Sam: Welcome to the Passle CMO Series Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Melanie Hill, CMO at Chambers and Partners, to explore some fascinating new research on how the role of the law firm CMO is changing and where it's headed next.

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Sam: Melanie, thanks for coming on. It's great to have you with us.

Melanie: Thanks for having me.

Sam: I'm sure, most of the listeners know, but for anyone who's less familiar, could you tell us a little bit about Chambers and Partners and, and maybe tell us a little bit about the research?

Melanie: Yeah, absolutely. Chambers has been conducting independent research into the legal markets for, well, over 30 years now. We would consider ourselves the sort of lead- leading legal and data and intelligence provider. I mean, we work globally with large law firms, but also medium and small law firms and boutique law firms, but everything in between all shapes and sizes. And we're in a really sort of privileged position where we talk to both the buyers of legal services, but also the providers of legal services. So we speak to about 1,000  buyers of legal services every day as part of the research process, but we are essentially researching the providers of legal services, so law firms.

So this specific piece of research, for me, obviously, being a CMO is particularly interesting. We deal with CMOs as one of our key personas on a sort of daily basis. They're the personas at the law firms that tend to aggregate and assimilate all of the research, and provide us with all of the referees, et cetera, as part of our research process. So while we deal with them on a sort of daily basis, I think at Chambers we didn't really know much about that particular persona, so we didn't really know much about the CMOs. We didn't know much about, you know, what they need in their day-to-day, um, roles and what Chambers can provide them on their day-to-day roles. What data could we provide them? So this particular piece of research was a strategic piece to really understand the roles of the CMOs at law firms and how they're changing and how they've, how they're evolving.

Sam: So I know this the research covered a lot of different points, but I wonder if I could compress you therefore,of everything that the data showed, what do you think legal CMOs most need to know?

Melanie: The data showed that revenue is a key growth factor that pretty much all of the CMOs are measuring, and they're prioritizing measuring that revenue growth, especially as a key factor of marketing success. 81% prioritize revenue growth, while we had sort of 69% prioritizing client retention and cross-selling, which for me is quite interesting. My background is financial services and mission critical software, so I've always worked in that kind of space. For me, it's really interesting that new business acquisition was really not one of the top prioritizations. I would be used to most marketing functions focusing on new business acquisition, but really this was about retaining clients and achieving the cross-sell.

So that was quite surprising to me, again, not being from the legal space. But I do think it's very key, and it becomes out very clearly in the data, that CMOs are absolutely a strategic, impactful function of a law firm now. You know, no longer are they ... I used to joke that they'd be the, you know, marketing is often seen as the coloring-in department and running a few events, and that definitely isn't what the data is showing. This is a strategic board level role that's driving real value and impacting the bottom line.

Sam: So the report touches on brand, it talks about reputation, it talks about data and driving commercial results. Can you talk a little bit about what the numbers show around those key focus points for CMOs?

Melanie: 55% believe that brand is a key factor in driving client hiring decisions. We're just about to release a piece of thought leadership as well that talks about the link between performance, client hiring, employee value proposition, talent attraction retention. It might not be a surprise that those pieces are linked, but clearly being able to have robust measurements around your brand is a key factor to the strategic CMOs and how they're delivering value. Reputation becomes measurable and, and a business asset, and if we look, and I know from my background and, and what I'm interested in, about 15 to 17% of the enterprise value of many companies is the brand alone. So no longer is brand just a kind of this ethereal, you know, nice to have piece. It's actually a real impact and measurable impact on the business. So if you think about 17 to 15% or 15 to 17% of the company's value is their brand, if you just rebrand alone, you immediately just wipe out that 15 to 17% of the enterprise value of a company.

So you need to be really, really conscious and careful about how you deal with the brand. But I think CMOs, and certainly the data is indicating, that brand reputation is a key factor to commercial success. And again, this piece of thought leadership we've got coming out in September is really digging into the drivers behind, and the links between brand rankings, performance, and growth. So these CMOs definitely are understanding that measuring the brand is really critical and really important, and to do that in a consistent and repeatable way, is really critical to the business, and showing that you're delivering value to the business.

Sam: That's a really important point. I think a lot of the CMOs that we talk to, a lot of the marketing leaders within law firms, feel like that relationship between marketing and the firm needs to be a really actively worked on asset for the marketing team. Does the research touch on that at all? It could... I think it mentions the relationship between managing partners and CMO. What did we learn from that?

Melanie: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the key and sort of striking data points was that 46% of the CMOs cite that partner alignment and buy-in is one of the biggest barriers to growth. So you know, they're really kind of suffering with the fact that they can't get that partner alignment and buy-in. So I think again, it is really critical to be able to work, you know, become a strategic partner to the partners of the firm, but also to be able to demonstrate the brand, the work that you're doing is delivering value to the real, to the business and impacting the bottom line. Again, if 81% are prioritizing revenue growth and they can demonstrate that in a sensible way, but in conjunction with that, measure the brand at the same time, you will bring people on that journey that these two things are really critically, well they're interconnected. And I always think about revenue and pipeline and brand is two pieces of the pie that you need to look after together.

So for example, pipeline and revenue is more quarter on quarter, month on month, you know, year on year. Whereas brand will really impact your future pipeline that's sort of 18 months, two years away. So looking after, you have to look after the immediate pipeline, but also measure the brand at the same time, and make sure that you're driving that future, protecting that future pipeline and that future revenue. So again, brand becomes critical, and ultimately, in my head, I've been brought up as a person that really focuses on demand generation, and measurable results and data. In my head, whatever you invest in brand now, and whatever you do to protect the brand now, will protect the future pipeline. So the two things are very critically connected.

Sam: Yeah. It's a great, it's a great way of sort of summarizing that long and short term need to work together for the success of the firm. I guess that's a good- 

Melanie: Yeah, and- 

Sam: A good point there, Melanie,  to sort of summarize a little bit of the research and, and to sort of say it seems like where the role of the CMO is going is more into that, trusted business partner space, that strategic space. But there's still a lot more work to be done in that relationship between the CMO and the firm and the managing partner.

Melanie: Yeah, I think there is. I mean, you'll probably know better than I will, because you'll be talking to your, to the CMOs and the struggles that they have, getting partner buy-in and alignment. I think that relationship is really, really critical. And they need to continue working on that. But again, I would always say lean on the data and intelligence. Lean on the... Make, allow your partner or allow your stakeholders generally just to use the data or see the data to be able to make those data-led decisions. One of the start findings that really surprised me was that only 10% of the respondents used data and intelligence, and found that data intelligence was core and essential. So it's only 10% of the CMOs, which to me was really surprising. Because in my head, again, data and intelligence have to be every p- have to be helping you to make every part of the decision, to build your strategy, to build your brand strategy, to build, build and protect your revenue, to achieve the cross-sell.

You know, all of that has to be driven by data and intelligence, and if only 10% are recognizing that data intelligence are core and essential, then there's a huge gap. You know, there's a huge gap of information that these CMOs need to be able to make those sort of better decisions and actually demonstrate value to those partners.

So yes, absolutely critical. Work with your stakeholders, work with your partners. I'm not an expert in law firms, but I just, I know that you do have to provide that data to all of your stakeholders, which would be obviously in this case the partners of the firm. 

Sam: That's great advice. I think that's a nice place to end it there, Melanie.We will put a link to the research so that anyone listening can go and check that out. But it was lovely to have you on. We really appreciate it.

Melanie: Thank you very much. It was lovely to be invited.

Charlie: You can follow the Passle CMO Series podcast on your preferred podcast platform. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time