July 14, 2025|Accountants, Kim's Blog, Lawyers, Marketing|
Campaigns, thought leadership and project management – People, Planning and AI Campaign star

At the recent PM Forum  online workshop on “Campaigns, Thought Leadership and Project Management” there were 17 delegates from legal, accountancy and consultancy firms. There was much discussion and debate. This article contributes to the learning resources for those who attended. Reflecting on delegate feedback (see below) there are three themes emerging. Campaigns, thought leadership and project management – People, Planning and AI

People, campaigns and thought leadership

Marketing and communications expertise, systems and processes are naturally important for campaigns. Yet the way we engage with and achieve buy-in from people was a theme in barriers and best practice.

  • It is labour intensive to create, develop and promote great communications and thought leadership campaigns. Most marketing and business development teams have limited and already stretched resource – in the face of overwhelming demand from fee-earners. Therefore, firms need to prioritise key campaigns.
  • Fee-earners can be impatient for instant action and results so their engagement and education in the process is critical. You need determination, time and creativity to come up with a truly innovative campaign with a differentiating “wow” factor. Involve people from the outset so their needs and ideas are reflected
  • Great campaigns typically require collaboration with a lot of people – marketing, business development, creative teams, research agencies as well as a variety of fee-earners
  • It is therefore necessary to secure support and sponsorship from a senior fee-earner acting as a champion for major campaigns. This can help ease internal politics.
  • The most important people are the clients – campaigns must deliver content in the right format at the right time that is of interest and value to the clients. It can be hard for fee-earners to adopt the audience’s perspective.

Planning and project management for campaigns and thought leadership

  • The starting point must be consideration of the firm’s (team’s and fee-earner’s) objectives. Campaigns are strategic when they are delivering against business and marketing objectives.
  • Build in evaluation at the outset (based on objectives). Ensure the relevant systems and reporting are established. Have a process for considering lessons learned from past campaigns.
  • To reduce reactive implementation of ad-hoc campaigns, MBD professionals need to adopt a proactive and consultative approach to develop strategically important campaigns
  • Use a framework to create a structured campaign which considers all the planning stages. This will deliver greater consistency in outputs and results.
  • Great marketing campaigns integrate with business development activities and support fee-earners in focused sales conversations with clients to identify new business opportunities
  • There may be multiple projects within one campaign (e.g. conceptualising, research, writing, events, social media promotion, advertising etc)
  • Detailed planning takes a lot of upfront time but there is often pressure to move faster and be “first to market”
  • Even with excellent project management systems and processes, people may miss deadlines putting the campaign at risk. Cultural values will drive behaviour and accountability.
  • It is easy to generate content – but really hard to craft really good content in an attention grabbing and digestible format that really adds value to clients
  • It is almost impossible to consider ROI on each channel or activity – evaluation has to be on the overall campaign (which returns to the importance of SMART objectives) and may take some time to emerge

GenAI for Thought Leadership

We considered the use of AI in campaigns. And AI tools (see System review: CogniClick for instant, personalised research).

However, there was an excellent PM Forum webinar in June 2025 where (1) Rachel Kelly | LinkedIn (PwC UK and Chair of PM Forum North West Committee) introduced (1) Gay Flashman | LinkedIn Founder and CEO of Formative – Creative.Intelligence Agency. Gay is former Managing Editor at Channel 4 and Channel 5 News. She leads a digital marketing agency whose clients include: World Economic Forum, McKinsey and Microsoft. She is author of “Powerful B2B Content” and is writing a chapter for “AI in PR and Comms” for Kogan Page.

Some highlights from the webinar:

  • Thought leadership definition: Creating and sharing valuable, insightful content to build authority, credibility and respect for a brand or individual by demonstrating a deep understanding of market trends and a vision for the future.
  • “For some, the evolution of AI will create a race to the bottom; for others, it will create a race to the top” Mary Meeker, Bondcap Report 2025
  • Advice: Use tested and approved tools, establish clear guidelines and be transparent to clients about AI use in terms and conditions. Be careful with copyright – although if it’s online it’s probably been used to train
  • Thought leadership life cycle where AI supports
    • Research, analysis and ideation (topic discovery, document and report synthesis, building structures and skeleton outlines)
    • Production (personalisation and replication, multi-format outputs, translation and transcription, summarising)
    • Amplification (social media content at scale, re-versioning, scheduling and posting, analysing results)
  • Key AI tools for thought leadership:
    • ChatGPT for content development (agile content partner)
      • Content generation and simple analysis
      • Brainstorming partner
      • Simple drafts and mock ups
      • Competitive analysis or landscape review
    • Perplexity for fact checking and research (real time researcher)
      • Real time web search – includes current data and trends
      • Great at citations (Harvard referencing)
      • Gap analysis
      • Research synthesis
    • Claude for analysing and comparing documents (reflection)
      • Mine out detailed reports
      • Save time to get to the first level of insight
      • Stronger at nuanced outputs
      • Refinement eg SEO optimised
      • London form outputs and prompt development
    • NotebookLM for internal synthesis (internal knowledge librarian)
      • Summarise and distil own work or uploaded content
      • Synthesis and summarises
      • You can interrogate the content
      • Fun podcast output 
  • Prompting guidance (CRAFT)
    • Context
    • Role
    • Action
    • Format
    • Tone
  • Create a prompt bank
    • Create a style and context document you can paste into new conversations
    • Save effective prompt cascades as templates you can reuse
    • Maintain your own repository of successful prompts and outputs
  • Research and ideation (enhance your competitor intelligence)
    • Topic ownership
    • Unique angles
    • Audience focus
    • Content frequency
    • Engagement levels
    • Trend triangulation
    • Find hidden patterns
    • Identify weak signals
  • AI ideation through structured prompt cascades (with worked examples)
    • Start with your premise, data, insight or idea
    • Seek contrarian views
    • Build out the premise with each prompt in a logical process
    • Obtain supporting evidence
    • Refine your thinking as you progress
    • Identify potential hypothesis statements
  • AI ideation through alternative personas or perspectives
  • Production in a multi-format environment for multiple platforms
    • Streamline and speed up production process
    • Mock ups, storyboarding and draft initial versions
    • Re-version and create personalised outputs
    • Use Frase to support structuring information and insight into a white paper or longer form report (it also bolsters SEO with optimised headers and strong references)
    • Use Grammarly and WordTune to refine, enhance and check
    • “Shatter” your cornerstone content – into different formats (LinkedIn posts, blogs, podcasts etc)
    • Design innovation with Canva (Magic Tools suite), Adobe Suite, Midjourney and Tableau for image creation and manipulation
    • Use Synthesia for text to video
    • Create Snackable content with Brevidy and Opus
    • Convert and transcribe with HeyGen (video translation) and Eleven Labs (audio transcripts of text content) 
  • There are many biases, limitations and risks to consider

Gen AI in Action: Elevate your thought leadership (PM Forum members only)

Delegate feedback and poll results

Delegate aims 

  • Become more advanced with campaigns, confidence and progress into a managerial role
  • Improve consistency of approach amongst my team
  • Support my consultants with priority-driven campaigns
  • Be more strategic
  • Build confidence in campaign development, buy-in and management alongside BAU projects
  • Develop my understanding of running specific campaigns
  • Want our campaign management to be more consistent and structured
  • Obtain golden nuggets of information that’ll take our campaigns to the next level and additional value add
  • Acquire skills for taking campaigns all the way from start to finish
  • Aim to become more familiar to the strategy behind campaigns
  • Become more proactive rather than reactive
  • Improve my campaign strategy and implementation to progress into a managerial role
  • Learn how to provide evidence-based advice on how to create and manage a campaign.
  • Progress in my knowledge and experience of campaigns
  • Make sure the campaigns I am working on align with those of the business
  • Gain better experience
  • Gain any skills and guidance that might benefit the current campaigns I am running

Developing campaigns – Delegate Reflections 

  • Understand the key steps to creating a campaign and the benefits that each one can have
  • What was interesting to me was the case studies, particularly the Green Room podcast – the large scale campaign which has been successful recognised with awards and visibility
  • Is there a sweet spot in terms of getting the balance between the planning time and creation of content that will achieve the “Wow” factor vs launching your campaign in a timely fashion so you are ahead of the curve and a leader [ie ahead of your competitors]?
  • For me a big one is understanding the different elements of a campaign beyond a few ‘push’ approaches and selling in the benefits of a broader campaign to our Fee Earners, often time poor/ not buying in.
  • Understanding the benefits of a structured campaign rather than “winging it” (moreso the fee earners approach than the marketing dept)
  • Understanding the steps involved that make a successful campaign
  • Reviewing the various examples was really helpful in understanding how different platforms can be leveraged for campaign effectiveness. But it also raised an interesting point for me, while using multiple platforms can broaden reach, my assumption is it could also complicate the process of measuring ROI for each channel
  • It was helpful hearing from others in the breakout room about types of campaigns they are working on and seeing the commonality of challenges/strengths that we have in common, despite different types of campaigns
  • What are your competitors doing that you could do differently? Don’t be afraid to be bold and different in an already overcrowded, noisy market
  • The tactic > strategy mindset is so important – the question we repeat most to FE’s who think BD/marketing is just writing the content is ‘why are we doing this/who are we trying to speak to with this’ – they find it difficult to answer because they see BD/marketing as a box checking exercise
  • I found the case studies really interesting, seeing how other companies implement an omnichannel approach. The campaign over tactics differentiation is really important
  • A simple thing, but I was really interested in the charts and managements matrices! Nice, clear ways of setting out a campaign – perfect for easy communication
  • Understanding the importance of creating a well thought out campaign from start to end rather than sporadic content ad hoc
  • It’s good to see the steps to go through in running a campaign from a birds’ eye view

Thought leadership – Delegate reflections

  • Research and pitching that buy in stakeholders for budget is key, understanding topics and having new and interesting information creates a valuable thought leadership campaign
  • The importance of selling in the benefits of a standout thought leadership campaign over a longer period – i.e. ROI will come at a much later stage. This is a huge mindset shift required by fee earners who are used to quick-fire marketing activities.
  • I think storytelling is really valuable to thought leadership – throughout the technical parts of setting up and running a campaign, that’s how you will connect with your audience and keep it feeling authentic
  • It’s given me food for thought around how we might be able to repackage content such as annual publications that tend to be more of a reflective piece. Therefore, provide strategic advice to FEs on how we could repackage this content to be thought leadership pieces [i.e. forward looking and spotting gaps / themes for clients] and neatly tying this in with their BD plans]
  • It’s great to see and understand the long-term value thought leadership has
  • The importance of strategic planning and ensuring as a team we tackle the strategic priorities and do those campaigns well rather than trying to appease all stakeholders
  • Tell clients something they don’t already know!
  • It’s always nice to see we all struggle with the same barriers! Things I’ll be taking forward; integrating sales/follow-up as part of the project to ensure accurate measurement of success.
  • Ensuring we have key partner buy-in in the planning stages to avoid internal politics landing on our team – lots of teams want the campaigns others have but most times don’t have a strategy behind it, or have knowledge about the work that goes into it
  • Think outside the box, taking risks is the way to stand out, look at what the industry isn’t doing
  • Not all thought leadership campaigns need to be about us/our services – Withers case study for example. It’s about standing out in the crowd
  • Ensure that we have a greater understanding of the planning aspect of each campaign we run – utilising different research approaches
  • The importance of bringing originality into campaigns – especially in sectors where the content itself can be a little ‘dry’
  • Focus on a long term plan and ensure that we maintain a regular form of communication with the stakeholders to encourage engagement
  • Using AI for research! I use it for content but somehow didn’t think about research
  • Creating a campaign that is based on clear market research is key e.g. creating content that creates value for the relevant audience
  • Importance of implementing different research practices, considering how to be original

Delegate takeaways

  • Objectives
    • Understand firm and marketing objectives to help in identifying a key area of research for thought leadership
    • Use more frameworks and be clear with objectives and time frames
    • Ensure fee earners are clear on the objectives and outcomes from the start to help with motivation
    • Set objectives and seek differentiation, rather than publishing content just because other firms are
  • Fee-earner engagement
    • Bring in fee-earners at the beginning of the planning session, instead of doing it by yourself and having a separate session to pitch the idea into fruition
    • Create a plan to educate fee-earners on thought leadership to increase buy in and engagement
    • Involve the correct people from the start
    • Promote campaign benefits to fee-earners
  • Audience focus
    • Make sure we are targeting and put time into planning out each campaign effectively and
    • Be led by the research and the audience
    • Find the ‘wow’ factor!
  • Planning and Project Management
    • Consider strategy from the beginning and refer back to this throughout the process – also consider that there are different ‘projects’ within a campaign – do these all align with strategy? What resources do you need/can you optimise for each to stay on track? Find your champion FE
    • The length of time to take on the planning side of campaigns, thinking about what insights are going to be valuable, working with champions from beginning
    • Look into further planning each campaign specifically, not skipping through certain steps which may benefit us down the line
    • We are actually doing a really good job but do have an idea around managing some of our business as usual campaigns to try and limit the noise around the edges
    • Interested in the AI software you showed to support with future campaigns / projects
  • Evaluation
    • Proactively implement evaluation into campaigns / projects – including measuring ROI and calculating correctly
    • Create reports following campaigns and analysing data retrieved 

Delegate poll results

Delegates like to benchmark their views against their peers. It’s also interesting to compare the results against those in previous sessions:

What is your MAIN role?

  • 33% Business development
  • 27% Marketing
  • 20% PR/Communications
  • 7% Campaign management
  • 7% CRM/relationship management
  • 7% Content creation – copy and images

How confident are you about developing and implementing campaigns?

  3. 7%
  4. 7%
  5. 33%
  6. 27%
  7. 13%
  8. 7%
  9. 7%

Which aspect of the session is of most interest?

  • 13%      Context – Strategy and marketing/BD
  • 0%       Campaigns – benefits and developing communications campaigns
  • 13%      Thought leadership campaigns
  • 13%      Overcoming barriers, implementation and project management
  • 60%      Everything – I am a sponge today!

What’s the MAIN focus for your campaigns?

  • 20%      Whole firm
  • 7%       Particular territory/office
  • 53%      Sector
  • 7%       Service line
  • 0%        Key clients/ABM
  • 13%      Something else

“Our strategy involves all of the above”

“Our thought leadership is more aligned to practice than sector”

“Practice area – key theme that cuts across multiple sectors – e.g. international trade”

Where are you weakest in campaigns?

  • 19%      Objectives
  • 13%      Clarity on markets and services
  • 6%       Planning and execution
  • 63%      Effectiveness

Having seen the definition of thought leadership, do you think your campaigns are mostly:

  • 56%      Communications campaigns
  • 38%      Thought leadership campaigns
  • 6%       Something else (e.g. events)

Are your campaigns integrated with your sales/relationship management plans?

  • 7%       Yes – really well
  • 60%      Yes – but we could do better
  • 33%      No integration

Which research methods have you used? (multiple choice)

  • 56%      Roundtables and panels
  • 56%      Collaboration with a third party
  • 50%      Email surveys
  • 38%      Case studies
  • 31%      Face-to-face interviews
  • 13%      Benchmarks
  • 13%      Delphi method (expert panel)
  • 6%       Telephone surveys
  • 0%       Monthly or quarterly polls
  • 6%       Other

During campaigns you collaborate with (multiple choice)

  • 63%      Trade, business and professional associations
  • 63%      Existing clients
  • 56%      Key clients
  • 50%      Referrers
  • 44%      Media organisations
  • 44%      (International) network
  • 25%      Educational establishments

Which objectives are there in your campaigns (multiple choice)

  • 87%      Number of enquiries/new clients
  • 73%      Social media engagement
  • 73%      Web site visits
  • 67%      Strategic positioning
  • 60%      Internal engagement/amplification
  • 60%      Reputation, awards and league tables
  • 47%      Revenue/fees/profits
  • 33%      Interactions/meetings generated
  • 20%      Return on investment (ROI)

Which tools do you use for campaign/project management (multiple choice)

  • 53%      Resource/budget planning
  • 47%      GANTT charts
  • 40%      Mailing list/specialist software/apps
  • 33%      Project management software
  • 27%      Task breakdowns and network diagrams
  • 27%      Team project management tools
  • 20%      Project management methodology
  • 13%      AI enabled tools
  • 0%       Agile

Project and team management systems used:

View of biggest problem with campaigns now?

  • 38%      Lack of fee-earner engagement
  • 25%      Lack of M&BD time/resource
  • 6%       Integration with other aims/projects/campaigns
  • 6%       Culture (politics, lack of rewards)
  • 6%       Project management processes/systems
  • 6%       Unclear or unrealistic aims/expectations
  • 0%       Scope creep
  • 0%       Poor internal communications/silo mentality
  • 0%       Lack of senior support
  • 13%      Other

Related campaigns, thought leadership and project management articles

Highlights from the 2025 Professional Growth Summit – Kim Tasso May 2025

Proactive Marketing and BD Executive: Skills questions – Kim Tasso April 2025

Buy in – Influence and Persuasion Toolbox – Kim Tasso March 2025

Marketing case studies – Digital thought leadership campaigns February 2025

Political, Practice and Marketing Trends February 2025

Planning Digital Marketing Campaigns and Content Strategy November 2024

Analytics and Measurement for Digital Marketing – Kim Tasso November 2024

Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) updates standard September 2024

18 ways to stretch MBD resources June 2024

Build your brand advantage with PM Forum and Sholto (kimtasso.com) June 2024

Highlights of social media best practice – with Chloe Christine (kimtasso.com) April 2024

Future Marketing Manager – New product development (kimtasso.com) March 2024

Cross-selling and referrer management – Data, focus (kimtasso.com) March 2024

Email marketing and automation with TBD and PM Forum (kimtasso.com) March 2024

System review: CogniClick for instant, personalised research (kimtasso.com) October 2023

marketing and business development (M&BD) team structures (kimtasso.com) September 2023

campaign, thought leadership and project management (kimtasso.com) June 2022 Buy in, momentum, online vs in-person, limited M&BD resources, measurement, follow up

themes on campaign development and thought leadership (kimtasso.com) July 2021 Education, integration, measurement

Video in the marketing mix (kimtasso.com) April 2021

25th Professional Marketing Forum Conference Report (kimtasso.com) November 2020 ROI, BDO case study on winning awards

nine reflections on thought leadership (2019) professional services (kimtasso.com) September 2019

Thought leadership, campaigns and project management (kimtasso.com) January 2018

Thought leadership campaigns and project management Eight Essentials (kimtasso.com) September 2018 Entrepreneurship, Engage, Educate, Expectations, Empathy, Essence, Edge, Engineer, Execute, Equip, Extract, Evangelism, Evaluation, Evolution

Project vs campaign management (kimtasso.com) October 2016

Thought leadership manual by Tim Prizeman (kimtasso.com) June 2016

Why fee-earners should let marketing help develop campaigns (kimtasso.com) December 2015

10 steps to create a business development campaign (kimtasso.com) November 2015

Campaign management in the professions (kimtasso.com) June 2015

Delegation and project management – Kim Tasso January 2014

Improve marketing campaign management in professional service firms (kimtasso.com) October 2013

Project Management in Marketing – Kim Tasso May 2013

5 top tips for time, project and campaign management – Kim Tasso April 2011

Recent professional services campaign highlights 

Marketing case studies – Digital thought leadership campaigns February 2025

Marketing and BD case studies in legal, accountancy, consultancy April 2024

Law firm media relations and integrated campaigns (Kysen) December 2023

Case studies: Marketing and Business Development at law November 2023

Professional services marketing/BD case studies August 2023

Being more strategic – Case studies and insights (Ireland May 2023) June 2023

Major survey of investors and developers reveals growth opportunities in evolving industrial real estate market | Forsters LLP | Leading Mayfair law firm May 2023 (with FTI)

Strategy case studies and more matrices February 2023

2023 financial benchmarks for law firms (kimtasso.com) April 2023 (Hazelwoods and Crowe) 

The Drum | How Addleshaw Goddard Increased Brand Awareness By Combining Poetry And Law December 2022

Thought leadership campaigns: Arcadia, JLL and Remit (kimtasso.com) December 2022

Legal marketing case study – Thought leadership campaigns (kimtasso.com) November 2022 (Howard Kennedy)

World Shaping Wealth: the impact of affluence on the next economy (taylorwessing.com) May 2022

Law firm thought leadership update (kimtasso.com) June 2021 Davitt Jones Boult, Howard Kennedy, DLA Piper, Moreton Fraser, Stephens Scown, Passle legal thought leadership league table

Professional Services Thought leadership update – (kimtasso.com) November 2020 FTI, Bidwells, Grist, FieldFisher

Accountancy marketing case study – MHA (kimtasso.com) June 2018

Tags

Related Posts