be sceptical of participating in a campaign put together by their legal advisors. This didn't prove to be the case at all.
Naturally, some clients passed on the chance to feature, whether because of calendar clashes or other activities, but of those who have appeared to date not one needed to be persuaded of the benefits. As mentioned above, having a really solid and compelling infrastructure for the campaign was essential in this.
So, dream big and the outcome will be bigger!
- Reached almost five million people so far
- Brand awareness/preference increased by over 25%
Find out more about Defining Moments by going to withersworldwide.com/en-gb/defining-moments