Q&A: Ian Powell

The secrets of success

In his role as marketing director at UK firm Irwin Mitchell, IAN POWELL has succeded in creating a successful and well-respected marketing and business development team. Here he offers insight into his journey from marketing junior to award-winning director and reveals how he hopes to see his firm's marketing function develop in the future. Interview by Lucy McNulty.

With a career spanning two decades in the marketing arena, what is it about the marketing profession that engages you?
Working in the legal marketing industry and indeed any marketing department presents you with an opportunity to drive businesses forward and gives you the ability to influence and make change, and I think that is what I find such an interesting element of the profession. Also as the perceived value attached to marketing departments within the legal sector has increased dramatically in the past ten years or so, it has helped to place those working in the profession at the forefront of a rapidly changing industry. Indeed, in recent years the marketing profession has progressed from a function commonly placed on the periphery of things, with marketing professionals seen as ‘the brochure people’ and consistently put in charge of what I call ‘the fluffy stuff’, to a function which businesses, and particularly market-led businesses, now embrace. Marketing and business development departments are now positioned at the centre as opposed to the periphery and those working in this arena get involved in most, if not all, areas in the business driving change and bringing in new business.
At Irwin Mitchell, we took into account this shift in focus by rebranding our marketing team to a business development and communications department in 2002. We wanted to ensure the firm’s marketing function reflected more closely the business development work we were focusing on so we set about orchestrating a move away from the low-value work that those in the department had been focusing their time on, towards the more high-value business development activity – such as client relationship management (CRM), business analysis, market intelligence, product development, lobbying and public affairs, e-commerce and such like. This high impact work adds a lot more value to the business and also drives a better return on investment (ROI) because with targeted campaigns you can actually point to the new business being brought through the door directly as a result of initiatives that we are running.
We, therefore, now have a real impact on the bottom line and with that comes a real sense of achievement. Everything we do is geared towards profit and that enables us to make a real impact on the business. And I find that a very attractive element of the profession.

What is it that makes you and your team stand out?
I imagine that the fact that everything we try and do is focused upon adding value helps us to stand out. But I am sure that working at Irwin Mitchell also helps us to get noticed because this is not a typical law firm. It has embraced change and it gives non-legal people the opportunity to excel [following a restructure of the management board at his firm, Powell became a full board member, along with fellow non-legal directors from human resources, group operations and finance, in 2001]. This receptivity to change has enabled us to bring in ‘best practice’ marketing concepts from outside the industry and apply them to the legal world, from direct response television campaigns right through to the more traditional CRM.
Ultimately however whatever we try and do is driven by the need to add value to the business. Yet, when you ask marketers from other firms what the most important aspect of what they do is, it is very rarely that they talk about driving profit. And as that’s something I believe we at Irwin Mitchell, are passionate about, I would say it is perhaps this constant focus on ROI that makes us differ from other teams.
We have found the web is perhaps the most useful medium we can use to do this. With a web platform you can easily and accurately measure enquiries and thereby see precisely how much new business has come in via the internet from targeted campaigns.
We implement a scientific approach to our web strategy, using a combination of online marketing tools and ensuring that our e-communication is supported by other off-line communication strategies. For example, our ‘new media team’ liaises with the our in-house press office to break news via new media, as a means by which to drive new business in the door. The web plays a big part in this. If, for example, there is an outbreak of illness abroad we will move very quickly to ensure we have media coverage on the matter, which is supported by online coverage using search engine optimisation and pay-per-click to drive traffic to the site. In one particular case involving a possible outbreak of illness at the Bahia Principe Hotel in the Dominic Republic, we brought in a large number of clients through incorporating this breaking news strategy into a campaign which involved our international partner Clive Gartner appearing on broadcast and in printed media providing comment and advice on the situation. This PR, coupled with strong web-based promotion of the firm led to Irwin Mitchell being instructed by more than 1000 claimants.
We also differ by having quite a stable team of very good marketers, which is quite unusual as most marketers tend to move on very quickly. When I started in this role I spent quite a long time putting together a very good team and it was time well invested because we work well together, we know each others strengths and weaknesses and everyone pulls together.
Our cross-practice marketing focused groups that we have in place at the firm help us to stand out as well as I don’t think they are all that common within the legal profession. For instance, the Product and Project Management Group, which I have co-chaired since 2006 together with Joe Simpson (partner and head of Insurance Services), was established to guarantee we apply best practice in all cross-firm change management projects and new product developments to ensure that we can develop new products quickly while implementing effective change management projects to improve efficiencies.

Much has changed in the marketing and business development departments at Irwin Mitchell since you arrived at the firm. Have you encountered any challenges in implementing these changes?
One of the greatest challenges when implementing change is always achieving firm-wide buy-in. When we rebranded the marketing team in 2002 the firm brought into it wholeheartedly because we took the time to explain to the senior management of the various departments what it was we were trying to accomplish in instigating such change. It helped considerably that there was a strong belief among the senior management of the practice that we had to add value in everything we do and that positioning the department away from the low level marketing stuff would enable us to do this. There was, of course, a couple of sceptics. For instance, there were some people who expressed concern about how moving away from the fluffier marketing work would benefit but, by and large, such concern was quelled when it became apparent that the changes planned would enable us to add a great deal of value to the business.. We rebranded five years now ago and although it certainly takes a while to get there and you have got to have a clearly defined concept of where you want to take the department , what you want to deliver and how you can assist the firm, the benefits to the bottom line when it is all in place are undeniable.

What are the key factors to maintaining a successful legal marketing and business development team?

A belief that what you do adds value because I still don’t think all partners or all legal professionals always see the advantages of and the return a marketing department can bring. So its imperative that you have that belief in yourself;
The ability stand up and be counted, to argue your corner;
The ability to be flexible. What may work in one industry might not necessarily work in the legal sector but elements of it will so you need to take the bits that you know will work and mould them for the environment that you work within. We try, wherever possible, to ensure we are not bureaucratic and we don’t lay in various processes and systems just because we want to. Wherever possible do not just look inward into the sector but focus your attention instead on what’s best agreed and best practice externally and apply that.

How do you think legal marketing and business development will change in the near future?
I think the industry is going to get more and more competitive thanks in part to the opportunities (and threats) which the Legal Services Act (LSA) will bring about, but also as a result of the growing emphasis on e-communication within the market.
Furthermore, there is a growing trend among our larger clients to involve procurement in the decision-making processes at their organisations, when selecting or implementing new legal suppliers or panels for example, which is likely to impact the legal marketing world. Because this practice takes the responsibility away from the legal teams normally entrusted with such work and in doing so removes any importance attached to the personal relationship you may have developed with the said legal team over time. At Irwin Mitchell we have seen this happen more and more frequently. Indeed, some of our clients are now reviewing their panels on an almost annual basis via third party procurement officers, with some even moving towards e-communication or e-auctions for work – procurement via the web. And finally I have noticed significant importance attached to the existence of ethical and environmental policies in legal services. This has grown out of public pressure for socially responsible practices in business and also because many large non-legal organisations have now adopted very stringent ethical policies and they expect their suppliers to fit in with them as well.

How is Irwin Mitchell preparing for these changes?
Such changes result in a constant need to add value and to ensure that whatever you do benefits the firm either through new business, through a measured increase in profile or in efficiencies.
I think it’s been quite well documented that we at Irwin Mitchell see opportunities being created by the LSA to move into partnerships with organisations and to be able to offer clients greater access to legal services 24/7. The way in which the client wants to receive legal services today has radically altered. Immediate access to legal services is now widely expected by the general public and rightly so when you consider that this has been offered by other sectors for a number of years.
The LSA will enable the industry to offer a much more consumer facing service to clients and we have already begun to prepare for that. We now have our own legal helpline that is offered on a 24/7 basis and we have also entered into joint initiatives with large organisations through which they either provide our legal services to their employees as part of their employee benefits packages or sell to their customers as part of an extended range of ‘added value’ services. We are lucky to be one of a few firms that offers a wide enough range of legal services to be able to do this and through offering services, such as those outlined above, it is hoped it will enable us to promote the Irwin Mitchell brand effectively in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
We have also brought in a new business procurement manager, from the procurement industry, who is able to understand the procurement process and therefore can help us to better respond to large formal tenders. And we are preparing for the increased focus on environmental and ethical status within the industry by implementing an expansive social responsibility policy at the firm which involves measuring our carbon footprint and working to reduce it, undertaking pro bono work, supporting various charitable causes including Business In The Community and our own charity , ‘101 donations’. But Irwin Mitchell has always been a law firm which considers ethical policies important so incorporating such systems into the firm has not required a large change in the way in which we do business here.
Indeed in terms of change we are constantly reviewing the market place and looking at what opportunities exist within the sector so that we may work with the partners to take advantage of any opportunities that arrive.
And in light of our recent success at the Legal Marketing Awards 2008 [Powell’s team was highly commended in the Best City/National Marketing Team category] we are obviously doing something right!

Ian Powell is marketing director at UK firm Irwin Mitchell. He can be contacted at Ian.Powell@IrwinMitchell.com.