Profile: Cherie Olland

As global director of business development and communications at international firm Jones Day, Cherie Olland is all too familiar with the challenges of successfully taking a growing firm to market. By Kate Clifton.

Currently, Cherie Olland is responsible for a team of more than 50 staff and has firm-wide responsibility for seven functional areas: internal and external print and electronic communications; market research; marketing materials; marketing technology; publications; public information, relations and advertising; and, seminars and events. Alongside that, she is a member of the firm-wide business-development committee, and a frequent speaker and writer on her discipline. With all this activity, she is a very difficult lady to pin down.

When we eventually manage to synchronise our diaries for a chat, Olland has just returned from a morning meeting to find a large bouquet of flowers in her office – a gift in honour of the fact that she has now been at the firm for 20 years, taking on her current role in 1991. In this time, she has seen Jones Day grow into a global firm with 30 offices in different continents. So, there is plenty to talk about.

What changes have you seen since joining the firm?
“I’ve seen a big change in lawyers’ attitudes towards marketing itself. There’s a much greater acceptance of it, with a deeper understanding of the purpose it serves and its benefits.

I think that we do much more. We have a bigger function within the firm and there are many more people who are active. My role, in managing the department and bringing in new ideas, hasn’t changed much. It’s pretty much the same as it was in the beginning, but there aren’t as many battles to wage.”

What are the main challenges of managing a global-marketing function?
“It’s really important to have a talented, unified group of people and managers who see themselves as a team. We didn’t fall out of the tree with 30 offices – we had about 12 when I first took the position. So when we add people, we make sure they have orientation for three days. We ensure that we have an annual meeting every year so that people can get to know one another and support each other. The way we operate as a firm is heavily integrated, so without this interaction it would be very difficult to do things. It also helps us to manage our brand, because everyone is working from the same page. We don’t just say ‘Go ahead Moscow, do whatever you feel like doing’. We have a central organisation that oversees the key functions that we provide – publications, events, technology, websites, marketing materials and market research. All of those things are managed centrally and then driven out across the different offices. The people in each office serve as our ambassadors – they help communicate our goals.”

How important is brand?
“The biggest challenge that I face is enforcing the brand globally. Every time you add a new office or a small group of lateral partners, they’re coming in with a different point of view. We have to integrate them and make sure they understand what our brand message is. They need to believe in it and you have to stay on it every day. It’s difficult as it means you have to say ‘No’ sometimes – and people don’t like to hear that. If we’ve thought it through and we know what our brand message is and that we have support for it at the top level of the firm, then we have a platform for saying ‘Yes’. Sometimes, I think brand is a bit or a red herring, but, a global, integrated organisation has to have a brand message. It’s not the be all and end all, but it helps you organise yourself around core aims, with a look and feel that’s consistent worldwide.

How do you instill your brand values in the firm’s staff?
“Brand understanding requires constant communication. I travel around a lot and the managing partner also reinforces it. He speaks about brand regularly. We just keep hammering it through and every time someone asks a question, we have the same answer.

This autumn, we will be communicating the brand message with a brochure and gift for people, so we can reinforce it in another way. People have different learning styles: visual learners or auditory learners, for example. So, we communicate in as many different ways as we can, so that people can find a way that fits them best.”

What are the most important aspects of your marketing and business-development activities?
“My personal point of view, but I think its shared by others at the firm, is that anything that gets you face to face with clients or potential clients is an extremely valuable enterprise. Distant things like public relations and brochures are a suite of tools that underpin your brand, but they certainly aren’t the same as client-facing activities.

There are thousands of ways to get this contact. You can do it through events and speaking engagements, or by picking up the phone and saying ‘I haven’t seen you in a while – let’s do lunch. These relationships are valuable and it would be foolish not to spend time on this. We will never say ‘Stop calling your clients, we’re going to spend a million dollars on advertising instead’.”

What has been the best aspect of your time at Jones Day?
“The lawyers that I work with have been great. You can really get the job done and it’s a pleasure to walk into that environment every day.

One of the things we’ve done over time is build a really great team with personality and commitment to the firm – and which remembers that it’s always about the client. I can illustrate this by reflecting how small the firm was when I first started, how it’s grown over time and the quality that’s come out of it.

At one time, we didn’t have any training for business development. The lawyers didn’t want it, as they thought it was a waste of time. We just kept pushing for a pilot and we got there in the end.”

So, patience is a virtue?
“Just because something doesn’t go down well one year, it doesn’t mean that it’s always going to be that way. I think the ability to stick with an idea that you believe in and not be afraid to raise it again, or reposition it further down the line, works well in a law-firm environment. You can’t get frustrated and say ‘I want this and I’m going to change the world tomorrow.’ It doesn’t work that way. Once you understand that, first, you’re less frustrated, but you’re also letting the natural evolution of thought process take place. And I think that people are usually much happier as a result.”

What other challenges are there?
“It’s also difficult figuring out how to allocate scarce resources. You can only have so much human capital or budget. Marketing can sometimes be like turning on a tap and pouring people and money into the drain. The challenge is to develop a really credible marketing strategy that sets the firm’s process-development strategy – a plan for people to understand. This gives you an iron-clad platform to gain support for various initiatives and ideas, without which you’re constantly ‘herding cats’. This can be applied to any free-flowing idea. The only way you ‘can put your arms around marketing’ is to have a properly articulated firm and a marketing strategy that everyone understands.”

How do you educate your people?
“We make sure that when we recruit people we bring them together for training, so there’s a steady flow of communication to get the strategy into their blood. This way, they can understand it and actually communicate it correctly. People do get the wrong idea from time to time, or they will make an assumption based on something that happened several years ago. Here, the business-development staff should be able to say ‘Let me help you see that through – this is what we can offer you today.’”

Are there any projects you’re especially proud of?
“The training programme is definitely something that I like to take credit for. It wasn’t a no-brainer. It wasn’t something that was universally accepted, so it was great once we got it through and implemented.

Developing our first advertising campaign was a really fun thing to do. We turned a corner with it and, again, I believe advertising is just one of a suite of tools you should have. It wasn’t a primary tool but it was an interesting project. The legislation that allowed US law firms to advertise came in around 1977. Although it opened the doors to advertising, within a fairly restrictive set of rules, firms like us really didn’t start doing it in earnest until well into the 1990s. Now, its more routine and we have a global advertising campaign, which is always interesting and fun to work on. Our marketing technology, people and market-research capabilities have all grown well over time.”

What does it take to be successful at this level?
“You need to grow a thick skin and keep a smile on your face, but I guess the real thing is to help everyone figure out who you are as a firm and make sure that everyone can articulate that and reinforce it in clients’ minds.

Stick with your initiatives and give them enough time to work – there are strongly held opinions in law firms.

Everyone has an opinion on marketing in law firms and the best thing to do is to challenge misconceptions as you come across them. Have conversations with people, try to keep your ears open and listen. Sometimes a misconception occurs when we have somehow gone sideways and are not presenting ourselves the way that we should be, so don’t always assume that you’re in the right.”