Marketing departments at the top UK firms are struggling to improve brand awareness and to get partners to buy into their initiatives, research has revealed.

A survey of 70 marketing departments - respondents included City firms Ashurst, Clifford Chance, Dechert and Denton Wilde Sapte, as well as US and Australian firms - saw more than four in five senior marketeers (83%) identify brand awareness and partner buy-in as their most pressing problems, while 70% complained of a lack of resources.

One respondent to the survey, conducted by market research group BPRI, said: 'The bigger the firm gets, the harder it is to get partner buy-in, as there are more people to manage and more partners to agree to something.'

By contrast, US marketing departments cited the prevailing economic climate and international credibility as their two biggest problems, while their Australian counterparts pinpointed brand awareness and limited resources.

The survey also found that small marketing departments were likely to feel better integrated within their firms but were under-resourced, while large teams said they had sufficient resources but were under-valued.

Paul Jaffa, chairman of marketing forum the Professional Services Marketing Group, said that achieving brand awareness - making a firm stand out from the crowd as providing a different service from its competitors - was probably the biggest challenge facing law firm marketing departments.

He said: 'Most marketing directors' experience is that firms, even those at the top, are highly aspirational and want to be like the market leaders.

It can be quite difficult to tell partners they really are not, say, the top property practice.

Clients say that service delivery is what time and time again marks people out.'

BPRI director David Burton said: 'Some marketing professionals are clearly having a hard time bringing their firms into the 21st century.'

Philip Hoult