When the Vancouver Canucks were shut out in Game 7 of the 2011 Stanley Cup, millions of fans were left deflated and depressed; but not Vancouver’s largest law firm.
Win or lose, Fasken Martineau considered its unique partnership campaign with the NHL team was a resounding victory for the firm, its clients and its internal staff.
“It turned out that Game 7 was the most viewed playoff game in history [with more than 50 million watching it on TV],” said Blair Lill, the law firm’s director of marketing and business development. “And our sign was there.”
While it was a high-profile moment, it was really but a blip in a lengthy and intense marketing and public relations campaign for which the firm used a blend of both traditional and new forms of marketing to communicate its message of support for the Canucks.
The integrated campaign won the firm the Legal Marketing Association’s HELM (Honouring Excellence in Legal Marketing) Award this year.
The campaign has its roots in a partnership started five years ago when Fasken Martineau decided it needed to do something to promote its unfamiliar name in town after absorbing the 120-year-old Vancouver firm Russell DuMoulin in one of a spate of law firm consolidations across Canada.
“My thinking at the time was if we could get a relationship with the Canucks, the type of things they stand for – teamwork, excellence, community involvement and community service – would be the type of things [that would be identified with the firm],” said Vancouver managing partner Will Westeringh.
“We would also get our name in a venue like Rogers Arena where corporate Vancouver and the business people are.”
Westeringh said getting key partners on board was critical. While they all eventually agreed, “I think some of them saw it as outside of the box. It was a risk.”
It was also important the campaign didn’t run afoul of the rules and regulations governing advertising by the legal profession.
“I would be embarrassed if we as lawyers didn’t check out the legality of what we were proposing to do, so we definitely did our due diligence. We never had a question from the Law Society or anyone else.”
The Canucks’ playoff campaign kept the firm’s five marketing professionals engaged full time, from January 2011 on. They set a number of external goals, Lill said. Those included using the firm’s existing Canucks sponsorship to increase the profile and brand awareness, gaining greater media exposure, giving clients and lawyers networking forums to further develop business relationships and increase firm revenue, and creating a unique client experience in the firm’s guest suite and club seats.
This last goal – which represents the traditional side of law firm marketing – was central to the campaign.
“That was where a lot of the planning and research comes into play,” said Lill. “Will and I looked very closely at key clients, strategic guests that we would like to bring into the fold. And we would basically handpick who would like to go (to the suite and club seats) and then bring along the lawyers for that game, and take it game by game.”
To draw in a select group of new and existing clients, Fasken created “Hockey Talk,” a breakfast event where Canucks senior management spoke to a packed room of clients and the firm’s lawyers, giving them a unique experience and a chance to talk hockey behind closed doors.
“You can’t go and buy a ticket to something like that,” said Westeringh, noting that “nothing went outside the room.”
Added to that were electronic tools such as the firm’s website, email signatures, YouTube, Twitter and, most
importantly, customer relationship management (CRM).
These sophisticated software systems have come into their own in the last decade, allowing companies to initiate and monitor thousands of contacts with clients every day with the push of a button.
“Everything we did for the Canucks campaign was done using our CRM: the invitations went out electronically, everyone RSVPed electronically and we tracked and managed things electronically.
“If we were doing it the old way by printing and mailing invitations and managing RSVPs by taking phone calls or emails it would have been very hard to be as nimble as we were able to be during the playoffs.”
