Hunt on to build first true law firm brand

Corporate lawyer Addleshaw Goddard is planning to build a roster of design consultancies to create what it calls ‘the first true law firm brand in the UK’.

Over the four months, AG – among the top 20 legal firms in the UK – wants to appoint up to four more design groups together with incumbents Hat Trick Design and Radford Wallis, to engage clients, employees and the wider industry. They will be chosen from a broad range of design disciplines.

The groups will make up a collective design team to ‘champion each other, challenge each other, inspire each other and produce some of the most forward-thinking collateral, events and cam – paigns of any industry,’ says AG head of brand marketing Elizabeth Lockwood.

Lockwood joined AG parttime in June 2007, having established herself in 2002 at Land Securities as its head of marketing. ‘I was brought in to AG to build a brand marketing team and to take the firm through a thorough rebranding, heavily focused on internal engagement and alignment,’ she says.

Radford Wallis has been working on a company-wide internal communications programme since last summer, which is designed to immerse AG’s 1500 staff in the benefits of successful branding, to get them thinking about AG’s current internal and external brand experience ahead of the company rebrand. The programme is based on an interactive portal which visualises how key brands have become successful, using a series of tangible case studies.

Lockwood says she intends to build a brand that ‘can sit alongside the likes of Innocent, Pret A Manger or Virgin’ in terms of customer experience.

‘We will be commissioning anything from tactical market ing campaigns, to advertising, sponsorship collateral, brochures and digital media,’ Lockwood says. ‘The roster will be about five or six groups in all, including Hat Trick and Radford Wallis.’

‘I want to create a roster that features both seasoned professionals and raw talent. Large bureaucratic design groups don’t interest me.

Egos and commerciality don’t inter est me. I want heart,’ she says. ‘I am looking for a roster of design groups which challenge me, push me, take me out of my comfort zone, but which also understand me.’

Lockwood says that, from May this year, there will be a ‘substantial body of work to begin commissioning’ using the newly appointed roster.

THE INTERNAL ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMME
• Designed by Radford Wallis
• Aimed at Addleshaw Goddard’s 1500 staff
• Created around an interactive portal designed to work like sections of a brain
• Other collateral used includes coffee cups and repackaged Mars bars designed to illustrate the physical attraction of other brands
• Precedes the company’s imminent brand relaunch this year, overseen by Hat Trick Design
• Three or four other design groups to be appointed