Allison Berey is chief marketing officer (CMO) at Polsinelli PC, an AmLaw 100 firm with more than 750 attorneys in 18 offices. She joined the firm — and moved back to Kansas City, her hometown — in 2012. Before joining Polsinelli, Allison’s more than 20-year career was outside of the legal industry and with a heavy global focus. Previously, she worked for many years in consulting, providing strategic advisory services to Fortune 500 B2B and consumer companies. She held senior marketing and management positions at GE Capital, among other organizations. Allison earned an M.B.A in marketing from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in international management from The Joseph H. Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. from the University of Michigan.
Your position with Polsinelli is the first role you've held in the legal sector. What attracted you to the role and the industry?
I have to say it was initially just circumstantial. I decided to move back to Kansas City after 27 years living around the United States and Asia, and became aware of Polsinelli’s new CMO role. While I had not prior considered legal, I was intrigued by the opportunity. The more I learned about the firm’s leadership’s goals and about the position, I was sold!
Polsinelli has grown and expanded significantly in recent years. What opportunities that this presents have you and your team capitalized on most in terms of marketing and business development efforts?
In a firm that has grown so quickly in such a short period of time, we have been in the position of starting from nearly a “blank slate.” We have augmented our foundation of strong existing team members, and have been able to adopt a focus on updating/improving existing processes on an ongoing basis.
Perhaps even more exciting are all of the entirely new capabilities we have built — new disciplines in strategic marketing, brand management, tools and best practices in business development, interactive media efforts, etc. I would summarize these as an all-in team effort to slowly redefine the role of the department in the firm. Our overarching goal is to be a strategic partner to the firm’s leadership, practice chairs and to individual attorneys, adding value in each activity from the most strategic to the most tactical, and we are on a solid path in that direction.
What are some of the major growth-related challenges that your department has had to overcome?
A couple of things come to mind. First, I think the biggest challenge is the “flip side” of the biggest opportunity. We have a team that thrives on having an impact — to define processes, create best practices, and constantly strive to add new value to what we do. But this all creates a highly dynamic environment. There is almost nothing that is “routine.” Very understandably, it can be challenging some days to maintain the energy and the passion that it takes to embrace that kind of environment.
We also try to operate within a fairly lean team structure that aligns to Polsinelli’s business model. This necessitates constant prioritization and evaluation of the strategic alignment of our initiatives and daily workload.
Having spent many years working in nonlegal professional services firms, what do you see as areas of improvement for law firm marketing and business development?
I have been very impressed at the pace at which marketing leaders in the industry have embraced change. With true competition only exploding post-recession, the marketing function has already evolved dramatically. The biggest challenge is in determining how to educate our organizations on how to best utilize our expertise. As we all move to explore and adopt new marketing technologies, to deploy meaningful analytics, and to generally educate our organizations about the important role marketing can play in developing and executing a firm’s strategy, I think we will see attorneys’ understanding and expectations of the marketing function change.
What sorts of practices and/or initiatives have you brought to Polsinelli from your prior roles?
First, we are implementing a very strategic and analytical approach to building out the marketing function. In creating a business-minded, numbers-oriented team with processes, tools and best practices that support our marcom and business development efforts, our team now more closely emulates the comprehensive strength of marketing departments in industries that have been competitive for decades.
Second, around innovation, I have tried to leverage my experience in product/service development processes. In my experience, the best way to innovate is to look outside of your own world. By seeking examples and best practices in other industries, we are most likely to arrive somewhere we may not otherwise.
Finally, we are moving toward greater focus on return on investment (ROI). In terms of business development we are applying some new tools and techniques targeted at the basics. We have an opportunity not only to train attorneys on the soft skills, but to shift the organizational mindset around events and conferences to a focus on ROI. We are also moving towards ROI analytics against marketing spend, and the pitch/proposal process. It will be exciting to see all that we can learn!
When you joined Polsinelli, the firm was considering rebranding. What are some valuable insights you gained that readers going through a similar process might find helpful?
At Polsinelli, we simultaneously rebranded by changing the firm name and developed a comprehensive brand strategy (oh, and we also launched an entirely new website!). This was a very new exercise for the firm, but one we pursued in a way consistent with other industries.
I am a firm believer that brand building is a strategic exercise. In order to build a successful brand, that brand equity has to be aligned to the client’s actual experience. The process a team might follow therefore necessitates going beyond the creative aspects of a brand — look, feel, personality, design — to the firm’s business model and strategy. Involvement from key stakeholders in your organization, a rigorous understanding of client priorities, and an execution plan that involves not only how you communicate but what you build internally enables you to emphasize your points of true differentiation. Trying to be everything to everybody is the most common challenge, so helping your organizations to realize the many benefits of focus is the number one priority!
I’m having the most fun on the job when...
I constantly learn from my team members. I truly love leaving a meeting, feeling energized not only by the important substance of an initiative we are pursuing, but by something really cool and meaningful I have gleaned from some else in the room.
And I also have a lot of fun when we all have a good laugh together. While ours is a pretty serious and focused environment, I think our team genuinely enjoys each other's company, and sharing the occasional hilarious/surprising/ridiculous moment is the best.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I treasure spending time with my boys, who are 10 and 12. They always make me laugh and they challenge me. I love seeing the world through their eyes!
I also enjoy exercising, theatre and other cultural events, and generally exploring Kansas City. I left my hometown for college at 18, and returned at 45. These 27 years later, not only am I at a very different stage of life, but KC has changed dramatically. It’s been a lot of fun to better get to know my old-new hometown!