”When I was tasked with finding a PR agency, I knew who I wanted to work with. Having previously worked with Midnight, I knew from experience that their team would go out of their way to get to know Trethowans – the people in the business and what we have to offer. Although we're based in the South, our clients are country-wide, and with Midnight's contacts, they find us opportunities for coverage in publications across the UK, as well as boosting our regional presence. We take pride in working with like-minded businesses who exhibit similar values to our people – no nonsense and no egos. Midnight is a fantastic extension to our marketing team who exhibit those values too.
Kirsty HughesMarketing Manager, Trethowans
The challenge
How we elevated Trethowans’ presence at every level and within the legal sector
Regional law firm Trethowans was an example of a firm on a growth trajectory, eager to accelerate yet held back by its limited visibility.
Before we worked with Trethowans, the firm was mainly securing local coverage in its many offices across the South, including Southampton, Salisbury, Bournemouth and Poole, and a base in London. This wasn’t going far enough in supporting the firm’s ambitious plans to double turnover, build its employment law team’s profile and gain national exposure.
In the legal sector, this is a challenging task. The competition is fierce. Competitors’ pockets are deep. And there’s always the need to balance national coverage with taking your focus off local awareness where other local firms can swipe clients. But give our team a challenge, and we rise to it.
So first up, the challenge was to position the firm nationally and attract national press coverage while at the same time maintaining and building upon the firm’s profile in its regional locations. Highlighting sector expertise in employment was another key priority. And, of course, rapid growth wouldn’t be possible without having a stream of talent queuing up to apply to work in your firm, so elevating the Trethowans brand and profile within the legal sector was an essential part of the strategy to attract talent and position as a good employer.
How Midnight met the challenge
Business owners and high-net-worth individuals read local newspapers differently than they used to. If you want to reach these targets, there’s no question – you must build a strategy around positioning in national and regional titles and sector-specific trade publications that are still widely consumed. These two groups were key targets for the firm. Our approach was to identify the sectors where the client wants to gain coverage and cherry-pick two or three titles that we prioritise and top tier. Then we went for it.
The first phase of our strategy was to hit the national press by submitting timely comments on national news items and getting the Trethowans’ name out to the nation. This activity was enhanced by targeted by-lined articles and feature contributions in top-tier legal sector press to enhance the firm’s reputation.
With the national strategy flying, we focused on building regional awareness by targeting local press. We deployed key messaging, news and CSR activity to reach potential clients within the local areas of the firm’s offices. Positioning the firm at the centre of each community Trethowans operates was a central theme.
Securing national press coverage, protecting local reputation
We quickly slipped into the role of becoming a crucial part of Trethowans’ team, working closely as possible with the fee earners in the business who could deliver expert comments and analysis.
Match our strong track record in PR campaign results with a trusting relationship between the PR team and the firm’s people, and you have a recipe for success.
And success we achieved, with impressive results. During the campaign, our team secured 141 items of coverage with a potential audience reach of 254 million. This included 15 items of national press coverage in The Guardian, The Times, Telegraph, MSN, Yahoo! and the Mirror.
On the regional front, we secured regular coverage in publications published in each location where it operates.
Furthermore, to position Trethowans within the employment sector, we sought and gained coverage in leading HR titles, including People Management, HR Director, HR Review and Personnel Today – all key titles for the target reader.
Bringing people forward to tell the story of the firm
The defining feature of our campaign with Trethowans was the volume and quality of the coverage we secured, including achieving 30 per cent top tier coverage in national and sector titles.
The national coverage was also responsible for an influx of backlinks that improved search traffic volume.
The impact of the activity on the firm’s standing within the legal sector will yield benefits for years to come as it looks to attract and bring on new talent.
Our campaign with Trethowans was a perfect example of how working closely with an agency, an in-house team and the right people within the organisation to deliver expert comment and analysis can yield spectacular results. Through the campaign, Trethowan’s name was mentioned a staggering 557 times. Pretty good.
