Cooley Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer Matt Lieberman

MATT LIEBERMAN: I joke at Cooley that one of the things that we're really good at here is using adjectives. When I say how was an event or what was a piece of content, they say it was amazing. It was awesome. It was excellent. And I don't mean to be flippant when I ask, but I was like, can you please tell me what amazing or awesome mean? Just because I want to understand because we should replicate the things that you think are good and we should also share with you what our data is showing as well. Bringing those two together is an ongoing journey.

GREG STUART: Matt Lieberman, welcome to Building Better CMOs.

MATT: Thank you. Glad to be here.

GREG: Yeah, no, I'm really excited about this one. So I don't know if the listener's paying any attention, but you're at a law firm called Cooley and you also came from professional services before. So I think as I mentioned to you here in the beginning of talk, this is the first time I've actually talked to a CMO of professional services.

MATT: Yes, we're niche, but a really important area for marketing.

GREG: Is there a small group of you that gets together in some secret chamber somewhere? No, I'm just kidding.

MATT: It is a pretty small world.

GREG: It is. It is. Well, and also too, you said something very funny to me. You said that ... Was it for PwC, although the company ... How old is the company and then what number CMO were you?

MATT: Almost 175 years old and I was the third CMO.

GREG: And I think that's just what most of us would expect. That's what caught my attention when the team here and I decided to have you as a guest on the show is that I think it's a very different dynamic that not everybody really understands and appreciates. So I'm kind of excited to get into that with you today.

MATT: Yeah, it's a very interesting space and one that has been growing significantly from a marketing perspective over the past 10 to 20 years.

GREG: I think you also have an incredibly interesting background because you actually started in L.A., you were in the film industry and actually on the creative side.

MATT: That's right. [I] worked at a couple of film studios and it was really great experience but really wanted to get over to the business side. So my last studio said, if you go back and get your graduate degree, we will bring you back over on the business side. Went to graduate school, like many of us did at that point. And like many deans, they said, Would you go interview with all these firms? And at that point I went and interviewed with Pricewaterhouse, a firm that I had not heard of, certainly didn't know anything about accounting.

GREG: Oh, is that right? That's so funny, really. I mean, really as a creator, I mean, listen, you look like you work at a law firm or an accounting firm today — I don't know if the listener will notice that — but you didn't really understand it because you've been on the creative side. Why would that matter to you, right?

MATT: Exactly. And I did have blue hair then too. So now it's just turning mostly to gray. But I went into the interviews and shockingly got offers from a number of firms, including Pricewaterhouse, and joined there in a rotational program specific to entertainment and media. And like many business school graduates, they think they'll do their two years at a professional services firm and then move on somewhere else.

GREG: Then you get out, typically.

MATT: I thought that would be the same.

GREG: Yep. And?

MATT: That did not occur. I was there for just two weeks shy of 25 years, although I had a few careers in one there. Yes, two years turned into 24 years, 11 months, and two weeks. But the first half of my career there in general was in our consulting practice, working mainly for entertainment media companies, although a number of my clients were financial service companies, insurers, others who were investing in entertainment and media.

GREG: And were you doing actually supporting them in some of their marketing strategy? Was that a part of the assignments within the consulting practice you would've had, or not so much?

MATT: Not so much. I was doing a lot of due diligence work.

GREG: Okay.

MATT: So it was really pretty hardcore financial stuff. A lot of Excel. Got to use a little bit of my creative background from the film world in our presentations and deliverables, but it was still very business orientated.

GREG: Okay. So creative guy, strong business background, though, with a degree, consulting. So you've seen a lot of the mistakes that other businesses have made, or maybe I should say the challenges that they had. So that preps you to really rethink some of the issues. Maybe just for the listener, can you just maybe give a quick bit on who Cooley is as a law firm, just so everybody understands here.

MATT: Sure. Cooley is a global law firm, nearing $2.5 billion in revenue, so it's one of the top 25 law firms. We started out in the West Coast in California with a heavy focus on technology and life sciences clients, although that has expanded quite significantly into a number of other industries. We have very robust both corporate and litigation functions, and our clients range, everybody from two people in a garage all the way through large companies and everything in between. And it is one that now expanded over to Asia and Europe as well.

GREG: Wow. And just for the listener's perspective, I think I got a sense at least from some of the information I saw, you guys tend to focus on some of the ad tech, MarTech companies in the space, not necessarily on the marketers. There's some law firms that specialize in marketers. That's not really where Cooley sits. Is that right?

MATT: Correct. We do have some areas that focus on that, but in terms of where the majority of our revenue would be from the marketing-adjacent space, it is in the technology space given how many startups and venture-type companies that we do.

GREG: Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, very interesting. I was a venture partner out in the Bay Area, was a dot-com guy, so I think I understand the firm probably from that part of your practice.

MATT: Absolutely. That would track very well.

GREG: So let's go back to this point. So PwC, I mean, listen, if we take your 25 years on top of that means others would've had to do the job for 75 years if they had CMO from the beginning. Let's assume they didn't. What's changed in professional services that PwC and even ... Did Cooley have a CMO before you? Was there a CMO before you?

MATT: Cooley had two CMOs before me as well. A little bit shorter of 10 years as well, but I think —

GREG: You're always the third guy in the door.

MATT: Exactly.

GREG: I don't know if that means something, but we'll keep moving.

MATT: How about third time's the charm?

GREG: Maybe.

MATT: I will say overall, just to set the conversation, law firms today are, across the board, about 10 to 15 years behind traditional professional services, especially Big Four, major consultancies, etc. And so a lot of the conversations I had when I was interviewing with other firms, including other law firms, were very similar, almost deja vu to where I was sitting at PwC when I first started in the role there. And it was really much more around a necessity as opposed to a goal, which was, [the] firm has grown significantly, but we haven't evolved the marketing and sales functions to grow with the size of the firm. Competitive environment is getting significantly more crowded, and it's not only the traditional competitors, but now it's tech companies, it's technology itself, it's boutique firms, etc. And then you also have changing buyer expectations. And as we all know, B2B buyers are still human beings and they really want and need to have experiences similar to what they're having in the B2C space. And that is something that, across the board of professional services, hasn't done well.

GREG: Are all the firms operating the same? Again, I'm a little removed from the space myself, so I don't know that I see ... Does every one of the professional services firms, consulting firms, have a CMO, do you think? And do you think most law firms of scale do today?

MATT: All of the Big Four and consultancies do have CMOs. Now, of course, some of them have titles that may vary a bit. Even myself, I'm chief marketing and business development officer.

GREG: Yeah, I saw that.

MATT: And so we have some that will be called chief growth officers or client officers and some combination therein, but all of them do have a core marketing function. It's a necessity.

GREG: Tell the listener a little bit about what's the job about. Because my experience with firms like that — and like I said, I was a venture guy, so I watched that — it's a collection of individuals who have their own individual relationships. Now sure, they may share information, insight, perspective, or draw upon somebody else, but they're really kind of a collection of individual businesses — partners, obviously. And they tend to be based on having very strong relationships. So what's the role of the CMO if the partner is driving all the business through those relationships?

MATT: Partially, yes. And I want to acknowledge that each of the partners in these firms created his or her own book of business in order to become partner with the firm. So they are owners.

GREG: That's their value. Correct. Yes.

MATT: Absolutely. And they will continue to bring in that revenue. However, there's a couple of key things at play here. Number one is, I used to joke at my former firm, there's 4,000 partners. So we had 4,000 self-proclaimed CMOs.

GREG: Oh my God.

MATT: And it wasn't to discount any of them, but it was each of them wanted their own marketing support, as you could imagine, similar to what they were expecting to have based on when they made partner.

GREG: Right, right.

MATT: And number two, most of them are pretty good at it, especially related to their own practice. Now, there's a fundamental problem, though, which is there is not enough potential white space, nor are there resources, for a firm to market all of the individual partners, whether it's a 10-person partnership or a 10,000-person partnership. And so you have to start thinking about how do you have the firm show up as one firm?

And that is a problem that all of us face and all of us have to focus on all the time. And I'll give a simple example just to make it real for individuals because for those of you who are not familiar with PwC, they have audit, they have tax, and they have advisory, which is consulting. And you can imagine that we have people who, in audit, who were audit practice partners who wanted to talk about cybersecurity and the impact that had on businesses. You can imagine there are tax benefits and things that individuals need to be concerned about from a tax perspective related to cyber. And then you had the same thing on the consulting side, which is around how do you develop your cyber strategy, for example. What was happening previously is each of the partners was pushing out their own marketing related to cyber.

So it may have been a point of view in the form of thought leadership, hosting events, attending events, hosting webcasts, you name it. Now that creates a lot of challenges. Number one, a lot of noise because, depending on how you come to a company's website, you may have multiple entry points and multiple different experiences. You may create additional risk because you may have partners who are saying things that are antithetical to each other. You certainly aren't going to be able to rank well in things like SEO or other types of areas where you want to show up as a top firm because of all the confusion. And you're spending a lot of money, you're not being efficient in terms of getting a singular firm message which is out there. So in that example, how do you talk about cybersecurity and the importance of cybersecurity? By the way, not only does it have all three of those service lines included, but the industry verticals, the geographies or regions, and all the ways that all of these firms are so heavily matrixed.

And so how do we bring one singular point of view that is cost effective and powerful in a way that brings the right marketing resources together? And that's all predicated upon having business strategy and priorities. So in that example, cybersecurity may be really important this year, but not as important next year. So we're going to go heavier this year on our marketing spend, but then maybe loosen up next year or vice versa. But the idea [is] that marketing priorities have to continually evolve with the business and the business continually evolves with what clients in the market want.

GREG: Right. Because you do want to make sure that the firm is picking up the trends and not missing some of those. Leaning in, obviously, it's going to be a lot on AI today and those kinds of examples. And then also, too, it depends on what the firm has as a capability.

MATT: The other interesting thing is that all the professional services firms that I've talked to or worked at all have a really great thing in the form of they know what they want to talk about and sell, but that does not match up with what clients in the market want to hear about. And that is where marketing can have tremendous value at a professional services firm.

GREG: So you're having to ... A translator filter? Is that what that means?

MATT: Yes.

GREG: Can you give an example of that? I mean, I don't know, maybe pick on PwC since you don't work there now, pick an example from there, because we won't pick on Cooley right now.

MATT: I'll even move over to Cooley. It's absolutely fine.

GREG: Okay, sure. Yeah. Yeah. What is the challenge of coming in there? You've been there a little less than a year, right? Just to be clear, Matt?

MATT: Correct. Yeah. So across the board, we have very similar challenges. And as you can imagine, think of something like tariffs. That impacts so many of the practices that we deliver.

GREG: Totally.

MATT: And we may have partners that want to talk about putting out summary alerts of new tariff regulation that was just passed. Well, that's not really valuable from a marketing perspective. They can go to any news source to find that. So then we have to say, okay, well, what do you actually want to put out there? And so that would be something that has: What are the client implications? Which types of questions should they be asking? What should they be thinking about for themselves internally? That is a way that clients really want to hear from our partners, right? They want to know, how can you help? What should I be thinking about? And what should I be looking for around the next corner?

As opposed to — and I won't pick on any partners specifically — many partners who will say, I want to go out there and tell them that we can sell them services A, B, and C, and those are going to cost X amount of dollars, and they are going to include this scope or work plan, and that this is what the deliverable is going to be. That is a very direct sales tactic, but what we really need to do is have a conversation of how do we bring people into the environment to know that Cooley has expertise in this area and then we can talk about more direct sales tactics.

GREG: Do you think the law firms are all positioned differently? Do you go through a whole position exercise? Here's how Cooley's different than like — our attorneys are Reed Smith — versus any of the other big firms out there?

MATT: Absolutely. In a couple of different ways. One is around areas of specialization, and many clients use multiple firms for the areas, meaning they may use Firm A for mergers and they may use Firm B for litigation. And they have a whole cadre of different firms they work with, or it could be many practices from one firm, but there are certain personality differences as well. There are some of the more traditional white shoe firms that were founded in New York and are still behemoths and really delivering some excellent services to some large clients. You have some that are very targeted on very small markets or smaller companies. You have some that are focused only on one or a few industries. You have others that are focused on alternate types of delivery models. And so when trying to differentiate between firms, it is fairly easy to do, not just in legal, but across professional services because we're all ranked based on practice, geography area, specialists, etc.

GREG: Boy, it's kind of crazy. How big ... Can you say how big the marketing department is there at Cooley, or even at PwC? Give me a sense of what's the size of the team.

MATT: We at Cooley are around 150.

GREG: 150 marketers?

MATT: Correct.

GREG: Wow. I don't know if I ever would have guessed the team would be that big. I mean, that's a pretty phenomenal kind of effort. And listen, I think what's funny about that — it's back to my original point — is that I've always seen these businesses very individually based. So for the partner who said, Hey, I'm going to take some of my potential income this year and commit it to this broader function for the better growth, you must have done a lot to really win them over with that.

MATT: It's always a process. I will definitely say that. And I will say when we transfer —

GREG: I'm not negating the fact that everybody thinks they could do marketing as a side hustle in every corporation in America. We talk about that a lot here at the MMA, but I gotcha.

MATT: Absolutely. But I will say that, from a perspective of any firm, we really need to make sure that they feel supported and on board, but also aligned with the strategy that leadership has defined. So we don't have the ability for a partner to say, Hey, I'm willing to put in X amount of my revenue. Rather, we work from the CEO downwards into those practice groups, into those offices, and say, How much do you want to dedicate this year? And then we can come up with a plan accordingly. And there inevitably will be some partners who will say, I didn't get the marketing that I thought I was going to get or expected. And that's a hard conversation. It's not because their practice isn't important, it's just not one of the priority areas. And there's no way that we can market 400 individual practices here at Cooley.

So what do we try and do to combat that? We try and have things like an event in a box. So if they really want to have an event still, they can work with their own team to build it. It will have all the branded assets. We got consultation from our team. That would be one type of thing. Another is, I often get, We really need to sponsor XYZ event. And when you actually get into it and ask why, if they don't care about being on the step and the repeat, what they care about is being able to network, have a speaking opportunity, something along those lines. And so it's like, great, go attend the event. Cooley doesn't need to sponsor it, but you should be there because it is important to you in your practice. So it's just trying to determine how we support our partners in the best possible way.

GREG: Talk to me a little bit about the business development. Why have the business development title? What does that mean? It kind of hung out there. I was curious.

MATT: Business development at law firms and in professional services as well is a couple of things. One is how do we take that marketing and start to target it more with a client focus, whether that is specific accounts or specific groupings of accounts. It is how do we start to move either prospects or clients further down the funnel? It is how do we do much better account management for, we may have sold a big project and it's going to be a multi-year project to ensure that the client is feeling supported and connected to the firm throughout. And so these individuals are wearing multiple hats, but it is really to help ensure that our important clients are getting both the service and the information that they need in real time.

GREG: Yeah. Crazy. And what's the revenue of Cooley, did you say? Over $2 billion?

MATT: Over $2 billion, yeah.

GREG: Yeah. That's a lot of money at stake to move around and navigate and keep that flow. Yeah. Hey, Matt, that's really interesting. Again, you do have such an unusual background where you've come from, from L.A., creative side, all the way through now to, well, from consulting, business consulting, and then into CMO roles and now over to the legal profession. But let me do this. You've had a chance ... I really wanted to ask you this, what is always the second question here at Building Better CMOs, which is, in essence, what is the best advice you've been given? And what's interesting about that question for you is that you've had the chance to work with some very smart, very thoughtful people. I mean, if nothing else defines consultants and/or lawyers, is that they're usually going to be the top of their class in some regards. They're people who are real professions.

And so I don't know. And listen, by the way, if you want to go with "My dad gave me the best advice," you could go there too. I've had a number of people do that. So what is the best advice you think you've been given?

MATT: I think there were two things professionally. One is from a former partner at PwC years ago when I was making the transition over to marketing.

GREG: By the way, did you choose to make that transition or did they come to you and say, Hey, we think you'd be good at this? I'm curious. I didn't ask you that.

MATT: No. In fact, we had a very open and honest dialogue and I said I was going to be leaving the firm and they said it's SOMETHING. What can we do to get you to stay? And I said marketing was always very interesting to me, because at that point marketing was really just a lot of thought leadership and events, and I love to do it, still love doing research.

GREG: Yeah. Oh, I like things I think I can do better too. Okay. Okay. So I'm sorry there. So you're thinking about this going to marketing, you suggested to the firm and a partner, I think you said, said to you ...

MATT: She said a statement I use with so many marketers behind — and anybody in the world — behind me today, which is, are you running from something or are you running to something? Because if you're running from something, meaning you're unhappy with consulting, I don't support you. But if you're running to something because you're really interested in marketing and where your career can take you, let's see what I can do to help make this happen. And that was a really pivotal moment.

GREG: I 100% agree, Matt. How did you answer that question? That's a hard question to answer because you don't know exactly what you're going to. So how'd you answer at the time? Do you remember?

MATT: Yeah, we had a very long conversation about it and it was very much a to, because I had a great role and was continuing to grow and was top rated, all the things that you'd want to be as I was approaching partner, but I wanted something new and different. I had been doing it for over 10 years and also didn't want to be on the road every week as most management consultants are. And so this was something that allowed me to stay with the firm, follow a passion that I loved — the research aspect of it — and to try something new. It wasn't going to be a loss because I also had the safety net of if it doesn't work out or I don't like it, I can always come back to consulting and nothing will have been lost.

GREG: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you had no harm, no loss on this one, right? Very limited risk.

MATT: Yes. And also the ancillary piece was there was no title inflation, there was no extra monetary. In fact, I was getting capped because the marketers were getting paid a little bit less than the consultants. It's often good to take a step laterally down somewhere where you're not expecting in order to get to the next step where you want to get to. I never thought about being CMO or a CMO, but that moment allowed me to go onto a new path, which then allowed for another path, etc. And so that piece of advice couldn't have been better.

GREG: Did the question at the time strike you? I mean, was it one of those lightning bolts, you just said, no, I know the answer to this question. I'm wondering how you reacted to it at the time. Do you remember?

MATT: I remember thinking, That's a really good question and I don't have the immediate answer, and I'm more of a thinker. So I wish I had the quick answer. So it was over several days. Yeah.

GREG: See, I'm a glib marketing guy. I would've had a really fast answer. I don't know what it would've been, but it would've been quick. It may not have been right. Listen, I love the point though. I had a guy ... It's funny you say that. I had a guy come to me a number of years ago, so I was running the interactive group within Y&R. This a lot of years ago. So I'm running the interactive, very early. It's in the '90s. The web has just been introduced, or this thing, we called it the WWW thing. I mean, it was really that early. It was very bizarre. And that guy come to me and he said he wanted to work in my group. And I remember I asked him, I said, Well, what's going on with your current situation? I don't like those people, or something like that, the group he was in.

And I said, Listen, not for nothing, but just a little bit of advice. I says, If you're not happy where you are, I don't know what makes me think I'm going to make you happy here. It's a variation of the point you just made. Hers is a little bit ... Well, it's the same thing, actually, I think.

MATT: Absolutely. Yeah.

GREG: He didn't take the advice very well. He thought it was kind of an asshole, but whatever. I mean, I was just like, listen, but it was good. It was and would still be good advice. If you're not happy where you are, then it doesn't mean you can't make change, it doesn't mean you can't go someplace else, but it's like you need to examine and understand what's going on, right?

MATT: Absolutely. And there's often many roads available to you that you don't know if you don't ask and have those conversations.

GREG: Yeah. I tell this story a lot when I got asked, so I was asked to come around and I wasn't asked to turn around the IAB. I was available having just sold a business for a venture capital firm and I got asked to step in and run the IEB. I was on the board. They said, Can you run the IEB until we figure out what to do? We're firing the CEO. So board member steps in, not uncommon. And I said, Sure, I'll do this for like three-six months. But I go, I don't want to run a trade association. That would be the dumbest thing I could ever do, is exactly what I said to the chairman. So I don't know, I think I'm upwards near 20 years of having run trade groups. Isn't that funny?

MATT: Famous last words.

GREG: Famous last words, exactly. Yeah. That's another point. Don't be too sure you know exactly what you want. Follow the path sometimes. Pay attention, listen up, ask good questions, and then see where it goes. Any other good advice you've been given? I mean, I am kind of enamored with this point that you really have worked with some of the smartest, most thoughtful people around. I love attorneys. My brother-in-law is an attorney. I think they're great. They have a unique perspective on the world. And consultants, they're forced to have to think big.

MATT: So I think the other big piece for me was marketing is always evolving and ever-changing, which is one of the things that drew me to it, especially B2B marketing. And I was so lucky to land in B2B marketing at a time when new technology was coming around, there was a lot of focus on this, there was a lot of opportunity. But I've met a lot of B2B marketers and especially in professional services who lay on their laurels and say, You know what? I got this. I know that I'm the best CMO. I'm running the best possible team. My other piece of advice, which I've heard from others in some various form, is you need to be a lifelong student, even as a CMO in marketing. And I can't find that to be more true than the last few years. And it's very interesting to me because, just when I thought I'd get something right, there was something that threw me a curve ball.

And I was also fortunate because at PwC, we actually had a marketing consulting practice. So often they were able to use us as a test case, which was wonderful, to try new and emerging technologies or new processes or new structures, etc. But to be around those really smart people allowed me to see that there was such a big world out there. And then even moving from regular professional services into law, although yes, you have to learn a new industry, a lot of the fundamentals are still going to be there. When I was talking about what it was like becoming a CMO at PwC, same thing here: increasingly competitive environment, technology is rapidly changing. Of course, you can have a conversation with what is the impact of AI on our business and on our client's businesses.

GREG: Oh my god. Huge for both of your industries, right?

MATT: Correct. And so what I've learned is it is so important to make sure that you are staying abreast of trends and looking way outside of professional services, way outside of even B2B, to see how things like buyer behavior are changing and how we can show up differently and how we can differentiate. Because I often hear the statement, It's impossible to differentiate in B2B. I don't think that's the case.

GREG: I don't think so.

MATT: I mean, from firms —

GREG: Not everybody does it is the issue. A lot of people, I don't know if they don't believe or they just don't think it's an option. I don't know. Go ahead. Sorry, I interrupted you there.

MATT: You're right. I think that a lot of them have given up, which is we're all big firms and you're going to have a similar experience. Yes, maybe one firm has better experience in X than the other one does in Y. But I think that there are personalities to firms. And even at Cooley, one of the things that attracted me, because I had interviewed at several law firms, was there's this thing that's called Cooley culture, and it's something that's very hard to define and you don't want to have a set of rules, but the people here are really kind and caring and you feel welcome from day one. And it's like, how do you ... That is something that's differentiating. And when you look at the client feedback, they even experience it and they say things ... Like, we just heard this feedback like, I'm mildly obsessed with my Cooley attorneys, or I love working with you as opposed to others. But like those are really great quotes. You don't usually hear that about a lawyer.

GREG: No, you don't.

MATT: So we're now working on a couple of initiatives to really take that and actually show what Cooley culture is to the outside world.

GREG: Yeah, because if you don't define it, then the market will, and that is not always in your best interest. I totally agree. I love [the] positioning there, almost ... I mean, listen, it's the whole fundamentals of the industry is getting that just right. And we just went through a reposition of the MMA and the angst that that brought and I ended up changing out firms in the middle of doing that, ad agencies working with me on it. There's all the risk in how ... We got it right at the end, thank God. And listen, I'm redefining a business in front of the world's largest CMOs.

MATT: Right.

GREG: Nobody wants that assignment, nobody. Attorneys and consultants are hard enough, they're smart people, but the world ... My board, we should know all the answers. So yeah, I hear it. It's very tough.

MATT: You have the toughest critics.

GREG: Yeah, totally could be. Exactly. Okay. So listen, Matt, let's go to the big question here though, because the purpose of Building Better CMOs, the purpose of the podcast, and it's really the reason the MMA, or Marketing Media Alliance, exists, is that what can we do to advance? It's the follow-on to what you just said there. It's what do we do to advance the practice of marketing, the discipline of marketing, the professionalism of marketing, I'd even like to say? And so I think in order to do that, though, you have to kind of take a half a step back and say, well, what do we think we don't get right? What do we think we don't really know? Now, to be fair to you, Matt, is that sometimes the MMA uses this as we go look for initiatives to go work on.

I heard a lot of CMOs tell me about the value of the relationship between long and short, brand versus performance, or offer-driven marketing. And so we built a methodology and now have raised a bunch of money and done a bunch of studies around this. So that's what we do. Okay. So I'm always listening. That's why I have guys like you on the podcast. I'm listening for the problems, the challenges, the things we don't know. So I don't know, in your experience, what do you think we, as marketing/marketers, maybe don't fully understand, don't appreciate, don't get? I don't know, go anywhere you want with it, but I'm looking for the challenges.

MATT: Sure. I think there's multiple. Firstly is the people component. When I came here, we had a very traditional marketing organization, one that was very successful and had been this way for many, many years. However, we can't ask for change and expect our marketers to come along with us unless they are given the tools to do so. And so I would say area number one is definitely around educating, upskilling, and having our marketers understand why we are evolving and what they need to do and know. So for example, here at Cooley, we instituted something called infinite learning. In infinite learning, we have that once a month, and it's several dedicated hours one week per month. Some of it is self-guided learning. Some of it is in the form of a webcast. Some of it is teamwork, whether virtual or live in the offices. And I'll give you an example of one from last month just to bring it to life, which was, like everybody, we have some challenges with CRM updating.

And there's only so many times you can ask our marketers or the partners or anybody else to go in and update CRM and to tell them how to do it. Rather, what we did was created a scavenger hunt and said, This is how we expect you to use CRM and go as teams and figure out how to do these tasks, A, B, and C. See who can do it most complete and who can do it quickest. That made it much more fun and interesting to see how they not only can use the CRM, but also why it's so important that we have clear and accurate data that sits within there. And so everyone —

GREG: Is that requiring the partners and their teams to update their databases? Is that what that means?

MATT: Yes. Yes. Everybody need to be updating data real time, which at any company is impossible.

GREG: They're like, I know everybody, I don't need to write it down. Or something.

MATT: Exactly. And especially back to that individual owner, entrepreneur, franchise model that you were talking about earlier, the real power of a firm when you talk about buying into the platform is that you're then going to be able to cross sell, meaning you will get opportunities from other clients and others can find opportunities for your clients.

GREG: Yeah, fair enough. Yeah.

MATT: So there's the people component.

GREG: Okay, so we got upskill the team. Understand that it's an ever-evolving, don't sit on your laurels, and oh yeah, there's this new thing called AI. Go ahead. Yeah.

MATT: And then we have the strategy component, which is ... It sounds basic, but it's actually very difficult in professional services, which is to build a marketing strategy that is aligned to the overall firm strategy as well as multiple individual practice strategies and how you bring those all together to determine which campaigns you're going to put out there. Because when I use the word "campaign," I'm talking about how we show up as one Cooley around a topic like tariffs I was referencing earlier, not around a specific practice group. And so getting buy-in at leadership level and then every level down while at the same time getting buy-in from the bottom up takes a lot of time and a lot of energy. And that's critically important because without the strategy, nothing else will be able to be accomplished or measured well as we move forward. So then that obviously then rolls right into data.

And so with the data component, we need to be able to have clearly defined goals, and these goals need to be mutually agreed upon between the business and marketing leadership, and they need to be things that are clearly measurable. They need to have a combination of both the quantitative data measurement as well as the qualitative, because nothing in B2B marketing is purely without having the color and context around it. They need to be things that are defined in how we measure them and what is important, meaning we're not going to report on any vanity metrics and we are going to report on things that are most valuable to the practice and we're going to do that consistently, and we're going to use that data to inform future decisions. One of the most interesting things — I had this at both firms — was partners saying, Well, I've attended this event for 20 years,

I want to attend at year 21. I've written this piece of thought leadership for 20 years. I want to do it again. And having the data now to say, You know what? Our clients weren't at that event. Or readership on this piece was pretty low. So not suggesting you shouldn't get marketing support, but let's look at other ways that we could potentially do better with a new format. Allowing that to be used to be both strategic and more consultative in nature back to the partners really is a game changer in terms of challenges, because the challenge that we have is that partners often look at marketers as order fillers. I want to go do an event, go produce it for me. This makes it much more of a collaboration between the two.

GREG: But the issue you're raising, Matt, just so I'm clear and kind of summarizing that for the listeners, is that you're basically advocating what any good strategy consultant probably would for the project. Be really clear about the goals, be clear about what our go-to-market approach is, be clear on how we're measuring success, and then have stakeholder buy-in to what we're doing, right?

MATT: And it needs to be consistent across the firm.

GREG: Do you see marketers who don't do that, by the way? So you've worked with CMOs in the consulting practice a number of years ago, but did you see them ... Because part of what you're suggesting, it's a little bit of a penetrating look at the obvious, but obviously you don't think people are doing it. That's what I want to —

MATT: Absolutely. At every firm. And I don't think any law firm marketer would disagree or professional services marketer would disagree with that sentiment because there's a number of partners — and marketers, even — who really believe in looking at how pretty or how successful or they throw out numbers. They'll say like, I had a webcast that had X thousand people attend. I'm like, great. How many of those were potential buyers? How many of those are existing clients versus new? How many of those are already in our CRM versus not? How many of them actually would fit our target model? And so being able to have much more intelligent conversations. I've seen marketers at many firms and they create these great decks with pictures of an event and pictures of the partners with their arms around their clients and drinks in hand and everybody's having a great time.

That is important, don't get me wrong, but we're wasting a lot of time creating those decks as opposed to doing actual good marketing. So that standardization has to also focus on what we're going to measure. I joke at Cooley that one of the things that we're really good at here is using adjectives. When I say how was an event or what was a piece of content, they say it was amazing. It was awesome. It was excellent. And I don't mean to be flippant when I ask, but I was like, Can you please tell me what amazing or awesome mean? Just because I want to understand because we should replicate the things that you think are good and we should also share with you what our data is showing as well. Bringing those two together is an ongoing journey.

GREG: I love your point about measurement too, and I think this is ... So don't let me put words in your mouth, although hopefully my point is still interesting, even if you disagree, that's fine. But I think that there's real specific measurement about what we're trying to do and accomplish on the thing. And I'll tell you, it's interesting, I had a situation where a major CMO, big retailer, called me a few years ago and asked me if there was a standard for quality marketing measurement. Now, I'm a super measurement expert. And I said, Oh, geez, I don't know that there is. I go, It's a great question. And MMA has since written it, by the way, so funny enough, but I said, I don't know, but I says, Why do you ask? And he said because his CFO and his head of merchandising were demanding he use less click attribution. And I said, Well, I hate to tell you, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard, because there is no relationship between clicks and business performance. If you don't agree, I mean, they were putting the marker at one point for marketing that was insane and that would have destroyed or harmed the business.

And I've seen that again. And in fact, I think it's a bit of an issue that we as marketers still don't 100% agree. I don't hear universal alignment when I talk to ... Is MMM any good? Is MTA? I mean, there's a bunch of things that come up around that. Do I even need to do that? I don't know. There's so much we still just don't know.

MATT: I agree with that statement fully. And just to make it real in terms of professional services, many of the projects that we deliver are multi-year, many of the proposals can be multi-year opportunities. And so we're never going to have that last-click attribution, nor in general, do we have a marketer going out and selling a $100 million project. And so what does that look like for us? We start to shift some of the metrics because things like associated pipeline or revenue aren't that relevant because hopefully marketers are touching a significant portion of that pipeline revenue. But if we start thinking about events, for example, and we put in a new one called MIMs, marketing influence meetings. So did somebody come to an event that either is now a lead that we didn't know before, or is in the middle of a proposal that we've now had an additional touchpoint with, or is an influencer on somebody purchasing a project?

I can then show that we had X amount of MIMs in any given month or related to one event. That's a way to definably show value to leadership as opposed to saying, I touched X billion in revenue.

GREG: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've taken the time — I mean, here's what you said, Matt — you've taken the time to figure out what you truly think — and I hear what you said there, makes sense to me — that is predictive of revenue business opportunities into the future.

MATT: Correct.

GREG: Yeah. I think sometimes we just do a bunch of downloads. I think marketing, and in fact, MMA's Possible event is coming up. I think this will probably come out before that, but MMA's Possible event is come up in Miami here pretty soon. And I've been thinking through, I like to take the moment since it's an MMA event, what's the point I want to make to the industry? And my point this year is a derivative of "Activity is not the answer."

MATT: Absolutely.

GREG: It's not ... You can't just measure ... And we do so much of that. How many clicks do we get? How many likes do we get? How many of these sort of metrics that we have no idea what they really mean to the fundamentals of transforming consumers' decisions?

MATT: Not only that, but did you have goals to start with? Because if not, those are just really big numbers that don't have context to me.

GREG: Yeah. And if you take — and to your other point, if I'm hearing you right — if you take and translate that there's a marketing measurement challenge, do we have that clearly defined and does it relate in what I just heard you say it does for you all, you've figured that out. But then it's a matter of, too, it's like, have we thought through both how to activate against that, what to do with it, how are we going to go to market with that kind of thing to then watch it? And then how does that tie back to the overall strategy of what we're trying to accomplish? What's the advice you give your teams around this kind of thing, by the way?

MATT: Make it as simple and easily understandable as possible to the partners. The second that you start throwing out either marketing-specific terms like "we increased CX by X," or the minute you start throwing out numbers like "we touched X hundred million in pipeline," you've lost them. And so how do we show these were our goals, this is what we're doing, and this is what we're changing going forward based on what we just experienced, changes the conversation so that you become more of a business partner and they see you as somebody who is growing and evolving with them, as opposed to somebody who's being handed something to do where then they then take it back and run with it.

GREG: Yeah. I think what I'm hearing you say is you're pretty fixated on making sure that everybody understands the reason why they're saying what they're doing or putting together the PowerPoint to explain it to somebody or putting together the analysis. Yeah. Make sure they're really clear on what the meaning of that is.

MATT: Yes. And that too is a journey, but getting people to think in a way of also being able to be much more analytical and provide that context. So how did we do compared to last year, if we have that data? We're now collecting all of it so we can do that. How do we do compared to industry averages? How do we compare to other similar type of marketing tactics that we've delivered? But being able to share what this actually means is something that interestingly, as marketers, at least in professional services, we haven't done great at, even though that's really the marketer's fundamental goal.

GREG: I think I often hear people say — maybe no one had said it to you, I don't know — but that consumer marketing is what most marketers do and then B2B picks up some trends from that. But I think you've got lessons that B2B could teach back to consumer marketers is some of what you're saying, right?

MATT: I think in terms of where we have really taken what B2C probably was trying to do and have now taken that further is really around personalization. And right now, what we're able to do because we have so much activity data, both first- and third-party, both how they've interacted with us as well as other signals they've given us, is to — and I'll put this in professional services land — is to customize content that they're going to receive. So for example, if somebody is a very early stage private client, they're nowhere close to becoming an IPO, we suppress them now from getting any IPO content. If somebody just went public or just went through some type of exit activity, they should be suppressed as well. But if somebody is really in that late stage private company who may be going IPO, not only should we be going harder at them with that content, but we should be putting them on custom journeys that really have them interacting with Cooley based on the types of signals that they're giving us.

I think that we're doing that really well now. I don't see that personally as a B2C consumer where I would expect more of, and I know it's very complex as well, but I would say that's one area that I think that they could do better.

GREG: Listen, I agree with you. You don't know this, [but] one of the things that MMA has dug into has been personalization, and we have a methodology that a buddy of mine, longstanding friend of mine, had found in some patents in the company that did it, he ultimately sold that company to somebody else or helped facilitate selling that to somebody else. But he came to me, he said, Listen, I think there's an opportunity with using machine learning in this case to do personalization of ads. He goes, And I think it can boost marketing performance 35, 50%, which is, you would go, Wow, that's really high if I could boost a campaign performance app. Turns out, man, we were completely wrong. It actually boosts performance on average 160%, and we've seen as high as almost 4X. So at some very basic level, you'd have to be a dope not to think that personalization wouldn't matter, right?

MATT: Right.

GREG: And yet, why is it so hard? And in fact, you wouldn't have seen this, but I get these conversations in the board meeting with usually CMOs rubbing their heads saying, Why doesn't my team understand the importance of this? They struggle to try to get the team to navigate towards it. And I don't see widespread personalization by anybody out there. I mean, you just had some of the most advanced applications that I think I've ever heard.

MATT: Yeah, and I think if, for example, in our space, if a matter is sold, whether we won or lost it to a competitor, we know and are able to close that out so that individual is no longer going to be marketed to. If I was searching for cars online and I bought my car, they don't know, so I'm still being served car ads until I stopped clicking on them.

GREG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I know. I know. They have no feedback mechanism on that. I'm not even sure they get the personalization up right. I mean, that was always the challenge with previous media — print, linear television — is that it was teaching consumers (because the ads weren't personalized) it was teaching consumers to ignore advertising. It was the fundamental thesis of that business and that has to have an effect on recall and other sort of impact scores, but yeah, we didn't get around ... And digital sort of ... I don't think we're good at it in digital though. I'm curious, how do you actually do — this is a very personal for the MMA question — how do you actually target people online? Have you really figured how to target individuals online?

MATT: There's a couple of things that we do. Number one is, for business, firstly, social media and specifically LinkedIn is a primary source for us, and that allows us to do targeting very importantly. Secondly, we have a lot of information. Many of the either targets buyers or other important individuals like alumni, for example, have provided information not only about themselves, but also around their preferences. So we're able to do very hypertargeted targeting to them. And then I would say thirdly, the other area is many of our buyers consume content in such specific areas, whether it's online via certain trade publications or certain media outlets, etc. It really allows us to do a much more focused buy than most even larger B2B companies.

GREG: Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of raising the question again — this is kind of bad, this is about you, not about the MMA — however, the MMA has been trying to do a bunch of targeting indirectly with some of our many member and member companies, and we're finding it to be a real challenge. And in fact, I think we're finding a bunch of, I don't know what I want to call it, go with the word shenanigans that seems to be appearing out in the digital ecosystem. And I'm just not finding the companies who really take that seriously to get that right. It's not that hard to identify a consumer. There's a bunch of signals and certainly cookies or the reduction of cookies or people getting rid of their cookies on various levels might interfere with some of that. I mean, I'll tell you what happened. We were trying to target just MMA company members and board members.

I just wanted to test to see how many actually saw the ads, and 65% of the inventory ended up on a game site.

MATT: Yeah.

GREG: I mean, that's bullshit.

MATT: It really is. And it's why you have to have your ... If you're using an agency or even in-house, stay on top of them to make sure that you really are getting the delivery in the areas where you thought you would.

GREG: Yeah. I'm concerned if the industry looks deeper into that that they're going to realize there's a whole bunch of stuff going on there. We're investigating some of that now too. So even when we have these better ideas, even when you try to do it right, I'm not so sure — as good as digital, that was digital's promise — I'm not so sure we're there as an industry completely.

MATT: Agreed. And I think also the other thing in professional services specifically is we cannot ignore the physical component as well, which is — and will continue to be, and is back with a vengeance post-Covid — that ability to provide that in-person connectivity is something that is maybe not equal, but somewhere very close to what we can do in the digital space.

GREG: So listen, Matt, last sort of series of questions here. So listen, you and I would be remiss not to talk a little bit about AI for a moment, right? And so let me position a little bit for your firm. So we've all seen the news. I mean, marketing's going to be potentially destroyed by AI, but also too, professional services has been in that bullseye of negative attention. And I think also a legal profession has also been suggested. So I'm not here ... I actually have a counter to that argument in a very big way, but maybe just where is the team and thinking through how you adopt AI, what are you guys doing to bring that into some of your marketing efforts and so on now?

MATT: We are involved now. It was very nascent prior to my arrival. And so we have a number of pilots that are now running successfully. And we're very clear to share with our marketers, this is not a cost-reduction play, but rather this is a way to give back time in the day to focus on much higher-value-add activities, because everybody is running at over a 100%. This is a way for us to increase quality. This is a way for us to also be much more efficient and effective in our delivery. And so some of it is the basics that you would hear from any marketer, like content aggregator tools. What is being done manually over and over again pained me when I got here, as opposed to putting all the information at once and having all the derivative pieces of content created for you for customization.

Part of it is around how we do some content generation itself. So for example, we may have an attorney and our marketing team work on a piece of thought leadership, but then we can use AI to help customize it for a specific industry or something that's very nuanced. Another area for us is around — what you were talking about just a few moments ago — is around predictive analytics. And so which clients do we think we have the highest win rate with? Which clients may be the most profitable for us? Which clients do we think we should go target because they may be within a specific industry that is more prone to being disrupted by a new regulation, etc. And so the idea of using it to help us as an enabler to do better marketing is something that we're still only nascent in and we'll be using it a lot more as we continue to grow.

GREG: Yeah. I'm with you. I don't believe in the whole ... I heard the greatest thing, I think I just either read it today or yesterday. They basically said no profession has been more aggressive about streamlining operations than accounting. And yet if you look, there are more accountants today than there ever has been.

MATT: That's right. And continuing to grow.

GREG: And continuing to grow, exactly.

MATT: Now it's —

GREG: And I'm not saying there isn't going to be some disruption and there isn't going to be some shifting, and some of that should be really good, but I don't know too as a CEO, I have 10 other things I want the team to be doing.

MATT: Exactly. And now we're freeing up the capacity for them to do so.

GREG: Yes, exactly. Or to think more thoroughly or then rejigger maybe the team and the placement. And also what we evaluated. In fact, I was just talking to my CFO and I was basically saying, listen, I says, I think we're going to put more value on judgment. This is what my conclusion was at the end of the conversation. We need to have more people who know what to do. And AI, as smart as it is, as much expertise it can bring me, it doesn't have judgment yet.

MATT: That's right. And to have those critical thinking and business analyst skills are still going to go a long way for quite a while.

GREG: Yeah, totally, totally, totally. Well, Matt, this was really fun. Like I said, I was super excited to talk to you. And then when I realized your background had actually started in Hollywood, I guess, I didn't call it that earlier, but you started in sort of film development and migrated your way all the way through business back over into marketing and that's where you found your love. So very exciting. I mean, it was a great journey. I appreciate your conversation today.

MATT: Thank you very much. I enjoyed it as well.

GREG: Thanks again to Matt Lieberman from Cooley for coming on Building Better CMOs. Check the description of this episode for links to connect with Matt. If you like this episode, you might also enjoy my conversation with Drew Panayiotou, the CMO of Keurig Dr. Pepper. Now we talked about the value created by raving fans of your brand, why creativity is an economic multiplier, and how AI is going to unlock the next big beverage category. Now you can find that episode on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're hearing me now. At the Market Media Alliance, we are working to make marketing matter more through conferences, research, and education. If you want to know more, visit mmaglobal.com. You can also email me directly, greg@mmaglobal.com. Now don't forget, Building Better CMOs is now on YouTube. Just go to bettercmos.com/youtube to start watching. Our producer and podcast consultant is Eric Johnson from lightningpod.fm.

Artwork is by Jason Chase, and a special thanks to Angela Gray and Dan Whiting. This is Greg Stuart, I'll see you in two weeks.