Win the Pitch: Tips from Mastercard's "Priceless" Pitchman - Kevin Allen. As a growth officer in my early career with the mad men and women of McCann Erickson, my mom could never quite grasp what I did for a living. But, when we pitched, won and delivered the phenomenon now globally known as Priceless for MasterCard, she could finally brag to her friends at my Aunt Rose’s kitchen table. From the moment the very first television commercial appeared (You remember it, right? “Two tickets: $28. Two hot dogs, two popcorns, two sodas: $18. One autographed baseball: $45. In one of the industry’s most hotly-contested advertising accounts, dozens of agencies’ pitches were winnowed down to two contenders. We all make pitches every day — for that highly-prized account; to a client who’s reluctant to accept your scary proposal; for a skeptical CFO to loosen the purse strings; or for a wary new team to believe in you. 1.
There are no magic tricks or hypnotics to persuade people to do what you say. 2. 3. 4. BEST. QUOTE. EVER. Sometimes I hear someone say something and it just resonates with me. It sets the stage and explains it all better than anything I could have come up with on my own. It becomes the cornerstone to an upcoming presentation, but it’s so good, I have to share it with everyone. I had one of those today. I was watching Meet the Press this morning, and hadn’t made it past the first segment when I had to hit the pause button and rewind several times to listen more closely to Thomas Friedman‘s opening statement.
When preparing to write his new book, “That Used to be Us,” he checked the index of “The World is Flat” and noticed something missing. Facebook: When I said the world is flat, Facebook didn’t exist. And, to top it all off, there is the generational shift from WWII’s “Greatest Generation,” through the Baby Boomers, Generation X towards today’s millennials that we are awkwardly confronting. To put the time frame in context that Mr. 2004 wasn’t that long ago. Am I up to the challenge? Like this: The Legal Intelligencer Blog: Measuring a Lawyer's Use of Social Media Marketing. By Gina F. RubelSpecial to the Legal On the legal marketing and public relations side of social media, the industry is abuzz with trying to determine how to measure the value of engagement.
There are a ridiculous number of articles, blogs, conversations and metrics surfacing -- all trying to tell us how to measure the return on investment (ROI) as it relates to an attorney's time spent online networking. So let's do the math. Attorney A blogs about the legal issues facing businesses today. Attorney A receives comments and queries to which she responds. Now, in the first year of the engagements, those two clients are worth $80,000 in billable hours to the firm collectively. In this scenario, the ROI is virtually impossible to measure, but Attorney A landed two new clients worth substantial revenue in the first year.
Think of it this way: every time you attend a networking function, do you track every minute of time spent, along with the cost to attend? Ask the following questions.
Seduced: For Lawyers, the Appeal of Social Media Is Obvious. It's Also Dangerous - Magazine. Features Illustration by Jean Francois Podevin Sean W. Conway thought he was writing an ordinary blog post. He never suspected he would wind up facing ethics charges. "I felt completely within my rights as a citizen, exposing what I thought was an injustice," he says. It seemed to the then-35-year-old defense attorney that a Florida circuit court judge was methodically depriving criminal defendants of their right to a speedy trial. This, he believed, was a deliberate ploy by Alemán to force defendants to ask for a continuance, thus waiving their right to a speedy trial. He tried to fix the situation by going through appropriate channels. Then Conway tried another tack. Conway's blog post did that—and more. Conway chose his invective deliberately. B. Kristine A. Conway, Terry and Peshek are all part of a growing problem. One reason is that more attorneys are using social media such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter.
"It is unclear what constraints there are. Terry learned this the hard way. Improve legal professionalism through humility — Lawyerist. Have you ever been accused of being arrogant? Boy, I have. And rightly so. I’ve done more of my fair share of pole-vaulting over the fine line between self-confidence and arrogance. Why? Because I didn’t have a good working definition of “humility.” Yes, I can be arrogant, and some will accuse me of being arrogant simply because I’m writing on the subject of humility. I’m not going to tell you how to be humble, because I’m not an adept and we all learned in our first week of Real Property that you cannot transfer something you don’t possess.
What I can share are two definitions of humility that I’m willing to work toward. It makes life easier. With those two thoughts in mind, let’s look at two working definitions of humility. In Relationships “In relationships, humility makes no comparisons.” Try not to compare yourself to others all the time and you’ll experience a freedom from fear that you’ve never known before. In Experiences “In experiences, humility accepts the situation as it is.”
Social Media Marketing. Five Tips for Getting Writing Right. Let’s face it: The legal profession is fraught with stilted language, circular constructions, pomp and its detestable buddy circumstance. Read nearly any statute, court decision or brief and you might feel you’ve fallen into that “Twilight Zone” episode where every sentence that the central character hears or reads is a non sequitur. But this post isn’t about writing briefs or contracts or any other type of legal writing. It’s about business writing and written communication in general. Poor writing skills can turn off potential clients and others, whether it’s in an e-mail message or a formal proposal.
A Refresher Course So before writing that e-mail or letter to a client or that important memo to your partners, consider these five basic writing tips: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. These few guidelines can help cut the clutter, jettison the legalese baggage and, if not make a document “sing,” at least make it clear, concise and readable. Steven T. Adding an RSS Reader to Your Daily Life. Do you have a tech-savvy friend who always seems to know things days before everyone else? The newest decisions are in their hands faster, or a mention of the firm’s name in the local paper is noted within hours of being released?
The assumption is “these people must spend their whole day surfing!” While that’s true for some, there’s another group out there power surfing the web, quickly and efficiently taking in mass amounts of news and headlines. RSS readers, whether web-based like Google Reader or application-based like FeedDemon, allow us to consume the exact information we want, faster. What can you monitor? You can add any of the following to your personal collection: Filtered news and event, by source, author or keywordKey industry publications and blogsAssociation newsLegislative changesNewly released court decisionsMedia pieces that mention your name, your firm name, or the competition.
So much of what we monitor online can be funneled into this single access point. How Lawyers May Use Social Media in the Future. The Future of Social Media Series is supported by Gist. Gist provides a full view of the contacts in your professional network by creating a rich business profile for each one that includes the most news, status updates, and work details. See how it works here. There has been a tenuous union between lawyers and social media. The fact that so much information and conversation is made public can deter firms from jumping on board.
That same hesitancy, however, gives some clues as to how social media may be used by lawyers in the future. Social media is a big deal. More and more firms and individuals are coming online. How Does Social Media Fit Into Law? New technologies usually present problems for lawyers, not for their technical complexities, but because it's tricky to figure out how to deal with them legally.
Because social media exists online, it is subject to individual Internet laws across each state or country where information can be accessed. Social Media as Evidence. Top 10 Uses for RSS in Law Firms. I've haven't posted a top-10 style list before, but there's a first for everything, right? :-) So... (drum roll, please) ... here are my top 10 uses for RSS Feeds in a law firm setting.
Top 10 Uses for RSS in Law Firms 1) Current Awareness - Surfing your favourite websites, newspapers & blogs is a waste of time. Smart firms & lawyers need to automate web content to come to them via RSS. 2) RSS for Firm Marketing - From blogs, to press releases, to firm newsletters and publications -- adding an additional delivery channel using RSS feeds is not a huge investment. 3) Vanity Feeds - Every time one of your lawyers, or the firm, gets mentioned in the news media or blogosphere, someone should be notified by RSS. 4) Internal Research Collections - Your library catalogue should offer an RSS feed for newly added materials that match your Lawyer's research interests. 5) Client Press - Do your clients have their press releases RSS-enabled?
Today's Law Marketing Resource.