Netting a sales pitch

Rowe & Maw's pitchside promotion for a football match in Greece epitomised the desire of firms to score successes in advertising.

But not all lawyers are fans, discovers Stephen Ward

It wasn't just Greeks who were bearing gifts when David Beckham slotted England's second goal in their World Cup qualifier in Athens last month.

Throughout the game, television cameras regularly zoomed in on Rowe & Maw's perimeter pitch advertising - the first use of the medium by a law firm.Rowe & Maw's advertising at the pitchside for England's match in Greece, which was televised live on the otherwise advert-free BBC, was on a revolving hoarding, so its name came up for a total of six minutes out of the 90 minutes of the match, with the logo: 'Rowe & Maw, lawyers for business.' The slot is understood to have cost around 30,000.A certain professional disdain still lingers from the time before 1984, when law firms were not allowed to advertise.

As Chris Pullen, marketing director at Rowe & Maw, acknowledges: 'Most law firms still don't care for advertising.

They believe building relationships isn't done through advertising, and up to a point they're right.'But that is changing, and more and more executives from the advertising world are being brought into law firms, and being given more credence, according to Mark King, director of marketing for another growing City firm with eyes on the magic circle, SJ Berwin.

'It is no good simply seeing advertising and marketing as a bolt-on strategy,' he says.He spent 20 years at Saatchi & Saatchi, before joining Linklaters and then moving to his current job two-and-a-half years ago.

He says that to have any deep effect, an advertisement has to be more than a just a quick hit.

It needs to be part of a longer plan.The Rowe & Maw soccer advert was not just a speculative long-range shot, even though it was an example of what the advertising industry calls a stunt, where it relies on the attendant publicity to spread the message more widely.

In this case, it was the first use of the medium by a law firm, and caught the eye because a law firm is incongruous on a soccer pitch.In explaining the purpose, Mr Pullen says: 'In terms of choice of medium we were looking for a combination of a wide target audience - in terms of covering the London market - which is where a lot of our work is based and originates from.

But also we would not be adverse to picking up a lot of other people who might fit in the desired ABC1 classification (mostly professionals), which is what most of our advertising is directed towards.'In the past, to reach ABC1 targets, the firm has advertised in The Times, which is widely read by in-house counsel, the Financial Times, read by businessmen, and the London Evening Standard's financial section to catch both on their way home.Mr Pullen says that when it first advertised in the broadsheets four years ago, the firm commissioned research with a sample of its target audience.

'Our name recognition after the advertising, which lasted the best part of a year, was up by 45-50%,' he says.But it is generally recognised that it is impossible to quantify how that success converts into extra business.

'I can't imagine any client saying I came to you because I saw your advert.

Even if people are influenced by advertising, they're not going to admit it.

None of us will say we saw an advert, and simply went out and bought something on the strength of it.

It would make us sound weak-willed and malleable.'What firms are seeking from such advertising is subconscious name recognition.

'This used to be referred to as the IBM factor - the security a client gets from going to a recognised name.

The theory was that no one would ever be criticised for buying a computer from the market leaders.

'You tend to be more comfortable with a named brand; you assume there is intrinsic quality,' he says.SJ Berwin recently ran a short series of advertisements as part of a careful marketing strategy which included dropping '& Co' from the firm's name.

In Mr King's words, the aim is to 're-articulate our personality and brand value, but across seven offices', six of them abroad.The advertisements were establishing that the firm was no longer a British practice with a presence abroad, but international, and the push included letters and e-mails to clients explaining what had been done and why.

'That's the most targeted you can be, to the people you want to reach most,' Mr King says.The advertising used only two newspapers, the international edition of the Financial Times, and the business pages of the London Evening Standard, and the total budget was in 'five figures'.

Each advert ran only twice.

'I'd be amazed if people in the market place had to any great extent noticed this.

What matters is the noise that you then put around it,' he says.The presence of the advertisements was helpful in boosting morale internally, and in encouraging high-quality new lawyers to join, Mr King adds.Firms casting an envious eye at the magic circle may be considering advertising, but it may be still be seen as something of a turn-off for firms already there.

Mr Pullen, whose firm sits in the tier below the top 20, says: 'If I was the marketing director of a magic circle firm, I doubt I'd do it.

They have a brand, they have an established position in the market.

People come to them, so there is less necessity to do it.' Georgina Stewart, marketing director at magic circle firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, says: 'We do very little corporate advertising.

We don't think it is the most effective way to reach our existing clients or our target clients.

The middle-sized firms seem to be using advertising more aggressively.'It may be the firms placed between about 20 and 40 in the top 100 who feel they need to advertise - but even Freshfields, which according to Ms Stewart normally has no corporate advertising budget, did advertise briefly when it completed its merger with German firm Bruckhaus Westrick Heller Lber last August.

'We wanted to mark the actual moment of the change,' she says.

'We had a simple advert in the FT and in other key international business media, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Wall Street Journal.'That apart, she says the firm maintains that face-to-face is still the most effective way of reaching existing clients, or to target potential clients.

'We put all our efforts into opportunities encouraging partners to make face-to-face contacts.' They eschew mass client receptions at sporting or other glitzy events.

'Our meetings are very business focused.

I think targeted seminars, breakfast meetings on specific issues which you know are likely to be interesting to clients are effective - bespoke events rather than mass events.'The same rules for advertising apply lower down the size scale.

In 1998, Fisher Meredith, a two-office private client and legal aid firm in south London, ran an advertising campaign as part of a re-branding, senior partner Eileen Pembridge recalls.Each practice area ran advertisements, all in the new corporate colour of purple.

One which attracted most attention was a poster soliciting claims against the police, which was banned by London Underground for being 'political'.In this case the spin-off publicity was completely unplanned, and subsequent legal aid cuts have meant that far from seeking this kind of work, the firm now has more than it can handle.

'We are now in the position of advertising for private client work to subsidise our legal aid work,' Ms Pembridge says.

To that end the firm advertises in a divorcees' magazine, two south London glossies, and in the gay Pink Paper.The Fisher Meredith message for these advertisements is always understated and sober, establishing gravitas, but offering credibility at a lower price than City firms.

She confirms that for her firm too, word of mouth is the best advertisement.Henry Brookman sought similar clients in a racier way recently, when he ran two advertisements for his specialist divorce practice in 50 City wine bars.

The one aimed at men said 'Ditch the bitch'; the one aimed at women said 'All men are bastards'.That might seem like an unfocused opportunistic stunt, but it too was the fruit of a carefully orchestrated, if low-budget campaign, as Mr Brookman, a sole practitioner, explains.

He wanted to expand his business, and had consulted an agency for advice.He says: 'It was fairly and squarely aimed at putting my name in front of the particular group of clients we had identified as already making up the bulk of my practice.

These are essentially City-based professionals.' He says they had anticipated reaction in the legal press but not the extent of the resulting furore from the Daily Mail to The Guardian.

'In a sense, all that advertising to the mass consumer isn't a lot of use to me,' he says ruefully.But he has no regrets.

'To suggest it entices people to bust up their marriages is just silly,' says Mr Brookman.And Mr Pullen is equally pleased with Rowe & Maw's result in Athens.

'I only wish David Beckham had taken his free kick and scored a few moments earlier,' Mr Pullen says.

'Then our ad would have been up at the time, and it would have been in all the photographs of the goal in the newspapers the next day.'Some things - even in the most choreographed campaign - you just cannot plan.Stephen Ward is a freelance journalist