Kidd Aitken is the world’s largest legal directory marketing company.

Kidd Aitken Legal Marketing approached Transform Communications to create and implement their first annual marketing strategy.

Our two main objectives were to increase brand awareness and build Kidd Aitken’s reputation. Insightful, useful thought leadership content formed the cornerstone to the strategy and acted as the vehicle to communicate the vast expertise of Kidd Aitken’s team. Providing value to legal marketing and business development teams.

We entered the CIPR PRide award for Best Use of Content and won a Silver award in 2022.

Award entry

Chambers and Partners is one of the most prestigious legal directories and a ranking within one of their Guides is highly coveted. A large proportion of Kidd Aitken’s almost 50-strong team are former Chambers editors and researchers, so their insider knowledge of the secretive ranking methodology is unparalleled. We wanted to communicate their insight.

We were initially inspired to hold a webinar to share the expertise of Kidd Aitken’s team. ‘Best Practice for Managing Submissions and Improving Rankings’, held in December 2020, was highly popular with 53 top-level attendees. By the end of the webinar, it was clear that many still had unanswered questions about the submissions process. The idea of a long-form guide covering the main themes of the process was born – a guide that had not been produced anywhere else in the marketplace.

In our research conversations with Kidd Aitken team members, we identified three key areas in which their clients sought guidance:

• How to create a strategy for Chambers rankings

• How to write an effective submission

• How to make the most of the client referee process

In the Guide, we sought to explain the best strategies for each of these categories, providing value to the reader while highlighting Kidd Aitken’s expertise.

We wanted this guide to re-frame the conversation around and attitudes towards legal directories. Their objective evaluation of a firm’s expertise is a brilliant endorsement – and marketing tool – but their time- and resource-consuming nature means that they are often viewed with negativity by law firms’ business development and marketing teams.

In a March 2021 webinar hosted by Kidd Aitken, ‘Are legal directories worth the investment?’, attendees were polled on the amount of time and resource they spend on legal directories. 43% reported 10-30%, with a further 43% reporting 30-50%.

By presenting useful information in an interesting way, we wanted to decode the world of legal directories. The Guide’s magazine-style format, with graphics, pull quotes and a striking colour scheme, injects vigour into the somewhat uninspiring world of legal directories. And for a time-short reader in the legal industry, important information was clearly signposted so that the Guide could be skim-read if necessary.

The Guide’s tone is clear and concise. The world of legal directories can seem labyrinthine, so it was important to convey the necessary information – logically and simply. Chambers’ cumulative ranking methodology makes it difficult to achieve a first-time ranking, and we therefore wanted to demystify this methodology in an accessible and engaging fashion.

‘Your Best Practice Guide to Chambers and Partners Submissions’ was first published in April 2021, accompanied by a promotional blog post and four sets of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter posts. It is also the first email of multiple successful cold email marketing campaigns and its own paid LinkedIn campaign to extend its reach to the target audience of legal marketing and business development professionals. This cross-channel campaign allowed us to pollinate this content across different platforms.

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