Pittsburgh Firms Should Seek National Visibility
By Steven Alschuler on January 22, 2015
In a recent conversation with the general counsel of a middle market, private equity funded company, based in Pittsburgh, the GC expressed some frustration over his board’s insistence that he only use New York-based law firms. Firms in Pittsburgh were certainly capable of meeting the company’s needs, he said, but simply didn’t have the luster of the New York firms with which his board was familiar.
Pittsburgh is rapidly gaining recognition among national business and media audiences as a city on the move and hot spot for growing companies. These include entities that are be based in Pittsburgh, but serve markets around the world. They include companies that may have been founded here, but that now have grown to the point where they need to raise equity or debt through either national institutions or public markets. Or they may include businesses that are based elsewhere, but have come to Pittsburgh because of its many attributes: world-class universities that provide a highly skilled workforce, relatively low housing costs, excellent healthcare and cultural institutions that enhance its quality of life.
How do entities like those define themselves? What motivates them? How and where do they receive information and consume news? How should a Pittsburgh-based firm market to them? What tactics will elevate, define and help build an aura of credibility for anyone seeking to communicate with those potential clients?
And why aren’t Pittsburgh-based law firms and other professional services firms, many of which have deep roots in the community, doing more to raise their profiles, project themselves as national leaders in their fields and market themselves to the national and global businesses that are an increasingly important part of Pittsburgh’s economy? Why aren’t they doing more to gain the kind of visibility and stature that might empower that General Counsel to hire them?
For a nationally or globally oriented business audience, there is no substitute for the credibility that comes with visibility in what have now become known as “traditional” national media: The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC, Fox and others with similar reach.
How do firms reach these media? How can they gain this level of visibility without appearing self-promotional?
It can be done by focusing on substance. It can be done on the basis of subject matter expertise that projects the firm’s leadership team as “thought leaders.”
Think about how many matters your firm is involved in right now that involve issues that would be of interest to other similarly situated businesses. If those case histories would be interesting to a certain type of business or industry group, they could easily be shaped into something that will be of interest to the media – even if the specific client cannot be named.
And think about how many stories break in the media in any given month – stories that are not about your clients – on which you or your partners could have provided commentary, if asked. Media needs experts, whether for quotes in a story appearing in print or appearances on cable news programs. It’s your expertise that’s important – not where your office is located.
Of course, it’s not merely about identifying a story line. It’s about development of the concept, being able to communicate the overall context and knowing which members of the media are interested in what types of stories. As in many things, it’s about skillful execution. But thinking along these lines is at least the first step in developing the type of thought leadership campaign that can generate national attention.
Firms need to be where the clients are, talking about issues that are relevant to them, in venues they respect, that project them as leaders in their fields – and they need to have clear plans in place to move in that direction.
