Thompson Smith and Puxon Shortlisted for Prestigious Legal Awards

Local law firm Thompson Smith and Puxon (TSP) has been shortlisted for the Law Society’s prestigious Excellence Awards, the highest accolade for law firms in England and Wales, in the Marketing and Communications category.

Thompson Smith and Puxon Chief Operating Officer, Sean Stuttaford, who heads the Marketing team, said “We are delighted to have been shortlisted for the Law Society Excellence in Marketing and Communications award. We have a small but excellent marketing team so for them to be nominated for a national award is particularly pleasing and just reward for the team’s accomplishments.”

Describing the process that the team went through when devising their communications strategy Sean adds “We felt that traditional professional service firm marketing would not effectively communicate our values or make the emotional connection we wanted with potential clients, and the adverts that we produced are definitely a departure from usual law-firm marketing techniques.

We wanted to communicate the genuine feelings of the firm: that we understand that when you need legal services it is usually a time of pressure and stress and that TSP will absorb and relieve this stress in a way that takes account of an individual’s needs and preference for service delivery.

The challenge that we faced was that we needed to ensure not only that our message made it clear that we are a law firm, but also that we had “buy-in” from our lawyers for the unique delivery of our services that we placed at the heart of the campaign; it was particularly important that our Directors and staff believed in the campaign and could deliver the outcomes promised.

Working with our creative team we had to ensure that the metaphors proposed didn’t get out of control and that we remained grounded when it came to the words we planned to use on screen alongside the metaphor itself. The finished products are stylistically different, particularly for a law firm, which we believe makes them memorable.

In addition, it was important that we were able to create an holistic marketing communications strategy and, whilst the two adverts have featured in a Sky TV campaign, which allows us to target postcode areas, in local cinema advertising and in social media, the images, words and sounds have been transferred for use in both radio and printed materials.”

Law Society president Christina Blacklaws said: “There are more than 9,000 firms and 140,000 solicitors in England and Wales, so to be shortlisted for an Excellence Award is to be recognised as being among the best of the best.

All the firms and solicitors who are shortlisted should be congratulated for the work they do day-in day-out to support their clients, many of whom are navigating complex and challenging legal problems.”

Winners will be announced at the Law Society’s Excellence Awards ceremony in London on 17 October 2018.

Both adverts can be viewed above.