We are lucky at Passle to be able to attend the LMA's fantastic annual conference this week, luckier still we were delighted to share the stage with Carolyn Manning, Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer at Mintz, to discuss how mid-market firms can punch above their weight and build their brand to become a destination for talent and business. 

Mintz are classed as a mid-market firm with roughly 550 attorneys and in order to compete with larger, more recognisable brands (such as AM Law top 50 firms) they need to be able to showcase their expertise and the value they deliver. This is much harder for mid-market firms as they do not have the access to the same level of resources or budget. In this session Carolyn spoke with Eugene McCormick about how she overcomes this challenge at Mintz and the journey she is on to build the brand of the firm.

Here are the key takeaways from a fantastic session: 

Why is brand a challenge?
 
- Carolyn explained how brand is a challenge for a firm like Mintz because they are not necessarily the obvious and safe choice.

- Mintz are brilliant at what they do but they need to make sure that their brand matches up to this

Building the plan

- For Mintz it is important to put the client at the centre of the brand. Mintz have an alumni network for clients to help them expand their professional network and keep in the Mintz fold

- Carolyn also spoke about the importance of creating regular content. If you create content then your name is out there. We have seen much more content since the pandemic. Whilst quantity is great, Carolyn is very focused on high quality content

- It is really important to then share this content in as many places as possible and feed back the success of the content to the Attorneys

- Carolyn doesn't have the luxury of having a large PR team. Mintz have 3 in-house PR experts and then have found it really helpful to leverage the advice of an external agency 

Closing the gap between the firms capability and perception

- Mintz cannot match the sheer volume of work that their competition is capable of. They can be more nimble and more intelligent about speaking about the work they are doing

- Carolyn and her team have been able to get authentic insights directly from their lawyers to establish them as experts in their domain

- Content at Mintz has 9 lives, their insights are shared on social channels, website, email marketing and importantly content is used as a BD tool for nurturing clients directly 1-2-1

Challenges of brand will be familiar for every CMO, but as Carolyn went on her internal roadshow at Mintz, brand "bubbled up" as a priority for the firm. Carolyn has undertaken a journey to resolve those challenges for Mintz and there are so many lessons others can take from her experience. For those wanting a deeper look at Carolyn's insights you can catch her on the Passle podcast talking about the same topic: CMO Series Ep 15 - Carolyn Manning