Blattel Communications is a team of expert communicators and business storytellers with professionals in California, Texas and Washington, D.C. Working exclusively with professional services clients in various industries – including law firms and legal technology, as well as real estate, construction and financial firms – we offer a suite of media relations tools, crisis communication and litigation support resources, monitoring and measurement capabilities and adjacent marketing and business development consulting services.
For more than 30 years, we have helped clients tell their stories – to their clients, prospective clients and the world, through proactive, business development-centric communications strategies. Our professionals routinely secure commentary opportunities on top-tier outlets (online, print and broadcast) regionally and nationally and, through our industry-first Sourcing Bureau model, we give our law firm clients the competitive edge they need to understand and proactively achieve their media, brand and, ultimately, business development goals. Everything we do is centered on Bringing Business to Business.
Is there an achievement or contribution that you are most proud of?Our focus is squarely on communications/media relations as a business development driver for professional services firms. We were pleased to hear directly from our law firm clients that the challenges of 2020 – in particular, the COVID-related downturn in March – proved to be not only navigable, but an opportunity. As firms refocused their business development and marketing models in response to the pandemic, we scored media exposure for a wide-array of clients’ thought leadership-oriented commentary and educational content across trade and daily media outlets, nationally and locally, and with a heavy bent toward broadcast outlets – a big coup as firms also look to expand their video content online. Our efforts were truly complementary, and we heard directly from several clients that these deliverables yielded new business during a period when many traditional business development activities were not possible.
What is your passion outside of work (or a favorite hobby)?This applies to more than just me. Our entire operation is incredibly well-informed about what is happening with their clients and in the broader news cycle. We are media junkies, and we apply these insights to our strategic client plans, often significantly broadening their focus, while also unlocking new commentary and business development opportunities. When what you do at work – engage with the news – is what you enjoy doing after work, results and success flow naturally.
What’s helped keep you/your team motivated through the past year?The imposition of a remote working environment, for us, had some silver linings. While our home base has always been San Francisco, we have long had an L.A. presence, and in recent years, we’ve had team members relocate to Sacramento, Austin and D.C. With everyone at home, we increased the use of our team meeting tools and took full advantage of opportunities to better leverage our industry-leading SaaS platform, building skills to harvest and decipher robust data sets related to brand awareness and media activity. Today, we are collaborating in real time at a greater scale than pre-pandemic with buy-in from all team members. Beyond operationally, we’ve pivoted water cooler conversations to Microsoft Teams and have taken advantage of the increased delivery options in our communities to ensure that clients and team members are recognized with treats on important occasions, such as birthdays – all while helping local businesses succeed in a tough environment.
What trends are you seeing in the industry?In terms of news coverage, local outlets continue to be squeezed, making it more challenging to secure coverage – an issue affecting all industries. However, for law firms, the twin goals seen at many firms — breaking into industry verticals and applying more metrics to marketing – are having a positive impact on the willingness to think beyond the legal trade outlets. Our clients are engaging with their clients through thought leadership commentary in targeted, industry-specific trade outlets. In addition, issues of law and its key role in policymaking and business – subject matter for which lawyers are the natural spokespeople – are increasingly of interest and import, and we’re finding significant media interest in education around legal themes and a corresponding willingness among attorneys to be quoted. These trends are supported by our clients’ media metrics, as firms are looking for and excited by the breadth of coverage generated by proactive media campaigns, the extended reach and scale of their audience engagement and the value of their earned coverage.