Rob and Murray dive into brand, culture and cross border mergers with global branding guru Bill Schroeder, Principal, Clarity Consulting Group (Part 2 of 2)

This is part II of GMT's in depth discussion with ⁠Bill Schroeder⁠ principal and founder of Clarity Group Consulting, the premier professional services brand advisory. In this episode we talk through how firms, especially those with global components, can approach the brand elements of the merged firm. Best in class firms think though the implications of the soon to be merged new entity far earlier in the process than we have seen historically. Listen to Bill discuss the ways firms can approach this effort while both maximizing the efforts of management while also allowing for strong input from both partners and clients. 

Contact Rob and Murray:
Robert C. Bata, Founder and Principal, WarwickPlace Legal
Email: rbata@warwickplace.com

Murray M. Coffey, Founder and Principal, M Coffey
Email: murray@mcoffey.net

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Robert, welcome to GMT, the podcast for globally minded law firm leaders with your host. Robert Bata, principal of Warwick place legal and Murray Coffey, principal of M Coffey, between them, Rob and Murray have about three quarters of a century's experience working with some of the most notable law firms on the planet. This podcast is designed to help those law firm leaders tasked with growth make great decisions about whether and how to implement cross border expansion for their firms and what it takes to succeed. All right, and welcome back. This is part two of GM T's discussion with clarity groups. Founder and principal, Bill Schroeder, well, one thing I think is really important we've talked a lot about is the client right, and that's critical right to building brands. So one of the things that we try to gage while we go through interviews internally is how ready for change is this organization is this firm, and oftentimes we find that leaders, top level leaders, think that their partners are not as ready for change as they might be. And so there are exercises that we do. We do this with the client interviews as well, and we do it with the firm where we will, we call it a speed round, where we'll ask, in the interview with a client, we'll ask them, let's go down a set of words, just pairs of words, and there's about 10 of them. Is this firm that we're talking about today that services you? Are they more this or more this, more this or more this? And they sort of rank them across measures for pairs of words, so one might be more modern, more traditional, for example. And then after they do that, we'll say, now let's talk about your ideal law firm. If you could create the ideal law firm, what would that look like? And they go through the same pairs of words, and invariably, you tend to see a shift more toward modern, more toward innovative, more toward all of those things we do the same thing internally. Talk about the firm today, to the partners and others. We talk to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then we say, tell us how you'd like to see the firm evolve. So what comes out of that is data that shows you what your clients think of you today and what they'd like you to be, what you think of yourselves today, and what you would ideally like to be. And if there are any gaps, and I would say most of the time, you're very aligned with your clients. Law firms are very aligned with their clients and where they want to and where they want to go, and they want to go further. So that gives leaders the impetus to say, we heard from you. We talked to a lot of you, and this is what we heard from our clients as well. So we're gonna, we're gonna start to make a bigger shift, which moves toward the activation work that you're talking about Murray, which is workshopping things to try to figure out within the context of our positioning and who we say we are. What do we need to change around here? What do we need to do differently around here, and how do we generate those ideas within the firm?

Rob Bata: 2:57

So how, how do you approach a merger, when obviously two different firms and in order to create a brand that reflects what will be the ultimate one hopes the product of the merger? How? Do you how do you assess the different cultures and the brands that those different firms already have, and what is the process by which you kind of try to merge those ideas and concepts? I mean the

Unknown: 3:37

simplest terms. We're looking at, what are the firms saying about themselves on their websites and in their marketing materials? Definitely, materials. Definitely, that's a starting point. And then we're doing a significant number of interviews. One of the differences between corporate branding and a branding where you're doing where you're working with a partnership of owners is we believe you have to hear from a large number of folks who are the owners. So whereas you might go into a corporate structure and talk to 10 people, I might go into a law firm of 3000 lawyers and talk to 100 partners, I will do focus groups with senior associates and with senior administrative folks. Again, in addition to client data, we're doing client research as well, but through those interviews, you're really trying to dig into, again, what are the values around here? What do we do? Give me examples of how we're different. If you worked at another firm and you lateraled In, how is your firm different from this one? We're really trying to dig into those kinds of values and characteristics that set the firm apart. They're hard to get to, right? This is a category that is not highly differentiated, but as firms come together and merge, and there are fewer of them that will, that will naturally play out, and then what we're doing is we're comparing what we're hearing from the one firm against the other, and hearing what we're hearing from them. And we're looking for commonalities that are positives, of course, and we're looking. Are commonalities that might want to be we might want to leave behind, and then we're pulling that together and saying, Here's what we heard from both firms that we think are really exciting, and you're in agreement on, how do we start to leverage those things? Because they're really client benefits too. We're hearing from clients they like that about you, you're particularly agile, you know, you don't noodle everything, you're not super academic, you're very business focused. You build these really deep relationships. And here are 10 examples of how you do that. So we're starting to build those kind of commonalities, and then we're presenting that back as a strategy, like here are the shared values. We think that you all have. Some are going to be aspirational, because we're building something new. We're not just going to rest on who you are. And here are some things that weren't so great, so we're going to need to turn those it's going to take some work. So here's a new sort of value, or here's a new characteristic we want to be living. So that's how we start to build a strategy that makes sense.

Rob Bata: 5:53

And do you get resistance about that? Internal resistance? Obviously, you're hired to do a job and so on. On a macro level, clearly, people want you to do your job, and it's accepted that you do a job that's worth doing. But when you when you dig down into these things, do you feel that you're able to draw out people's genuine perceptions. And I didn't just mean, is somebody shy talking about or not shy? I just mean, are you going to have people who think that that's a great opportunity to to have a lot of complaints, or people who think that's a great opportunity to tell you that branding doesn't matter to them and it's just just a load of nonstick

Unknown: 6:42

I surprisingly, we had really good, really good experiences. To be honest, I have not really had any major challenges, oftentimes, especially in the more conservative firms, will say we've never had this exercise before. This is great. I feel like I'm in therapy and I'm able to talk about all sorts of things no one's asked me about before, and we're like, well, you're an owner in the firm, this is really important that you think about these things and you talk about them. So now we've had really good experiences. And when we present the strategy, because we've heard from so many people, it's hard to argue with it. It's hard to say, well, you know, you're a consultant, you made all this up. I didn't make it up. We're pulling it from what we heard from your people and your people and your clients, and just sort of, you know, formulating it into a strategy, I will say. And we hear this all the time in law firms, people don't hire the firm, they hire me, and my brand is what's critical. That is 100% true, right? You hire the lawyer, the best lawyer you can for what you need, especially in these big, you know, corporate on these big corporate matters at the same time, you know, we like to say a rising tide lifts all boats. So, you know, we want you to have a stellar individual brand, but we also want the firm to have a stellar brand. And the story I tell is, I was interviewing a client of a law firm one day, this is several years ago, and she said, you know, you don't hire Jane Doe at McKinsey. You hire McKinsey, and the law firm that figures that out will have something formidable. And there certainly are firms that have figured that out. There are firms that have brands. You could argue, Kirkland has a strong brand, right? Skadden has a brand. There are there's a when you think of these firms, you think about the way they perform in a consistent way, and the way they look and feel, and there's a sense, right? And there's others, plenty of others too. But that idea that it isn't just about you, and for law firm leaders, you obviously want to keep your your best people, so the more you can build a firm brand that stands for something internally as well and keeps and attracts talent, the better for you, right? We know laterals are constantly jumping and going to other firms, if it's just about money, and money, of course, is a main driver. Probably the main driver. You're going to miss out on something. I think so. I think it's a way to help to attract and retain talent too. Is if you start to build this, this entity that we want to belong to, right? You don't want to be part of

Rob Bata: 9:09

something. Yeah, it's an interesting point about you're not hiring the lawyer, you're hiring the firm. Of course, there are people who feel exactly the opposite, who think that it doesn't matter what firm I'm with, I have this personal relationship with clients that they're hiring me this that kind of thinking actually could be empirically demonstrated as as being flawed when I think back on my experience in the in the late 90s, when US firms were beginning to enter London, and as was I with my firm and many of these US firms, which didn't have major Wall Street practices, one of the firms, ironically, that that happened to was a firm, Chicago firm called the sun and shine. And Rosenthal, which, as, as you know, in a later incarnation, became Dentons, but they were an enormous failure in London at that point, which I'm sure you know, this is part of legal law. This is not anything particularly insulting to say. So I think it is important when, when people think that they are hired simply for their own relationships and their own capacities. I think it's it's great to be very confident about that, but you also have to know that behind you stands of that firm with a strong brand.

Unknown: 10:37

Well, you know the other thing I think to this conversation, if you're saying, you know, they hire me, not the firm. Oftentimes, the thing you always hear about, why are we having this big merger right cross border mergers, is because we want to have this platform where we can service our clients and we so that, in and of itself, to me, says we need to have a consistent level of quality and approach and ways of working across the firm. So it kind of doesn't make any sense if you're thinking about mergers, and you know, going to this major platform, if you're not willing to think about the firm as a brand, as a as an organization with similar ways of working and similar ways of being right, if you're just going to what's the what's the value to me as an individual, if I just want to worry about my own matters and my own clients, and I don't want to take advantage

Rob Bata: 11:30

of that platform, okay? And sometimes that happens, especially with cross border and speaking of that, so I just want to explore with you a little bit how difficult is it, when you're looking at me, we've been talking about culture and law firm, when you're looking at dramatically different cultures, there are national cultures and and can you talk a little bit about what you've seen in that area where, of course, you know the saying about the UK and the US you know, To to countries, you know, divided by common language. In some ways, those can be the most challenging. The UK solicitor culture is very, very different from from us, lawyer culture, but maybe you can address that a little bit.

Unknown: 12:18

Yeah, it's a challenge you can't really talk about, you know, brand culture, if you don't talk about geographic, regional, national, local, cultural differences, right? And as I have traveled significantly and lived overseas, and I've had international clients, but I'm not, you know, a native UK person or a native German, you know, you just there's no way you're going to be that person. So you have to try to learn as you go, in some ways, you have to learn from the people in the firm about the way they do things around here and what feels right and doesn't feel right to them. Language, of course, has huge implications, because what one word means here might mean a completely different thing there, and the way you operationalize it, we sometimes rely on local people on the ground. So we'll work with other consultants we've worked with outside of the US. But I think you know, you just have to, you have to acknowledge it with leadership, that these are going to be part of the cultural issues that we're dealing with. And I think it gets to a larger point about how you start to bring the organizations together, and how you start to use your administrative folks through this process too. Where I've seen it really go off the rails is when you have two firms coming together from different geographies, with two sets of everything, right? Two CMOs and two, you know, heads of this and heads of that. And they're not working together. They're working at cross purposes, because they're still seeing themselves reporting up to different leaders who say that they're aligned on the vision and the mission, but maybe aren't quite as aligned as we think they are. So that's, that's one of the things I would say, is you have to get all of your senior administrative folks lined up with your senior leadership at the firm to understand what are the objectives here, and how are we going to make this work together? And we're going to have to learn as we go. We've also worked with coaches who come in, who specialize in working cross culturally to get teams to work better together. And we do a lot of workshopping ourselves, where we bring people together to do that.

Rob Bata: 14:28

And Murray, you've undoubtedly done that in house, so where you've, you've, you've, you've had that sort of consultation when there was some kind of international approach with, for example, your former firm,

Unknown: 14:42

right? Yeah, and, and with my former firm, the the mergers that we had were not, we're not what you know, we euphemistically called mergers of equals, right? So there weren't, there weren't, there weren't. Often times there wasn't a lot of duplication. But. What I will say is that what I found in those mergers with smaller, smaller firms, is that they didn't have same infrastructure levels that the that the that our firm has, and so they didn't have a CMO, and they weren't used to working with professionalized business development people. They weren't used to working with professionalized, you know, available, 24/7, it folks. And so there was a that too. And this is kind of gets outside of, I think, the brand discussion a little bit. But that too is a is a challenge as well, because, you know, we would find with, with some of the with, with at least one of the smaller firms that we merged with, they would show they wouldn't talk to us about a client meeting that they were going to have, and then they would show up at the client meeting with the US based partners, and they would each have different kinds of materials where somebody at the somebody at the at the firm that we had merged with, had grabbed some artwork, and I'm sure you can grab some artwork off the off the website, and, you know, threw it into a Word document and hoped that they had gotten the branding right. And, you know, it it just, it was that that's just a little example of it, but it was, it was also trying to get them to to to understand, hey, these resources are here, and this is what it means for for you, at least from a, you know, from an identity perspective. Now, I do have a question for both for Rob and Bill, and maybe we should wrap this up shortly. But what is the role we see that that firms that are merging, especially these larger firms that are merging, will hire professional services, consulting to to represent the merged entity, or the soon to be merged entity. You know, when I look at what's going on at ao, ao and Sherman Sterling, I'm looking at the comms work, and it's, it seems to me, and I just some indicia is that there's somebody working on behalf of the merged entity and creating the creating the comms from the merged entity, where, where does the Where does a clarity sort of get or should a clarity get inserted into this process? At what point, Rob, we've talked about, you know, sort of different points in the in the merger process. Is there a, is there a pre merger role, like, like, I mean, when they're still in discussions or, or is it the decisions been made, and now we bring in a clarity to reverse engineer this brand that we're gonna be putting out into the market? I just, I'm curious about this. I don't know if it happens or it should happen, or experience you've had with it,

Rob Bata: 18:05

because I'm going to give you that bill,

Unknown: 18:07

that's me, okay, if I can add, I feel like the earlier and the better. Again, it depends on your perspective on what you're trying to achieve. But if you really are thinking about brand the way we talk about it, right, which is a 365 degree way. It isn't just about the comms. It's about how we do things around here. I think it's really important to bring people who do this kind of work early on to talk to leadership. Right now, there's going to be some sensitivity, obviously, to having you talk to their partners before there's a vote, but I think there can be real value to that too, because you're in the process of not just trying to understand what's common between these two firms cultures and how you do things, and what you're aspiring for in your vision, but you're also having an opportunity to tell them, Oh, I talked to your colleagues At the new firm, the other firm, and they feel the same way about some of these topics. So you're starting to cement that. You're trying to show them that you're educating them on the fact that there are some real synergies. There's that word, again, commonalities and shared ideas and values here, and that can help to pull things together. And then you're also, when you're doing that research, and we're learning, and I've talked a lot about the cultural aspects and how we do things around here, but you're you're learning right about those commonalities. You're then building a strategy. That strategy is then used for thinking about, how do we do what's our client service model look like that reflects that strategy? What is our recruiting and retention initiatives? What do they look like that reflects that strategy? In fact, who are we trying to recruit that fits who we say we want to be, the Eni, all sorts of other things start to bubble up from this strategy. And of course, then what you also do is you use the strategy to inform what the communications look and feel. Going to sound like. So if you've included all of your partners, the vast majority of the firm, in these conversations, in the research and clients, you've heard from clients, of course, as well, and then you've developed the strategy. It's very it's much easier than to go forward and say, and based on that strategy, this is what the new logo looks like. This is what our top level messaging sounds like because you see how it reflects the strategy that came from clients and you. And that makes things much smoother than just going forward and saying, We got a new website, we got a new logo. Doesn't it look great? Well, you know, everybody's got a subjective opinion. I like blue, I like red, I like green. I don't like reading. So you get into that if you don't have the foundational research and strategy to inform the process.

Rob Bata: 20:45

And I think just going back to the point you made earlier, at the very beginning, you know, there's also the issue of, you know, two, two plus two makes five. So you're not just looking at the commonalities and how all that works with, with that hated word synergy and so forth, but how the things that both firms have as assets are making it possible to metamorphose into something else, but something that builds on those things. But that's new, but that's actually a whole new concept. You know, that's why so many people are talking about a and oh and and and Chairman and Sterling. Because this idea, if it happens, is that this could be one of the first really successful transatlantic mergers, which is global, but where there's, first of all, there's, they are equal in many ways, in some significant ways, they're not and and how this becomes a whole new concept, as it were, and Hogan Lovells, I Think, pulled that off pretty well. But, you know, here we're talking about a much, much bigger size, and we're talking about a so called Magic Circle firm and a Wall Street firm, you know, so, so it's different. That's why it's getting that much attention. It's, it's that, it's that when the two plus two becomes five, that's interesting to people, and that's why there's so much commentary on it. Yep, so and just to, just to follow up a little bit on Murray's question, I think, I think the idea of of branding versus, say, in house marketing, but going to a branding consultant and so forth, sometimes it doesn't come up that early and and sometimes it happens that people say, gee, we're just about ready to announce. Shouldn't we get somebody to to help us with that? So I think it is important to get to it sooner and earlier, especially when you were talking about the kind of thing that clarity does, which is this very intensive and extensive review and interview and a workshopping process and survey process and and building on that you Can't do that the last 48 hours.

Unknown: 23:20

So, so yeah, or message too, and we haven't even touched on other strategic aspects, which maybe is another podcast. But you know, when you're combining, you have to think in terms about, how do you migrate the equity from the legacy brands into the new brand? So, you know, we talked about sun and shine. When sun and shine became SNR Denton and then ultimately Dentons. You need to focus on, how do we migrate, right? So you need to be able to tell the marketplace what happened to sun and shine, which had a fairly strong brand in its market. The name went away completely. No one knew who SNR Dentons was. So you have to really be thinking in terms of that too. How are we going to maintain any of the equity we had and transfer it over? How are we going, you know, what's the name going to be? Oftentimes, that becomes a sticking point in the negotiation. So how do we get data to support the decision on name? We went through a very fairly exhaustive process to come up with named Dentons from many, many different names. And we aim to show where the equity was in all of those names. And it just so happened that the name Denton had the most equity. So we were able to go to the partners and say, Look, you can have your personal feelings and all of that. Of course, let's keep our eye on the prize, which is, we're trying to create this new challenger brand of a firm, and the equity is in Denton. So let's, let's go with that and that that made that process easier. So the more you can do the data and the strategy that informs those kinds of decisions, the

Rob Bata: 24:59

better. Sure it's really important to see how you use the word equity, different from, you know, the the valuation of equity, the monetary valuation, but I think that's an important point, because I find that when I prepare an initial discussion item, the discussion agenda. I always put down name, and this is the sort of thing that people get very excited about and start thinking about, and gets pretty heated. I didn't used to, but I learned that this is something that's going well, what's, what's it going to be, and whose name is going to be up front and so forth. And I think these are, this is exactly the sort of thing that somebody like Hugh can come in with a cool head and say, well, well, let's investigate what's what, what the equity is in in these names, what, what the brand, the precisely, right. So that's an important point. Ultimately, reasonable people can agree on names, and they can also agree on the fact that maybe one name will fade, fade away into the past like SNR did,

Unknown: 26:23

but Rudnick and Wolf, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Rob Bata: 26:27

you know, absolutely not to mention Piper Matt and Murray. Although Piper still remains, Piper

Unknown: 26:33

still there, Piper remains. That was interestingly. You know,

Rob Bata: 26:37

Murray, of course, was the Murray of Murray against Madison. Sorry, we're going to Bata, which is one of the most important constitutional cases ever decided in this country, and that name is gone. But, yeah, alright. Well, having said that, I think, I think this has been a fantastic discussion, and I think, as as you've said, Bill, maybe there's, maybe there's going to be occasion for a second one of these with you. You have so much insight and so much experience and and you come at this from from a really interesting angle that maybe we should have you on again, if you'd like, I'd

Unknown: 27:13

love to. I I'm very passionate about brand because of the way I think about it and what it means. And I'm also really excited to work with law firms. I think, you know, my first foray was I went in house white and case years ago, my first marketing job thinking, Oh, what's this going to be all about? And learn that, you know, I think they're full of smart people who are incredibly accomplished. And I think it's a business that is constantly evolving, although all businesses are evolving, but I think there's a lot of work to be done, and I think I love working in the category. So thank you for having me, guys. Thank you very much. Thank you. No that was that was great. I always learned something bill when we have these conversations. So and with that, I think we'll wrap and thanks again.

Rob Bata: 28:04

Thank you very much, and thanks for watching. You.