Your Honor Award Member Profile:
Carolin Sagawa, Marketing Director, Goodwin LLP
Winning Category:
Body of Knowledge, Communication: Goodwin Brand
Carolin joined the legal marketing community three years ago after spending more than a decade in the consulting world, most recently at Booz Allen Hamilton. There, she led the marketing efforts for business units and managed corporate marketing strategy. One thing she noticed upon entering the legal industry was that every firm looked—and sounded— the same. When the CMO asked her to step in and help drive the comprehensive branding initiative for Goodwin to differentiate the firm from its competitors, she was more than up to the task.
Goodwin leadership wanted to grow the firm, from one with a national footprint to a global one. To achieve this growth, they took on a multifaceted strategic plan which included the brand. At the onset of the brand project, leadership analyzed the competitive landscape and saw they could truly differentiate themselves from the established brands currently holding top AmLaw positions.
The result is a modern and sophisticated brand that boasts a shortened firm name (Goodwin, from Goodwin Procter), striking new logo and a bold brand promise of unprecedented. “What really made the difference was having visionary leadership. They were willing to go there and be bold. Because we had that, it worked. It set the tone at the top; an appetite for change and courage to be different.”
Managing the change took some education. “Part of the issue was introducing the idea of the sales funnel to lawyers. There are different parts of the acquisition process where different sorts of messages are required. There is the time for pitches and proposals, where detailed experience and bios are expected because the target knows us and has asked us to provide that information. But, there is also the time when a potential client is just getting an introduction to the firm, and that first impression is important. You want to have that differentiation come across quickly and impactfully. That’s where the brand comes in, whether that be the website or an impressive piece of collateral.”
Now, Carolin is building out the content marketing function for the firm to support the brand position of unprecedented. She has been able to take the content marketing best practices from the general management consulting world and put them to work at Goodwin. “It has been really fun to open people’s eyes on how we can be reaching more people, identifying different ways to reach them, and finding multiple ways to serve up information.”
Her proudest moment? Launch day. “It was an amazing feeling. I was so incredibly proud of the team, the firm and of myself.”
We couldn’t agree more. Congratulations to Carolin and everyone involved at Goodwin for raising the bar and truly differentiating yourselves from the market.
By Rebecca Edwards for the September/October 2017 LMA Mid-Atlantic Region Newsletter