The Passle Podcast - CMO Series Passle

In today's professional services marketing landscape, AI is the hottest topic, leaving many marketers pressured to keep pace with the rapid advancements in their firms' AI strategies.In this episode of the Passle CMO Series Podcast, Cam Dobinson has the privilege of hosting Gina Connell, Chief Marketing Officer at B P Collins, to offer a practical look at navigating the AI journey within a firm. Join us as we delve into how Gina spearheaded the firm's AI policy, offering insights on collaboration, agility, and fostering firm-wide engagement to ensure the effective use of AI.Gina and Cam explore:
How to develop an AI policy, and why marketers should be reviewing their firm's policy
How to avoid silos and bring the firm together as a whole on the AI journey
The practical steps to effectively developing and communicating an AI policy
How to bring the different parts of the firm up to speed on AI and its potential impact
What the AI journey looks like from here and the biggest opportunity for AI in legal marketing
Advice for marketers looking to stay ahead of the curve with AI in their firm
 
 

From employee engagement to recruitment and retention, there are many benefits to building a successful employee brand. On this week’s episode of the CMO Series, Vicky Hanks, Head of Marketing at Blake Morgan joins Will Eke to share the key projects she’s delivered to enhance the employee brand across the firm and the importance of effective internal communications.
 
Vicky and Will discuss:
The moment in Vicky’s career journey she realised the importance of effective internal communications and employee branding
How the employee brand has evolved at Blake Morgan and the key drivers for those changes
The key projects that have helped build employee engagement
Aligning the internal brand with the external brand and the challenges in doing that
What success looks like and how the employee brand can support the external marketing and BD efforts
Advice for others looking to build their employee brand through effective internal communications

Dubbed by The New York Times as “The Prosecutor Who Stared Down Bill Cosby,” and internationally recognized as a leading litigator in the #MeToo Movement, on this very special live recording of the CMO Series REPRESENTS Podcast, Yasmin Zand welcomes Kristen Gibbons Feden, Shareholder at Anapol Weiss. This special episode recorded at the #FollowFriday Conference on International Women’s Day delves into Kristen’s passion for advocating for abuse and trauma survivors and why she’s focused on harnessing empathy and understanding to support the people she represents.

In today's competitive landscape, fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion isn't just a moral imperative — it's a strategic advantage. Fresh off the back of our International Women’s Day episodes released on CMO REPRESENTS series, today, we’re shining a spotlight on the crucial importance of BD coaching for women.
Our guest, Deborah Farone, Founder of Farone Advisors, joins Will Eke on the Passle CMO Series Podcast to share her extensive expertise as we discuss the unique challenges women face in honing their BD skills and the transformative impact of tailored coaching programs. Deborah and Will explore:
Deborah’s career journey and what led to her current role as Founder of Farone Advisors
The turning point in Deborah’s career when she recognized the necessity for tailored BD coaching, particularly for women
The unique obstacles women encounter in honing their BD abilities, and how the current landscape reflects these challenges
The impact on CMOs, BD leaders, and firms if they don't invest in BD coaching for women 
Success stories of women who have transformed their BD approach as a result of coaching
Recommendations for organizations seeking to enhance the BD skills of their female employees

Training and developing the next generation of lawyers is a key driver for a firm’s long-term success.
Investing in new talent is often overlooked, but today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Sheenika Gandhi, Chief Marketing Officer at Greenberg Glusker, to understand how she is reimagining business development training, for the future success of their associates and the firm.
Sheenika and Ali discuss: 
Sheenika’s career journey and how she came to be a Chief Marketing Officer
How she became aware of the need for BD training 
The training culture at Greenberg Glusker including specific training programs and their focus areas 
What success looks like and any examples
A look into the future of training at Greenberg Glusker 
Advice for other CMOs looking to reimagine their training programs 

Mapping the clients’ buying journey is key to successfully aligning content to meet their needs. 
 
Someone with extensive experience across multiple industries in doing just that is Vicky Cunningham, Marketing Director at Efficio Consulting. Vicky joins the CMO Series Podcast today to discuss her approach to aligning content strategy with the client buying journey to drive business growth.
 
Vicky and Will discuss: 
The importance of mapping the client buying journey and aligning this with content strategy 
How Vicky approaches this at Efficio Consulting 
The barriers to success and how to overcome these 
The key components of driving your content strategy and examples of success
Advice for others looking to align their content with their client’s buying journey
 
Transcription: 
 
Will: Welcome to the Passle CMO series podcast where we discuss all things marketing and business development. My name's Will Eke and today we are going to be talking about aligning content with the client journey. Mapping the client's buying journey is really key to successfully aligning content to meet client needs. Someone with extensive experience across multiple industries including law, consulting, and various other areas, is doing just that. And I'm really really happy to have Vicky Cunningham, who's the marketing director at Efficio Consulting, join us today. Vicky is going to discuss her approach and Efficio’s approach to aligning content strategy with the client buying journey to drive business growth. Welcome Vicky, how are we doing?
 
Vicky: Hi, Will. Thanks for having me. I'm doing very well, happy to be here.
 
Will: Good stuff. Some people will recognise you and your voice. We were just talking about that from your Freshfield days, but we'll come on to maybe how you got to where you got to on one of the questions today. To start off with- be good to set the scene in terms of your career. What- at what point did you realise the importance of mapping the client buying journey and, and aligning it with you know, a really robust content strategy?
 
Vicky: Well, I think the seeds of that come from the fact that I started out in a sales route and if you get closer to the coal face, it, you know, it focuses the mind. It's always- I've always had to stop and say, you know, what's a customer or client need first? What is it that, what is it that they want? How do you put yourself in their shoes? I also spent a number of years as a journalist, so you, you know, you get the understanding of storytelling, the importance of storytelling for different audiences and that, you know, takes you right into what do you- what stories do you need to be telling to your potential clients and your existing clients to, you know, to keep them focused, to sort of help them along their buying journey or to, you know, nurture them once they have bought. So it's sort of- it's kind of in my professional DNA, I think from the, you know, the background that I've come up through.
 
Will: Makes perfect sense, especially, yeah with the journalist background as well-
 
Vicky: -and part of, you know, part of that route from a marketing point of view, i've also spent time in consumer marketing, and that's very very different clearly to B2B and professional services. So, consumer marketing, you're getting much much closer to your potential customer and again, that teaches you to think customer first, maybe doing much more sort of persona based marketing and B2B tends to approach that differently.
 
Will: Yeah, and I suppose you- with that you're used to actually having this tangible outcome often with a consumer as well. You can actually link it back sometimes to a transaction type.
 
Vicky: Yeah, and you know, in professional services, I think people still- marketeers and I've been guilty of this too, still often think of their clients as job titles and the practitioners think of their clients sometimes as job titles and not as humans, which is cr