Law Society: story-telling tool for staff
The Law Society is to spend £400,000 on its annual advertising campaign, which will this year be focused mainly on a range of private client services from solicitors, Legal Futures can reveal.
It has appointed Yorkshire-based PR and marketing agency DTW to handle the campaign, which will launch at the start of September and continue through to December.
The society’s membership board was told earlier this month that it has two aims: to “sensitise members of the public, including SMEs, to needs which can be served by solicitors”, and educate them on how to access solicitors; and to “improve members’ confidence that the Law Society is meeting their expectations to represent, promote and support them – especially in generating new business”.
The campaign will focus on the top five areas of consumer law in terms of volume and number of searches on the society’s ‘Find a Solicitor’ website – conveyancing, wills and probate, personal injury, criminal and family law. It will also be aimed at small businesses, around employment law and business advice.
It will be a ‘multi-channel’ effort, including public relations, social media, video, online and outdoor advertising, including online adverts on ITV Player. There will also be printed and electronic materials for solicitors to use locally.
The society is planning a survey towards the end of the year so as to “measure the impact of the campaign with our members”.
As revealed by this website in March, the society is separately working on an £80,000 project to make it more ‘member focused’.
A report on its progress to the membership board said the project team has developed a “story telling tool” which will “help communicate in a consistent, compelling and relevant way the purpose of the society so that members have information to inform and support their consideration of the value of the society”.
All of the Law Society’s employees are to be trained in how to use this tool, the report said.
It said there are also plans to use members’ “voices” in the society’s communications so as to “leverage the value of peer-to-peer endorsement”. Those on the membership board were asked to identify one member “who has a positive story to tell about how they have benefitted from their membership of the society”.
The project team has also created a series of ‘pen portraits’ of solicitors working in a range of different environments that aim to help staff “understand in more depth the world our members operate in and, through greater knowledge and understanding, serve members more effectively”.
Can anyone tell me whether past Law Society campaigns have had much of an impact with the public? I would think this sort of advertising has very little value in raising awareness or increasing sales unless it is very high profile and ‘in your face’.
Of course, if it’s just to demonstrate value to members, then I’m sure it will be a great success 😉