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Maura Brandt, chief marketing officer, Crowell & Moring

How have your marketing efforts evolved during the last five years?

I joined Crowell & Moring in November of 2019, a few months before we moved to a remote working environment as the result of COVID-19. For a new CMO, this situation presented both challenges and tremendous opportunities. It afforded me, at such an early point in my tenure, to see how the firm responded to an unprecedented situation for our clients, our industry and our firm.

What I came to appreciate and see play out time and time again to the benefit of our clients and our community is the strength of Crowell’s culture and what we refer to as “low walls.” The firm takes problem solving collaboration, whether it’s one on one with a client, assembling cross-disciplinary teams or working seamlessly with other outside counsel, to a whole new level.

...COVID-19 resulted in our accelerating cross-disciplinary initiatives, expanding proven channels and replicating already existing collaborative working group structures.

The firm’s collaborative instincts and commitment to identifying and aligning resources and talent in a manner that is directly responsive to client needs enabled us to quickly help clients deal with new and novel situations — not just what was immediately in front of them, but around the next two corners.

As a firm with deep regulatory roots and valuable government-facing litigation experience, we were able to quickly assemble working groups and deploy teams across the firm to cover both substantive areas and different geographic jurisdictions. This enabled us to be nimble and forward-looking and to strategize about expertise we could offer our clients to mitigate risk and provide them with the critical answers they needed to create short term and long-term response plans and strategies.

We did all of this by first and foremost prioritizing constant communication with our clients, developing approaches and offerings that were responsive to both the unique and shared problems that our clients were navigating. We also used valuable and established channels, like our client service teams and our weekly partners meetings, to understand our clients’ needs, share insights, highlight critical and timely expertise, and identify value-oriented support and solutions.

Communication is foundational to our client service commitment and was critical to the way we responded throughout the pandemic, and the way we continue to respond and serve our clients. Communication, and our focus on ensuring that we reflect the “voice of the client” in all dimensions of our marketing program, includes regular interaction by the attorneys who work most closely with the client beyond the work that we are privileged to handle. It also includes inviting clients in to speak with us about topics that are important to them, leadership visits by our chair, timely programming and substantive insights, and continuous feedback.

How does your marketing department drive strategic plans and lead the charge in a time of change?

Across the entire marketing department, from client service and practice and industry focused business development, to events and CRM, to content and communications, our professionals consistently demonstrate their ability to not only develop and drive strategy, but also to be able to pivot, which — as we have learned over the past 18 months — is critical.

As I mentioned previously, both instinctively and purposefully, we prioritize bringing the “voice of the client” to what we do. The pandemic required us to create a whole new game plan — one that prioritized our professionals working shoulder to shoulder with our attorneys to not only anticipate client needs, but to put ourselves in our clients’ shoes and appreciate the business and legal challenges, as well as the important people challenges.

The department worked collectively, collaboratively and smartly, sharing best practices, identifying creative solutions and products, and tapping into the expertise, diverse backgrounds and different perspectives of our professionals.

In addition, through interactions both formal and informal, our team leaned on one another to find better and different approaches and produce value-oriented client offerings. They also supported our client relationship attorneys in ensuring that we were connecting the appropriate dots to bring our clients the best answers and the right solutions.

One of the notable things about 2020, and continuing into 2021, was that Crowell & Moring grew significantly, bringing on new lateral partners and groups of partners, to meet the expanding and diverse needs of our clients. It was essential that we integrate these new laterals with a real focus on connecting them where they were needed most — clients that would benefit from their expertise. In addition, we quickly identified opportunities to have them join our continuing lineup of timely webinars and other programming, and to participate in the “expert agendas” we assembled to educate clients about areas of critical importance and impact to help them think not just about the immediate, but about what was coming next.

Our business development, marketing and communications professionals play a critical leadership role in designing and facilitating our lateral integration process.

What is your firm’s most effective marketing channel?

Although it is not what might be traditionally defined as a “marketing channel,” two of our most effective client relationship tools are our client service teams and our Business Development and Acceptance Committee (“BDAC”).

Our formal and informal client service teams are structured in a manner that ensures we are operating in an informed, proactive, coordinated and client-directed manner. Our BDAC is responsible for both identifying and implementing programs to support and advance our commitment to client service excellence. But this committee, which includes attorneys and business development professionals, is also in many ways an incubator and a catalyst for new ideas and initiatives to ensure that we are continuing to provide the highest level of service excellence to our clients.

Our client service teams and the BDAC are responsible for many of the new ideas and initiatives that we end up formalizing and implementing as a firm.

What marketing and business development initiatives born out of COVID-19 will be used in the future?

I would say that COVID-19 resulted in our accelerating cross-disciplinary initiatives, expanding proven channels and replicating already existing collaborative working group structures. This afforded us the opportunity to quickly and efficiently assemble the right expertise.

Our efforts also benefitted from a proven model of bringing together attorneys and our business development, communications and marketing professionals, to think not only about the solutions we need to provide our clients, but the most effective way of sharing and delivering information and insights, both externally and internally. Things moved quickly, and we needed to keep pace not only with the answers and insights, but also with creative delivery models that were responsive to our clients’ needs.

Our embrace of cross-disciplinary and collaborative approaches and structures enhances our ability to serve our clients proactively, efficiently and effectively.