For several years now I have been a judge on the “Best Marketing Campaign” for the Managing Partner’s Forum annual awards. Here are the judge’s citations for the 2009 winner and runners up. Well done to all those who got to the shortlist! (Further details of the other category winners at www.mpfglobal.com).
WINNER – Turner Parkinson (law)
12-partner Manchester law firm Turner Parkinson started this campaign tentatively with the creation of a website under a sub-brand to promote insolvency generated businesses and properties for sale. The initiative started to generate a significant flow of introductions and resulted in hundreds of further opportunities being added to the site each week. The later introduction of an integrated PR campaign (and coverage on BBC Radio Manchester on the TP Deals Barometer), e-marketing and weekly bulletins generated a significant number of property and corporate transactions for the firm as well as meetings for senior lawyers with 100s of contacts. A great example of a practical revenue creating campaign which has also helped reposition the firm amongst some of the larger accountancy and insolvency players in the market.
SECOND PLACE – Boyes Turner (law)
Having previously spent over £50,000 pa on advertisements that were declining in effectiveness in the extremely tough personal injury claims market, the team at this 25-partner Reading law firm faced a tough challenge. Boyes Turner created a ‘hub and spoke’ claims website with specialist sites and SEO and PPC campaigns for cerebral palsy, industrial diseases and personal injury. This was backed up with a media campaign using a fast response to topical news items such as the ‘toxic sofas’ story and investment in a referrals network. This well thought through and well executed campaign achieved strong flows of enquiries, good conversion rates and an admirable cost per case figure.
THIRD PLACE – Taylor Wessing (law)
A thorough execution of a text-book-perfect research based global thought leadership campaign with a tie-in with the leading technical journal, blogs, websites, PR roundtables, internal communications and direct and digital marketing strands. There was close collaboration between the lawyers, the marketing team and the external agencies involved and this resulted in genuine added client value in terms of an innovative new Global IP Index to guide companies on the effectiveness of patent protection and enforcement in 24 world economies.
