Final - Boswell Content Marketing Portfolio
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Transcript of Final - Boswell Content Marketing Portfolio
Content Marketing Portfolio
The benefit of content marketing is that it empowers you to build trusting relationships with clients by consistently providing valuable and shareable information to start conversations that lead to sales and referrals.
Compelling content is emotionally resonant and intellectually stimulating. It communicates the value of your products and services with clarity and brevity. It’s both informative and fun to read, and it sells the main idea of your messaging without being “salesy.”
This content marketing portfolio contains work we’ve produced including blogs, brochures, eBooks, marketing plans, newsletters, publications, social media, website copy, and white papers on behalf of our clients. If you have any questions, you can email me at [email protected].
Thank you,
Steve Nichols, MS Owner Boswell Inc.
Table of Contents
Blogs – pg. 6
• Burns & McDonnell: “Three Reasons Facility Managers Should Care AboutCommissioning” pg. 7
• Burns & McDonnell: “A Building Owner’s Guide: What You Need to Know AboutCommissioning” pg. 8
• Dysart Taylor: “Receive the Full Benefits of Charitable Giving for the Holidays”pg. 9
• Dysart Taylor: "Termination for Convenience is Never Convenient" pg. 10• Kaufman & Nichols: "Peace of Mind Blog" pg. 11• Laplacian: "Business Applications of Computer Vision" pg. 12• Laplacian: "Defining and Solving Business Problems Through
Software Engineering" pg. 13• Laplacian: "How to Calculate Effective Customer Engagement Strategies with
Big Data" pg. 14• Moblico: "3 Ways to Drive Loyalty and Engagement with Your Mobile
App" pg. 15• Moblico: "A:B Plus Testing Allows You to Hone In On the Best
Communications for Your App" pg. 16• Moblico: "Automating a Customized Customer Journey with Mobile
App Marketing Communications" pg. 17• Moblico: "Can Your Phone Read Your Mind? Or is a Beacon Nearby?" pg. 18• Moblico: "Essential Steps to Getting to Know Your Customers During
App Registration" pg. 19• Moblico: "Foolproof In-App Marketing Tips for Publishers" pg. 20• Moblico: "How to Manage Mobile Content to Monetize Your App" pg. 21• Moblico: "Make Customers' Lives Easier with In-App Card Services" pg. 22• Moblico: "Mobile App Marketing Platforms for Agencies - Helping Your
Clients Reach their Mobile App Users" pg. 23• Rotaract KC: "A Young Professionals Community Service Club in Kansas
City" pg. 24
Table of Contents
Brochures – pg. 25
• Burns & McDonnell: "Designing and Building Facilities for the NationalGuard: Our First Line of Defense" pg. 26
• Burns & McDonnell: "Energy Savings for the National Guard withBuilding Systems Commissioning and Retro-Commissioning" pg. 38
eBooks – pg. 50
• Moblico: "'Tis the Season to Use Your Mobile Apps to Drive Revenues" pg. 51
Marketing Plans – pg. 56 • Lathrop & Gage: "Mightier than the Sword - a Legal Marketing
Communications Strategy" pg. 57
Newsletters – pg. 107 • Dysart Taylor: "Fall 2014 Newsletter" pg. 108• Dysart Taylor: "Winter 2015 Newsletter" pg. 109• Rotary Club of Kansas City, Missouri: "E-Buzzsaw" pg. 110• Shook Hardy & Bacon: "Records Management Department Announces
Diamond Award and Thank You! Board Winners" pg. 117• Shook Hardy & Bacon: "Spotight on... Kelly Zamboni, Records Center
Trainer" pg. 118
Publications – pg. 119 • Dos Mundos: "Halterman Helping Schools in Mexico City" pg. 120• Forbes: "5 Steps to Prevent Brain Drain in Your Organization" pg. 121• How Life Works: "4 Ways to Avoid Holiday Debt" pg. 122• Inc.: "Why Big Budgets Aren't as Sexy as They Sound" pg. 123• Inc.: "4 Tips for Handling Customer Complaints Without Compromising
Your Values" pg. 124• Kansas City Business Journal: "Rotary Club of Kansas City Raises
$1M, Celebrates Centennial” pg. 127
Table of Contents
• Kansas City Business Journal: "Experts: Still Time to Benefit from Bush-eraTax Cuts" pg. 128
• Killer Startups: "Would Your Business Survive if Your Co-founder DiedTomorrow?" pg. 129
• Medium: "You Don't Have to Be Old to Consider Life Insurance" pg. 130• Utility Products: "Extreme Conditions to Consider When Purchasing
Rugged Tech for Utility Technicians" pg. 131• We Work: "Don't Let an Ineffective Hiring Process Keep You from Top
Talent" pg. 132
Social Media – pg. 133
• Rotaract KC: "Rotaract KC: A Young Professionals Community Service Clubin Kansas City" Facebook Page pg. 134
• Rotary Club 13: "Downtown Kansas City Rotary Club 13" Facebook Page pg. 135• Sildon Law Group: "Kansas City is the City of Entrepreneurs" LinkedIn
Group pg. 136
Website – pg. 137
• Burns & McDonnell: "Commissioning for Optimal Building Performance" pg. 138• Burns & McDonnell: "Increased Facility Value Via Retro-Commissioning" pg. 139• Burns & McDonnell: "Integrated Commissioning Process" pg. 140• Burns & McDonnell: "Recommissioning Your Existing Facilities" pg. 141• Dysart Taylor: "Ketchum Named Managing Director of Dysart Taylor" pg. 142• Kaufman & Nichols: "Kaufman & Nichols, CPA, PC" pg. 143
White Papers – pg. 144
• Burns & McDonnell: "The Commissioning Process: a Step-by-Step Guide" pg. 145
• Burns & McDonnell: "Retro-Commissioning: Why, When and How?" pg. 151• Moblico: "Helping Your Client Help Themselves - Mobile App
Marketing Platforms for Agencies" pg. 157• Sildon Law Group: "Augmented Consequences" pg. 159
Blogs
“We were very impressed with the content Steve supplied. Nice to have a great starting point, so thank you!”
– Mandy Zellers, Marketing Manager atBurns & McDonnell
Brochures
“Shout out to Steve Nichols for this pursuit and win. You do a great job!”
– Tanya Martella, Business Development Manager at Burns & McDonnell
Designing and Building Facilities for the National Guard: Our First Line of Defense
Assessments - Commissioning - Design - Design-Build -
Construction - Energy Security - Master Planning -
Programming - Renewable Energy
Burns & McDonnell has provided comprehensive A-E services to the National Guard Bureau (NGB) since 1999. We are a four-time incumbent on the nationwide NGB IDIQ contract and also provide services under state-wide contracts in California, Minnesota, Georgia, Ohio, New Jersey, Delaware, South Dakota and Oklahoma. We provide the insight, knowledge and experience to successfully complete projects of all types, size and complexity.
Burns & McDonnell currently provides Type A, B and C services for more than 40 concurrent Task Orders under the nationwide NGB IDIQ contract. To date, we have provded services for Air National Guard facilities totalling $467,850,000 in construction costs and Army National Guard Facilities totalling $400,858,200 in construction costs.
The map below demonstrates our capabilities to provide nationwide services for a wide variety of National Guard facility types.
Our employee ownership is the foundation for our mission
to make our clients successful.
“The design team consistently performed in a professional manner while developing that personal partnership that is required for executing a project on time and within budget. Their attention to detail and understanding of the owner’s unique requirements has resulted in quality construction documents that were bid within budget.” - Major Flint Tyler, Engineer of Military Construction Design, Georgia Army National Guard Cumming Regional Readiness Center
Cumming Regional Readiness Center Auditorium, Cumming, Georgia
Burns & McDonnell’s approach to project success focuses on four main components of National Guard project achievement: Mission, People, Energy & Environment, and Cost.
We strive to fully understand your Mission and how it relates to building and site design.
We gain an understanding of your People to support user needs, collaboration, productivity, efficiency and comfort.
We focus on Energy & Environment solutions that will reduce energy use and operational costs.
As we work with you to make decisions, we provide Cost data and estimates while maintaining the project budget and schedule.
Overview
REDHORSE Squadron Facility, Mansfield Air National Guard Base, Ohio
Burns & McDonnell has in-depth knowledge of NGB program needs based on 15 years of service under nationwide and state IDIQ contracts. Our experience ranges from inventory of readiness assets in five states to master planning and environmental assessments for base developments, and design of readiness centers and support facilities. We have developed regionally-based teams of A-E professionals experienced with NGB design guidelines and procedures, and the wide range of NGB facility types required to support your mission.
Professional Services
Summary of Professional Services
• Anti-Terrorism Force Protection• Architecture• Building Information Modeling (BIM)• Computer Aided Drafting and Design (CADD)• Capital Investment Strategies• Commissioniong/Retro-Commissioning• Construction Management• Construction Phase Services• Cost Estimating• Design-Build• Design-Build RFPs• Design Standards• Encroachment Studies• Energy Savings Performance Contracts• Energy Strategies• Engineering• Environmental Assessments• Environmental Baseline Studies• Environmental Studies and Permitting• Facility Condition Assessments• Installation Design Guides• Interior Design• Land-Use Studies• Life Cycle Cost Analysis• Master Planning• Natural and Cultural Resources Management Plan• National Environmental Policy Act Compliance• Physical Security• Power Purchase Agreements• Program Management• Project Charrettes• Project Feasibility Studies• Project Programming and 1390/1391 Development• Site Location and Development Plan• Sustainable Design• Value Engineering
Daniel K. Inouye Fighter Squadron Operations and Aircraft Maintenance Facility
Prof
essi
onal
Ser
vice
s
“Burns & McDonnell has been especially cooperative to work with and always read to respond when needed. I attribute the dedication and attention of your team to your quality focused culture and employee ownership.” - Lt. Cmdr. Troy Wertz
Hawaii Air National Guard
Awards
Burns & McDonnell is the only A/E firm that has won The Professional Services Management Journal’s Premier Award for Client Satisfaction for four consecutive years.
Fire Station, Reno Air National Guard Base, Reno, Nevada
Awards
Other Federal/Military Awards• 2012 Honor Award for Facility Design: U.S. Central
Command Headquarters, MacDill AFB/AMC Design Awards Program
• 2010 Design Award for Concept Design: U.S. Central Command Headquarters, MacDill AFB/AMC Design Awards Program
• 2010 Design Award for Interior Design: Joint Intelligence Center, MacDill AFB/AMC Design Awards Program
• 2009 Honor Award for Facility Design: Joint Intelligence Center, MacDill Air Force Base/USAF Design Awards Program
• 2009 Honor Award for Concept Design: Battlespace Environmental Laboratory, Kirtland AFB/AMC Design Awards Program
• 2008 Merit Award for Concept Design: Academic Training Center, Eglin AFB/AETC Design Awards Program
• 2006 Merit Award for Concept Design: Joint Intelligence Center, MacDill AFB/AMC Design Awards Program
National Guard Awards• 2012 Merit Award for Concept Design: Fire Station,
Reno ANGB, Nev./USAF Design Awards Program• 2012 Citation Award: Air Intelligence Exploitation
Facility, Reno ANGB, Nev.• 2011 Merit Award for Concept Design: Daniel K.
Inouye Fighter Squadron Operations and Aircraft Maintenance Facility/USAF Design Awards Program
• 2009 Engineering Excellence Award, ACEC - Arizona: Buckeye Armed Forces Reserve Center, Buckeye, Ariz.
• 2008 Best Project, Design-Build Institute of America, Mid-America Region: Missouri Air National Guard Rosecrans Air Traffic Control Training Complex,
St. Joseph, Mo.
Air Intelligence Exploitation Facility, Reno Air National Guard Base, Nevada
Daniel K. Inouye Fighter Squadron Operations and Aircraft Maintenance Facility, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii
Burns & McDonnell completed more than 40 successful new construction and maintenance and repair projects for the ANG in the past five years including full design of hangars, digital intelligence facilities, operations and training facilities, flight simulators and fire stations as well as munitions administration facilities, aircraft ready shelters, and dining facilities. The majority of performance evaluation ratings we receive on Air National Guard projects are “Exceptional” and “Very Good.”
All new facilities were designed to meet LEED Silver or better certification standards.
Air National GuardExample Projects• Daniel K. Inouye Fighter Squadron Operations and Aircraft Maintenance Facility Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii
• Base Defense Group Beddown Facilities Stewart ANGB, Newburgh, N.Y. • Fire Station Reno ANGB, Nev.
• High Speed Taxiway New York ANGB, N.Y.
“These winning projects represent the Air Force’s continued commitment to providing quality facilities that are truly ‘resource efficient’ and built to last. They were judged not only on their aesthetic merits, but strong emphasis was placed on cost control, energy efficiency, functionality and sustainability.” - Maj. Gen. Timothy A. Byers, USAF, speaking of the Reno ANGB Fire Station and other projects
recognized with 2012 USAF Design Awards
Daniel K. Inouye Fighter Squadron Operations and Aircraft Maintenance Facility,Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii
Air N
ation
al G
uard
The design and construction of maintenance and aviation facilities on military installations requires coordination of high-tech systems, room for expansion and knowledge of Unified Facilities Criteria as well as state and local building codes. The Burns & McDonnell team has decades of experience providing the technical planning, programming and design of airfields, flightline facilities, flightside, landside, beddown and mission-critical facilities for the ANG.
Maintenance and repair facilities are designed to improve energy efficiency and reduce operations and maintenance costs for the ANG.
Example Projects• Air Intelligence Exploitation Facility Reno ANGB, Nev.
• REDHORSE Squadron Facility & Master Plan Mansfield ANGB, Ohio
• Predator Operations Complex Ellington Field, Houston, Texas
• Digital Ground Station Otis ANGB, Mass.
Air National GuardAir Intelligence Exploitation Facility, Reno ANGB, Nevada
“Burns & McDonnell was a pleasure to work with over the last five years as we developed and constructed an entire new base/campus. They were easy to work with and did their best to accomodate the government, even through contract delays and project scope changes.”
- Major Joseph Logan, COR, Ohio Air National Guard - REDHORSE Squadron Facility and Master Plan
Air National G
uard
Burns & McDonnell completed more than 45 successful ARNG projects from 2009 to 2014 including master planning, RFP development, full design of armories and readiness centers, DD Form 1390/1391 workshops, PROJDOC, and design of other ARNG facilities using 415-12 and the ARNG Design Guides. The majority of performance evaluation ratings we receive on Army National Guard projects are “Exceptional” and “Very Good.”
Army National GuardExample Projects• Information Operations Readiness Center Washington ARNGB, Joint Base Lewis- McChord, Wash.
• Master Plan Update Regional Collective Training Center, Camp Guernsey, Wyo.
• Regional Training Institute (RTI) Arkansas Regional Training Institute, Camp Robinson, Arkansas
Arkansas Regional Training Institute, Bentonville, Arkansas
“It is a real pleasure working with professionals who understand customer service and the term ‘work ethic.’” - Lt. Cmdr. Rick Miller
Arkansas Army National Guard, Arkansas Regional Training Institute
Arm
y N
ation
al G
uard
We are about to begin our fourth consecutive five-year NGB Nationwide IDIQ. Our membership in the National Guard Association of the United States and our ongoing involvement with ARNG and other Department of Defense projects keeps us current on the Unified Facilities Criteria referenced in the ARNG design guides. We design high technology, economical and sustainable facilities that reduce operations costs and meet renewable energy goals.
Example Projects• Army Aviation Readiness Center Windsor Locks, Conn.
• Regional Readiness Center Cumming, Ga.
• Readiness Center Transformation Master Plan (RCTMP) New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, Indiana, New Hampshire
• Regional Training Institute (RTI) Bangor, Maine
Army National GuardWindsor Locks Army Aviation Readiness Center, Windsor Locks, Connecticut
“We have received superior support from the BMcD team...The team has never missed a deadline...Additionally, the cost estimating was superb...The keen observation of the project team in determining protential credits back to the government saved tens of thousands of dollars.” - Maj. Benjamin Neumon, PE, Civil Engineer/COR, Connecticut Army Guard
Army Aviation Readiness Center, Windsor Locks
Army N
ational Guard
All projects listed below are ongoing.
Specialized Experience and Technical Competence
Spec
ializ
ed E
xper
ienc
e an
d Te
chni
cal C
ompe
tenc
e
Points of Contact
As a retired colonel with more than 26 years of military service, Mr. Karnowski brings his military experience and project leadership to the execution of our ARNG program. He is knowledgeable of ARNG requirements and procedures at state and national program levels. He has extensive experience with the ARNG Design Guides, NG Pamphlet 415-12, NG Regulation 415-5 and UFCs.
As a principal and senior leader in the firm, Mr. Kraus oversees our nationwide NGB program and works directly with NGB/PARC-S regarding contract performance and oversight. With more than 35 years of DOD experience and 20 years of NGB experience, he served as a project and program manager for numerous and diverse design and design-build projects for both the Air National Guard and the Army National Guard across the country.
Eric Kraus, LEED AP NGB Contract ManagerDirect: 816-822-3839Mobile: [email protected]
Mr. Zimmerman is a principal in the firm and serves as program manager for ANG projects nationwide. He serves as program manager and task order manager for six projects to support the $149 million Daniel K. Inouye Fighter Squadron Operations and Aircraft Maintenance Facility for the Hawaii ANG at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. He has also served as a project manager for the planning and design of a myriad of flightline facilities.
Mark Zimmerman, PE, DBIA, LEED APANG Program Manager and Senior Project ManagerDirect: 816-822-3847Mobile: [email protected]
Points of Contact
Pete Karnowski, LEED AP ARNG Program Manager and Senior Project ManagerDirect: 816-822-3058Mobile: [email protected]
“Burns & McDonnell is our go-to team for all of our state projects. Their design teams are considered an extension of our Delaware FMO staff.” - Col. Christopher Prosser, Delaware ARNG
San Francisco
Phoenix
Denver
Omaha Chicago
St. Louis
Miami
Atlanta
Washington, D.C.
New York
O’Fallon
Wallingford(New England)
Wichita
Minneapolis-St. Paul
Kansas City
Orange County
Philadelphia
RaleighSan Diego
Seattle
Norfolk-Hampton Roads
MilwaukeeMadison
Richmond
Salt Lake City
International:Doha, Qatar
Honolulu
Portland
Gillette
Houston
DallasFort Worth
Austin
ChattanoogaOklahoma City Springdale
Sioux Falls
Bismarck
Palm Beach Gardens
Burns & McDonnell Office Location Map
Visit our website at:http://www.burnsmcd.com/federal
Energy Savings for the National Guard with Building Systems Commissioning and
Retro-Commissioning
Energy Savings for the National Guard
San Francisco
Phoenix
Denver
Omaha Chicago
St. Louis
Miami
Atlanta
Washington, D.C.
New York
O’Fallon
Wallingford(New England)
Wichita
Minneapolis-St. Paul
Kansas City
Orange County
Philadelphia
RaleighSan Diego
Seattle
Norfolk-Hampton Roads
MilwaukeeMadison
Richmond
Salt Lake City
International:Doha, Qatar
Honolulu
Portland
Gillette
Houston
DallasFort Worth
Austin
ChattanoogaOklahoma City Springdale
Sioux Falls
Bismarck
Palm Beach Gardens
About Burns & McDonnell
Burns & McDonnell is an employee-owned professional services firm with more than 4,500 professionals including commissioning specialists, engineers, architects, construction managers, project managers, and business staff who all have a vested interest in your success.
Our fully integrated national commissioning practice of more than 100 commissioning specialists has successfully commissioned more than $8 billion in new facility construction and optimized the building system performance and energy usage of more than 23 million square feet of existing building space with our retro-commissioning services within the past five years. Our commissioning specialists hold all relevant commissioning credentials that enable us toreduce costs and enhance building performance for you.
Burns & McDonnell was ranked No. 18 in the Engineering News-Record Top 500 Design Firms for 2014. We were also recognized as a Top 10 Commissioning Giant by Consulting-Specifying Engineer magazine in 2013 and received the PSMJ Premier Award for Client Satisfaction for four consecutive years.
“Our employee ownership is the foundation of our mission - to make our clients successful.”
Burns & McDonnell Office Map
Energy Savings for the National Guard
Commissioning
Commissioning and Retro-Commissioning:
The primary direct benefits of commissioning and retro-commissioning are reduced building operations costs. Commissioning is a systematic process of verifying and documenting that a facility and all its systems and assemblies are planned, designed, installed, tested, operated and maintained to meet the owner’s project requirements (OPR). This facilitates the smooth progression of design and construction so the owner receives a building that fully meets their expectations. We follow ASHRAE Guidelines for commissioning.
Retro-commissioning involves planning, investigation, energy auditing, evaluating, testing, adjusting and correcting building systems in existing facilities to identify and evaluate improvement opportunities. The purpose is to identify and implement strategies for energy and resources to be conserved and for operations and maintenance procedures to be optimized to meet all of the owner’s facility requirements.
Our retro-commissioning process creates immediate no-cost or low-cost improvements and provides recommendations to resolve complex problems and implement energy conservation measures. We will train your O&M staff to operate and maintain your systems effectively and efficiently for the long term.
Energy Savings for the National Guard
National Guard ProjectsFeatured Project
Name: Bangor Regional Training Institute
Location: Bangor, Maine
Size: 84,000 square feet
Construction Cost: $14.4 million
Burns & McDonnell provided retro-commissioning services at this facility for the Maine Army National Guard. The owner desired to identify operations cost-saving measures after original construction and commmissioning were complete. We investigated these isues to provide direction for their resolution and verified mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and control systems worked as they were intended.
We also trained the facility manager, building operator and energy manager to maintain proper system functionality after retro-commissioning was completed. These services resulted in an annual savings of at least $36,500 per year with a simple payback of 16 months.
Energy Savings for the National Guard
National Guard ProjectsKey Projects
Name: Windsor Locks Readiness CenterLocation: Hartford, ConnecticutSize: 110,000 square feetConstruction Cost: $30 millionBurns & McDonnell provided commissioning services to attain LEED Silver certification for this facility belonging to the Connecticut Army National Guard. Energy efficiency measures include: cool roof, improved envelope, high-efficiency mechanical systems and lighting systems, and reneweable energy.
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Name: REDHORSE BeddownLocation: Mansfield, OhioSize: 53,000 square feetConstruction Cost: $25 millionBurns & McDonnell provided commissioning services to attain LEED Silver certification for this facility at Mansfield Air National Guard Base for the Ohio Air National Guard. Our Certified Commissioning Authorities worked with our LEED Accredited Professionals to execute commissioning activities. All building HVAC systems were commissioned through a multi-phased approach. Commissioning services included functional testing of all HVAC, lighting controls, and domestic water systems.
Name: Martin State Airport Fire StationLocation: Baltimore, MarylandSize: 21,100 square feetConstruction Cost: $7 millionBurns & McDonnell provided LEED fundamental commissioning services at this facility for the Maryland Air National Guard for it to attain LEED Silver certification. Energy efficiency measures were applied to reduce operations costs.
Energy Savings for the National Guard
National Guard ProjectsFeatured Project
Name: Buildings 407 & 459
Location: Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey
Size: 34,000 square feet
Construction Cost: $8.4 million
Burns & McDonnell performed retro-commissioning services on two existing facilities for the New Jersey Air National Guard. These technical support facilities were never commissioned properly and suffered from ongoing performance and energy problems.
After initial evaluation and identification of energy conservation measures, our target for annual savings is $50,000 along with improved occupant satisfaction. Retro-commissioning is anticipated to yield a simple payback of less than 17 months. Retro-commissioned systems include: heat recovery units, heat pump units, geothermal pumping system, exhaust fans, VAV air handling units, VAV mixing boxes, hot water boilers, expansion tanks, pumps, water booster system, lighting, lighting controls, and building automation controls.
Energy Savings for the National Guard
National Guard ProjectsKey Projects
Name: Camp Minden Regional Training InstituteLocation: Minden, LouisianaSize: 35,000 square feetConstruction Cost: $48 millionBurns & McDonnell provided LEED Enhanced commissioning services at this facility for the Louisania Army National Guard. This project is the first phase of a multi-phase camp revitalization project. The facilities that are being commissioned under Phase-1 consist of a central plant, education/administrative building, billeting building, and dining hall expansion project.
Name: Arden Hills Readiness Center Location: Arden Hills, MinnesotaSize: 82,000 square feetConstruction Cost: $20 millionBurns & McDonnell provided LEED Enhanced commissioning services for this Minnesota Army National Guard facility. The commissioning services encompass all HVAC, fire, and life safety systems, emergency power, lighting, and domestic water systems. The facility’s primary function is to provide administrative training and material storage areas for the assigned military units. A secondary function is to support state functions such as disaster relief and policing actions in case of a civil disturbance. A third function is to provide for military and public social functions.
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Name: Cumming Regional Readiness CenterLocation: Cumming, GeorgiaSize: 106,000 square feetConstruction Cost: $22 millionBurns & McDonnell provided LEED Fundamental commissioning services to enable this facility to attain LEED Silver certification for the Georgia Army National Guard. The facility was also a recipient of the ACEC Georgia Engineering Excellence Awards. Cost effective energy conserving features were incorporated into all aspects of the design, energy management control systems and high efficiency motors, lighting and HVAC systems.
Energy Savings for the National Guard
National Guard ProjectsFeatured Project
Name: Nevada Air National Guard 152nd Airlift Wing Fire Station
Location: Reno, Nevada
Size: 20,300 square feet
Construction Cost: $10.2 million
Burns & McDonnell performed commissioning services to help this facility achieve LEED Silver certification. The fire station houses administrative offices and living facilities as well as equipment for aircraft and structures firefighting, accident-spill response, and an alarm communications center.
Energy Savings for the National Guard
National Guard ProjectsKey Projects
Name: Predator BeddownLocation: Victorville, CaliforniaSize: 17,500 square feetConstruction Cost: $7.3 millionBurns & McDonnell provided LEED commissioning services at this facility for the California Air National Guard. Commissioning services included the development of a commissioning plan, functional perfomance testing, facility personnel training, review of Basis of Design (BOD) documents to verify they met the Owner’s Project Requirements (OPR), and a final commissioning report.
Name: Watertown Readiness CenterLocation: Watertown, South DakotaSize: 106,000 square feetConstruction Cost: $21 millionBurns & McDonnell provided LEED Enhanced commissioning services to attain LEED Gold certifiation for this Readiness Center for the South Dakota Army National Guard. Commissioning resulted in high efficiency heating and cooling as well as a new building automation system to reduce energy consumption of HVAC equipment throughout the facility.
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Name: Rhode Island Control TowerLocation: Cranston, Rhode IslandSize: 5,800 square feetConstruction Cost: $7 millionBurns & McDonnell provided LEED commissioning services for this new air traffic control tower (ATCT) for the Rhode Island Air National Guard. It is an eight story steel-framed structure with administrative offices, communication equipment rooms, restrooms, and the ATCT cab. The project scope included commissioning of all HVAC, fire and life safety systems, emergency power, lighting, domestic water systems, stairwell pressurization, and smoke exhaust systems.
Energy Savings for the National Guard
Client Testimonials
“(Burns & McDonnell) has been our independent CxA for at least two other projects and done a great job.” ~ Maj. E. J. Landrith
Predator Beddown California Army National Guard
“Through testing and issue tracking - a Commissioning Punch List - BMcD’s Commissioning Service and the Commissioning Agent contributed to the Owner receiving a functional building as intended. What impressed us the most in regard to the Commissioning Service was the thoroughness of the Commissioning process and the follow-up by all concerned.
We were also impressed in regard to the Commissioning Agent because of his willingness to dig beyond the computer screen and to crawl into the “nooks and crannies” of the building to insure that the Building Automation System (BAS) was describing EXACTLY what was happening. Burns & McDonnell Commissioning Service has been a valuable addition to the project team and I would contact them as future opportunities arise.”
~ Frank J. PinizzottoMartin State Airport Fire Station
Maryland Air National Guard
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“Completely blows the door off of previous CxA’s I have worked with.” ~ Chris Guy, Engineer III
Watertown Readiness CenterSouth Dakota Army National Guard
Energy Savings for the National Guard
Key Personnel
Mr. Lindstrom has more than 26 years of engineering and commissioning experience and is responsible for commissioning more than $8 billion and 19 million square feet of new construction and retro-commissioning of more than 10 million square feet. His experience encompasses program and project management to make clients successful.
Brian Lindstrom, PE, DCEPNational Director of Commissioning
James Sledd, CCP, CDT LEED AP BD+CManager of Commissioning
[email protected]: 312-608-9826
[email protected]: 540-597-0442
David Meyers, AIA, CxA, PMP, LEED AP
Mr. Sledd has more than 26 years of engineering and commissioning experience and is responsible for commissioning more than 6 million square feet of space with a total construction value of more than $1 billion.
Mr. Meyers is responsible for commissioning more than 9.2 million square feet of combined construction costing more than $4.4 billion. He is also responsible for retro-commissioning more than 2.3 million square feet of existing building space.
Manager of Commissioning
[email protected]: 314-210-2735
Brian Schwartz, CxA, CCP, LEED AP BD+C Manager of Commissioning
[email protected]: 612-599-6413
Mr. Schwartz has more than 10 years of engineering and commissioning experience and is responsible for commissioning more than 3.7 million square feet of space with a total construction value of more than $1.1 billion. This includes National Guard commissioning experience of 1.1 million square feet with a construction value of $250 million.
Energy Savings for the National Guard
Please visit us at:http://www.burnsmcd.com/commissioning
WORLD HEADQUARTERSKANSAS CITY, MO
ATLANTA, GAAUSTIN, TX
BISMARCK, NDCHATTANOOGA, TN
DOHA, QATARDOWNER’S GROVE, CHICAGO, IL
DOWNTOWN, CHICAGO, ILDALLAS-FT. WORTH, TX
DENVER, COGILLETTE, WY
HONOLULU, HIHOUSTON, TXMADISON, WI
MIAMI, FLMILWAUKEE, WI
MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, MNNEW ENGLAND
NEW YORK METRO
NORFOLK - HAMPTON ROADS, VA O’FALLON, IL
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKOMAHA, NE
ORANGE COUNTY, CAPALM BEACH GARDENS, FL
PHILADELPHIA, PAPHOENIX, AZ
PORTLAND, MERALEIGH, NC
RICHMOND, VASALT LAKE CITY, UT
SAN DIEGO, CASAN FRANCISCO, CA
SEATTLE, WASIOUX FALLS, SDSPRINGDALE, AR
ST. LOUIS, MOWASHINGTON, DC
WICHITA, KS
Contact us:9400 Ward Parkway
Kansas City, MO 64114
eBooks
“You rock! You are my new favorite person.”
– Laura Goede, Digital Production Manager at Inboun on behalf of Moblico
‘Tis the Season to Use
Your Mobile Apps to
Drive Revenues
This year, the holiday season is expected to see an increase of 5 percent in sales coming on the heels of last year’s 3.6 percent increase according to dex
media. So how do you make yourself stand out in the blizzard of holiday communications? The answer is
with mobile app marketing, of course.
1
Starting conversations that lead to conversions
The most crucial step to any mobile app marketing strategy is to melt the ice between you and your customers by starting conversations that can lead to sales.
For instance, if you’re a retail marketer, you can send smart push notifications about exclusive holiday offers to customers who’ve downloaded your company’s app. Push notifications are little messages that appear on their smartphones along with a compelling buzz or jingle.If you want to get really creative, you can use
iBeacon location marketing to push offers to customers while they’re in your store. iBeacons are small transmitters that send messages to customers’ smartphones when they get close to them. So, if you’ve got someone in your store that’s checking out a new parka, you can have an iBeacon zip a message to their smartphone telling them that these particular parkas are discounted today only, just for them. American Eagle is already rolling out iBeacon technology in more than 100 of its stores nationwide in time for the holiday season.
A recent survey of 100,000 mobile shoppers found that beacon-triggered messaging caused an interaction rate five times higher than traditional
57% of consumers download apps from their favorite brands
Of those, 68% enabled pushnotifications
50% wanted exclusive offers
50% wanted to recieve loyaltydiscounts
50% wanted to recieve timelynotifications about sales
This could help you make more sales because according to a survey from entrepreneur.com:
push messages without location context, and that in-store beacon engagements caused a 45 percent interaction rate. Sounds pretty cool, huh? You’ll need to be careful, though. The same survey found that receiving more than one beaconed message caused a 313 percent drop in app usage among app users. So, in-store push notifications are like eggnog – only good in moderation.
Professional services providers can also use mobile apps to engage with their audiences. In fact, large professional services firms such as Deloitte and Baker & McKenzie are increasingly embracing mobile app marketing as a way to connect with their clients. If you’re an accountant or tax lawyer, you can use smart push notifications to send dynamic content to your clients about issues that are relevant during the holiday season such as gift taxes and deductions for charitable giving. Also, nonprofits can solicit donations by pushing content that shows how important their work is during the holidays for people who are less fortunate.
Beacon Technology
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Capturing interest and bringing customers back for more
Here’s an idea: Let’s make if fun for people to buy from us.
In 2014, mobile orders are expected to make up nearly 14 percent of e-commerce purchases with one in four e-commerce sales being made on mobile devices according to Hubspot. How do you cash in on this trend? The trick is keeping people using your app so they have plenty of opportunities to buy, and gamification is a means to keep customers engaged with your mobile app.
Gamification, pronounced “g a m e - i f - i c k - a y - s h u n ,” means rewarding your customers with points when they use your app, effectively turning it into a game. For example, retailers can reward customers with points when they do things like make purchases, visit the store more often, or share mobile deals on social media. These points could then be used to get special discounts, or a chance to win a sold out, high-demand holiday item like Tickle Me Elmo was back in the day. Customers will be like, “Sweet, now I don’t have to worry about getting trampled on Black Friday.” Points can also be linked to credit cards to make it easy and convenient to accumulate every time the card is used.
Retailers aren’t the only ones who can benefit from gamification, either. For example, hotels can use points to reward people travelling to visit relatives for the holidays when they book rooms through the hotel’s app. Those people could then use their points to get cool stuff like free room
service or tickets to local attractions. If you’re a professional services provider and you find that business slows down during the holidays, you can use trivia games to keep your clients engaged with your brand until they need you again.
“Mobile moments” such as these will reinforce your brand positively in the minds of your customers so they feel motivated to come back and continually engage with it through your app. You can also make it super easy for people to
buy from you repeatedly by enabling merchant services so their credit card info is stored safely and they don’t have to keep reentering it. Now grandma can use her app to order socks and sweaters with impunity.
As an example, a global provider of prepaid products such as gift cards, used a mobile app marketing platform to enable people to buy gift cards from their mobile apps. Its retail clients benefited from the convenience of this service
during the holidays, and also made it easier for them to push loyalty discounts and incentives to customers through their smartphones.
Also, a leading HVAC manufacturer used a mobile app marketing platform to allow its contractors to sell products from its online storefront. This was especially beneficial during the holiday season when the weather was freezing and customers needed access to heating services immediately.
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Mint.com makes the painful process managing your financials simpler and more entertaining through gami-fication. By employing a variety of goal trackers, visual breakdowns, and easy-to-interpret charts they are helping their users meet their financial goals.
Have you heard of the 80/20 Rule? It basically means, “Focus on what works, forget about what doesn’t.”
You can achieve this by using the information you capture from your customers’ in-app interactions to see which ones lead to conversions, and which ones give you a lump of coal. Analytics dashboards make it easy to plan holiday promotions for ad banners and mobile deals as well as to strategize dynamic content for push notifications. Data append will give you a broader understanding of your target audiences’ consumer behavior online so you can infer what sort of content they’ll engage with such as holiday catalogs, seasonal images and videos. Also, the information gleaned by app analytics can even be applied to broader marketing campaigns that integrate online and traditional marketing to ensure that customers
receive consistent messages every time they interact with your brand.
As an example, a high-end manufacturer of lenses for hobbyists used a mobile app analytics tool to reach customers and drive sales during the holiday season and beyond.
By using an in-app mobile marketing platform, you can turn your customers’ holiday stress ‘into relief by making it fun for customers to communicate with your brand and buy stuff. Good luck this holiday season, and go easy on the eggnog.
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Marketing Plans“Well done, Steve.”
– Katherine Hollar, Chief Marketing Officer of Lathrop & Gage
Mightier than the Sword
A legal marketing communications strategy
for Lathrop & Gage LLP
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Table of Contents 1. Executive summary – Pg. 3 2. Internal review – Pg. 4
a. Company i. History
ii. Structure and locations iii. Revenues iv. Firm facts and values
b. Service review i. Practice areas
ii. Industries iii. Pricing
c. Marketing communications review i. Branding
ii. Goals, objectives, strategies and tactics iii. Success metrics
3. External review – Pg. 11 a. Legal industry
i. Legal marketing ii. Agribusiness
b. Competition i. Differentiation
4. SWOT analysis – Pg. 27 5. Strategic recommendations – Pg. 31
a. Target audience b. Content strategy c. Costs vs. benefits d. Tactics
i. Content marketing manager job description
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Executive summary –
Lathrop & Gage LLP is one of the largest law firms in the U.S. The firm places a high value on
client satisfaction, technology, communications, and its Midwestern roots. It is a full-service law
firm, and its attorneys are highly respected as experts in their fields of practice.
This is a report on legal marketing communications prepared for Lathrop & Gage LLP. The
report will focus on the firm’s agribusiness practice group and ways it can reach and form
relationships with decision makers in large agribusiness companies. A review of the firm’s
overall marketing strategy as well as the marketing strategy of the agribusiness practice group is
included. Finally, a series of strategic recommendations will be recommended.
For the purposes of this report, “agribusiness” is defined as any company specifically involved in
agriculture for the production of food and/or trade materials such as cotton. We will exclude
tobacco due to special regulatory conditions related to this product, and for the same reasons we
will exclude the gas and energy sector involved with ethanol derived from corn.
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Internal review –
Lathrop & Gage is a full service corporate law firm. Diversity is treated as a valuable asset and
several initiatives are in place to foster inclusiveness regardless of background, race, religion,
gender, age or sexual orientation. The firm also values community involvement and leadership.
History –
Gardiner Lathrop and William Smith opened a law office in 1873 in the River Market district in
Kansas City. Lathrop was born in Waukesha, Wis. in 1850 and is a graduate of Yale and the
University of Missouri. He earned his law degree at Harvard University.
John Gage was born in Kansas City, Mo. in 1887 and grew up on his parents’ dairy farm at Ninth
and Cleveland Streets. He sold milk to people in the area throughout his youth, then graduated
from the University of Kansas and earned a law degree at the Kansas City School of Law.
In 1940, Gage was elected mayor of Kansas City and helped dismantle the Pendergast political
machine. He was re-elected twice and his tenure saw a new era of transparency of government
in Kansas City. At the conclusion of his third term, he re-entered private law practice and moved
to his farm in Douglas County.
Gardiner Lathrop delivered the commencement speech at John Gage’s graduation from high
school in 1903 and handed him his diploma. The law firms of Lathrop & Norquist and Gage &
Tucker merged to form Lathrop & Gage 93 years later in 1996. Lathrop & Gage is the oldest
law firm west of the Mississippi River still in operation.
Lathrop & Gage today –
In 2012, Lathrop & Gage’s revenues were $140.8 million, up from $138 million in 2011. The
firm currently has 320 lawyers and has offices in 11 cities nationwide: Kansas City, Boston,
Boulder, Chicago, Denver, Jefferson City, Los Angeles, New York, Overland Park, Springfield,
and St. Louis.
The firm’s first and oldest client is the BNSF Railroad. The firm also operates a human
resources consultancy called HROI Human Resources Return on Investment; a government
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relations firm called EnGage LLC; and has a strategic partnership with Rutherford & Bechtold
LLC, a complex finance law firm. Joel B. Voran is the firm’s CEO.
Katherine Hollar, chief marketing officer of Lathrop & Gage, describes the firm’s brand as,
“formed on the heartland principles of honor, service, trust and value.” She goes on, “Other
firms try to hide their Midwestern values, but we don’t need to do that.” She says the firm’s
branding is represented by the pieces of Midwestern art on the home page of its website, and that
the art “reflects positive Midwestern values.”
The Lathrop & Gage LLP logo
A unique trait possessed by Lathrop & Gage is its culture of entrepreneurialism. “We support
attorneys thinking as business owners,” says Hollar. This is reinforced by Lathrop & Gage’s
partnership with the Gigabit Challenge, a contest held in 2011 entrepreneurs to compete for cash
over their ideas on how to use Google Fiber in a business plan.
Value –
Lathrop & Gage is strategically positioned to offer a higher value than its competitors on the
coasts in terms of price because of the lower overhead of having its headquarters and offices in
the Midwest. The firm offers several different payment plans beyond the billable hour such as
operation within a predetermined budget, fixed fees for components of services, flat rates
regardless of whether an associate or partner works on a project, discounted upfront rates with
success fees, and regularly-recurring retainers. These alternative fee arrangements are as a result
of industry-wide changes in consumer demand for new payment model options for legal services.
The firm monitors client satisfaction through feedback interviews which are regularly reviewed
and acted upon. The firm invests heavily in technology such as videoconferencing equipment
and an internal electronically stored information production team.
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Services –
Business Transactions: Lathrop & Gage provides support in sales and purchases for health care
and real estate, as well as securities, tax and corporate governance.
Employment and Employee Benefits: Lathrop & Gage works with employers to craft policies,
design benefit plans to attract top talent, and provide litigation support.
Environmental: Lathrop & Gage works with clients to assure compliance with environmental
legislation. They focus on environmental insurance, litigation and regulations.
Intellectual Property: Lathrop & Gage handles patent, trademark and copyright through
prosecution, transactions and litigation.
Litigation: Lathrop & Gage helps clients resolve conflicts through bankruptcy, antitrust and
white collar criminal defense, and product liability defense.
Wealth Strategies: Lathrop & Gage protects its client financial future through drafting wills,
estate planning, trusts, and charitable gifts. It protects businesses through succession planning,
ownership transfer and entity formation. It also advises nonprofits on issues related to tax and
government regulations.
Industries:
Lathrop & Gage attorneys offer legal services in the following industries:
Advertising
Agribusiness
Biotechnology and Life Science
Charitable Organizations
Construction
Digital Privacy and Data Protection
Education
Energy
Finance
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Freight Transportation
Healthcare
Hospitality & Entertainment
Media & Entertainment
Real Estate
Technology
Marketing strategy –
Hollar described the firm’s commitment to relationships and goodwill as key to its success, and
affirmed that a corporation’s in house counsel is generally the decision maker they appeal to in
order to cultivate business relationships. In addition to the newly-launched website
lathropgage.com, which was recognized by the Web Marketing Association as “outstanding in
the legal and professional services categories,” and some magazine advertising, the firm
regularly hosts social events as well as continuing legal education classes for attorneys. These
events create opportunities for Lathrop & Gage lawyers and staff to build and maintain
relationships with current clients, prospective clients and referral sources.
Hollar also stresses the importance of responding to requests for proposals (RFPs) from
organizations that are looking for a specific legal need. Her goal is to help the attorneys as much
as possible to give those organizations at least three reasons why Lathrop & Gage is the best
choice to handle their particular matter. However, she points out that although the marketing
department can get them to the “20-yard line,” it’s up to the attorneys themselves to actually
close the deal with clients.
One aspect of Lathrop & Gage’s commitment to lasting and quality relationships with its clients
is its practice of regularly-occurring client feedback interviews. Hollar initiated the program in
2009 as a means to continually improve the client experience at Lathrop & Gage. Clients are
interviewed about their opinions regarding the firm’s performance and their satisfaction with the
results obtained. Other factors such as the client’s opinion of the firm’s fee model and
technology are also inquired about. In addition, interviews evaluate relational aspects of the
lawyers’ service such as their communication skills and the concern they express for their
clients’ needs. The results of these interviews are shared with the attorney who worked with the
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client and Lathrop & Gage’s CEO; areas where the firm excelled are identified along with
potential areas of improvement, and Lathrop & Gage works with clients to craft
recommendations about how best to proceed in the future. Composite scores from the results of
all the client rankings are then calculated and shared with the whole firm to give everyone an
idea of where the firm stands in the eyes of its clients in general in terms of quality of service
provided.
Lathrop & Gage maintains a presence on several social media channels. The firm has a LinkedIn
page with 856 followers, but does not appear to publish any information besides an “About”
page with a company description. It has a Facebook page with 289 “Likes” where it publishes
links to news and articles on its website. Its Twitter page has 570 followers and publishes links
to news and articles on its website as well as other relevant legal industry content that is
retweeted from other sources. There is no official Lathrop & Gage presence on Google+.
Lathrop & Gage regularly publishes legal alerts with articles that communicate breaking legal
developments in specific industries. These alerts contain the contact information of lawyers
whom the recipients may reach out to for more information. They are published on the Lathrop
& Gage website under “Legal Alerts,” and are emailed to people who sign up to receive them.
There are links to Lathrop & Gage’s Facebook and Twitter profiles on each alert.
When talking specifically about how he markets his own practice and Lathrop & Gage, David
Shorr, partner in charge of the Jefferson City and Columbia offices, says, “My market is pretty
narrow in terms of what I get. I do more complex cases, almost all in regulatory side. I go to
conferences, I belong to quite a few groups that would give me access to people who are going to
have issues, and my objective is to get my name out and Lathrop’s name.”
David said it’s usually the CLO or the CEO if the company does not have a legal officer, “less
than 60 percent of the company’s I work with have a CLO.” He also said the perceived quality
of a lawyer’s work and their reputation is “important” to help them get business.
In regard to the support provided by the Lathrop & Gage marketing department to his practice,
he said, “They provide us funds from the standpoint of being able to attend conferences, and they
do some a very nice (things) for name recognition for Lathrop.”
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Shorr said he felt social media and content marketing for his practice and for Lathrop & Gage
would be helpful. “I think … as younger people start (becoming a part of the) decision making
process… I think it can be exceptionally effective regarding name recognition. I’m still
convinced people are not prepared for advertising lawyers for defensive skills. But name
recognition is readily acceptable and helpful.
But, he warned that social media content alone would not be enough to win new business from
the clients he works with. “Younger people have a better understanding about social media.
There only reason I even know about these things is because my kids told me. It’s not organic
with people in their 50’s like it is people in their 20’s. CEO’s and decision makers are in their
fifties and will not make a decision based on something they see on (social media).
He does go on to say he thinks social media is good for name recognition in the marketplace. “I
think if used in a broader context, social media is helpful. Stories about practice successes or
community involvement (are) helpful from a standpoint of name recognition and community
identification, and the occasional story of a success in a specific area is helpful.”
Shorr has a LinkedIn profile with 265 connections.
Agribusiness marketing strategy –
Hollar has expressed interest in developing a marketing strategy to help lawyers in the firm’s
agribusiness industry group develop relationships with decision makers in Fortune 500
agribusiness companies. Several of the firm’s locations are strategically positioned in the
Midwest where agribusiness is prevalent such as Kansas City, Boulder, Denver, Chicago,
Jefferson City, Overland Park, Springfield, Columbia, and St. Louis. The attorneys in its
agribusiness industry group have backgrounds in agriculture and have a track record of success
in the representation of agribusiness clients.
Notable agribusiness cases handled by Lathrop & Gage include: successfully defending one of
the nation’s largest pork producers in a nuisance case related to odors emanating from 80,000
hogs; serving as outside intellectual property counsel for the Missouri Soybean Merchandising
Council, and the MidAmerica Research and Development Corp.; obtaining a favorable
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settlement in a case involving selling and shipping chicken carcasses to Russia; serving as
outside counsel for Big Bend Agri Services.
The lawyers who lead Lathrop & Gage’s agribusiness group are Wallace E. Brockhoff, Dan
Cleveland Jr., J.A. “Jay” Felton, and William A. Rudy. Felton is also the firm’s marketing
partner and helped launch the firm’s client feedback program and its first national marketing
plan. There are 17 lawyers total in the agribusiness group; 15 partners, one associate and one of
counsel.
Wallace Brockhoff has an active LinkedIn presence with over 500 connections. He is also a
member of several discussion groups involving agribusiness as well as alumni associations and
local business. He has a Twitter page with 16 Followers, and does not have a public Facebook or
Google+ profile. Dan Cleveland Jr. has a complete LinkedIn profile with 91 connections and is a
member of two groups related to professional interests. Jay Felton has a complete LinkedIn
profile with 406 connections and is a member of four groups related to professional interests. He
is on Google+ and six people have him in their circles, and he has a Twitter page with 11
followers. William A. Rudy does not appear to have a presence on social media.
Attorneys in the firm’s agribusiness division define “agribusiness” as farmers, seed and chemical
producers, and farm implements and machinery. Attorney Jay Felton describes “contiguous U.S.
farmland overlaid with rail, highway and river transport” as the “greatest natural resource in the
world.” He points out the opportunity to create a “value chain” of “chemical and seed providers
and tech companies, a relatively small group of farmers, and myriad processors” who “use crops
to produce food and energy.” He goes on to say Lathrop is uniquely positioned to serve clients
in “all the links of that chain.”
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External review –
The American legal industry, which generates $261 billion in revenue annually is in a time of
change. The recent recession, the rise of the internet and social media as marketing tools,
consumer demand for alternative fee arrangements, and the increasingly pinched job market for
new lawyers has resulted in a plethora of issues facing legal marketers. While the business of
law is still relationship based, the ways in which relationships between clients and attorneys are
built and maintained are in a state of flux, creating new risks and opportunities for law firms,
lawyers and legal marketers.
Negative economic effects of the recession –
The legal industry was severely negatively affected by the economic crisis and recession of
2008. This was reflected in law firm hiring trends between 2007 and 2011. In this period, law
firms hired fewer lawyers and laid off hundreds. Law school applications are down, and more
people are graduating from law school without a job than ever before; the legal industry lost
2,300 jobs in January 2013 compared to the previous year.
This graphic from “Business Insider” in 2011 reveals the impact of the financial crisis on the
legal industry hiring practices:
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New law school graduate employment continues to be a problem, and a trend has developed
where recent grads have begun to sue their alma mater because they cannot find jobs despite
promises of high graduate employment rates by their schools. Michael Lieberman, a 2009
graduate of Southwestern Law School in California, says, “I know I did my research on it. I
relied on those numbers when I made my decision. I relied on that 95-97 percent employment.”
He says Southwestern Law School advertises that 97 percent of graduates have jobs within 9
months.
Business model and fee arrangements -
Traditionally, the business model of law firms large and small has been based on attorneys
receiving referrals from their networks of family, friends and business contacts. With the advent
of mass communications such as phone book and television advertising, and later internet and
social media networking, lawyers were able to reach a larger audience of prospective clients.
That outreach, however, is limited by state bar associations that regulate attorney advertising and
marketing communications through ethical rules based on the American Bar Association’s
Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
The purpose of this regulation is to prevent abusive or unethical behavior by attorneys as they
develop their practices. Though these rules are all based on the same model, they can vary
greatly from state to state. For example, North Carolina recently determined that lawyers who
practice in its state cannot use online advertising services such as Groupon, but Missouri decided
its lawyers may do so.
The traditional law firm business model is a loose confederacy of non-integrated business units
or specialties operating under a single brand. In other words, though all the lawyers in a single
firm technically work for the same company, they are usually part of sub-groups within the firm
and there is little communication between each sub-group. Law firms can only be owned or
invested in by attorneys, a rule enforced by the American Bar Association. This has resulted in
keeping law firms relatively small compared to other businesses. The largest law firm in the
world by number of lawyers, Chicago-based Baker & McKenzie, has only 3805 attorneys and a
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total of 10,000 employees. This is a small number compared to the 49,000 employees who work
for its client The Dow Chemical Company.
The Southern California law firm of Jacoby & Myers recently sued to allow non-lawyers to take
ownership interest and to invest capital in law firms on the basis of free speech. The argument is
that if outside investors were allowed to infuse law firms with capital, those firms could then
operate more like modern businesses with cutting-edge technology and a robust management
structure to implement replicable business processes, with the end result being a more valuable
service to the client. However, the American Bar Association argues that the legal profession is
separate from that of a businessperson who is only concerned for the bottom line, and that
lawyers have special ethical obligations to their clients that would be undermined if they also had
to consider the needs of their financiers for a return on investment. This argument is ongoing.
Regardless of the dispute over the professional ethics of outside investments in law firms, the
business of law is still a business and therefore subject to market forces. One thing that has
recently been changing is how clients wish to pay for legal services. Lawyers traditionally
charge by the hour and measure the business success of their practices in terms of hours billed
over a specific period of time. However, clients that consume high volumes of legal services
have recently begun to demand different billing structures or “alternative fee arrangements.”
Since the recession, legal billing rates have increased at a rate faster than consumer spending and
as a result many corporations have decreased the amount of “bread and butter” work they
outsource, preferring to have their in-house counsel take care of that work instead. Edward
Ryan, executive vice president and general counsel of Marriott International, says the change is
“a reaction to the significant increases in billing rates over the last 10 years.”
Amy Schulman, general counsel of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, has started to demand flat rates
for legal work she directs to outside law firms she hires. She believes the billable hour is an
inappropriate business model in the current economical client of the legal industry. “Most
people that understand the model really embrace it as a call back to a different era when lawyers
and clients had a much more collaborative, trusting, long-term relationship,” she says.
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This graphic, from The Economist, compares the increasing cost of legal services with the
increase in consumer prices.
Bruce Buchanan, copywriter at Womber Carlyle Sandridge & Rice LLP in Winston-Salem, N.C.,
agrees, saying “I think the recession forced law firms to be more client-focused, both in how they
market and in how they deliver services. For example, firms (at least the smart ones) started
looking for alternative fee arrangements and ways to share the cost overrun risks that
traditionally had fallen completely on clients.”
As a result of this trend, law firms have begun to adapt to the demands of the marketplace for flat
fees for legal services. In a recent survey of the AmLaw 200, the 200 biggest law firms in the
U.S., 92 percent of respondents reported using flat rates.
Another alternative fee arrangement that has gained popularity in recent years is the success-
contingency model where attorneys charge little up front for their services and make their
compensation based on whether they achieve the client’s goals. The Kansas City law firm of
Stueve Siegel Hanson LLP offers this contingency-based model, as does Kansas City-based
Lathrop & Gage LLP. Other alternative fee arrangements include retainers where lawyers are
paid up front and then perform work on demand for a given time period; blended rates where
experienced and non-experienced lawyers work together for the average of their collective
individual rates; component rates where lawyers are paid per segment of work completed; and
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“collars” where lawyers bill for up to a certain amount of time and then offer discounts for the
time they go over.
Robert Lipstein, partner at the law firm of Crowell & Moring in Washington D.C., says of
alternative fee arrangements, “Any law firm leader today who thinks they can do 100 percent of
work on billable hours forever into the future is not going to have a law firm for very long.”
The importance of relationship-building in legal marketing –
The majority of major corporations maintain a group of 15 to 20 law firms to which they
regularly send legal work. This group forms the “preferred” list of legal services providers.
Pfizer is an example of a large company that maintains such a group of preferred law firms.
These law firms are fed commodity legal work on a regular basis by their client corporations.
However, in the case of special legal needs such as mergers or “bet the company” litigation,
corporations will seek out the best attorneys available in terms of quality and expertise with the
issue they’re facing.
Chief legal officers are generally the primary decision makers in determining if a corporation
will hire outside counsel. Regardless of whether a law firm is one of a corporation’s preferred
legal service providers, a pre-existing relationship between the corporation’s CLO and a law
firm’s attorneys is of paramount importance as to whether that firm gets the business of that
company. In a survey of CLOs in the S&P 500 about how they hire law firms and whether an
unknown lawyer could get a pitch meeting with one of them, one person said, “I think the answer
is you're not going to . . . if you're moving in from (someplace out of town like) Alaska, you're not
going to get me. You've got to work a little while and have a relationship. . . . [F]or me, people have
the reputations and their reputations are well known. And so it's sort of the matter of I'm going to
come to you more than you're going to come to me.” There is also an incentive for CLOs to form
relationships with legal services providers because without pre-existing relationships, the best
lawyers and law firms can be difficult to hire because of a pre-existing workload and lack of
familiarity with a particular company and its legal issues.
Just as corporations have a list of preferred legal services providers, they also may keep a list of
“banned” providers at least informally. There are several ways for lawyers or law firms to end
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up on a company’s banned list, but according IBM General Counsel Robert Weber, the first sin
is to solicit his company counterparts for business. He says that it’s fine for lawyers to socialize
with the executives at this company, but when lawyers ask them for business it creates an
awkward situation. Unethical behavior or actions that are insensitive to client needs are other
ways to make sure CLOs skip over the names of prospective recipients of their legal work. The
most important thing Weber states that he looks for in lawyers and law firms he does want to hire
is clear, concise legal advice.
There is a tendency for corporations to hire lawyers and not necessarily law firms. A CLO will
hire a law firm because he knows the lawyer who works there and considers her to be a star, and
will follow the star lawyer from firm to firm. In fact, Kansas City-based Husch Blackwell
recently lost several attorneys and the business of the clients those attorneys worked for to its
competitors Denver-based Kutak Rock LLP and Kansas City-based Stinson Morrison Hecker
LLP. This is further evidence that corporations hire lawyers, not law firms. Womber Carylyle
Copywriter Bruce Buchanan says, “In terms of marketing, I also think we are seeing a shift from
firm-level branding to individual attorney branding, and social media has been a huge component
in that. Generally, clients hire attorneys, not firms, so marketing efforts are now more focused
around building up individuals.”
CLOs judge lawyers and law firms subjectively as they follow preferred lawyers and their teams
as they move to different firms. Though objective criteria do play a role in decision making of
CLOs and those who influence their hiring decisions, law firms are overwhelmingly selected for
subjective reasons that are based on how CLOs perceive lawyers and law firms in terms of
competence and trustworthiness. The problem with these criteria is the fact they are subjective; a
law firm’s trait, technique or tactic that works to win the business of one CLO may not work and
may even hinder the ability to win the business of another
The selection criteria CLOs cite as the most important in their decision to hire outside counsel
for very significant matters are “prior experience” with that lawyer or law firm, “reputation” of
the lawyer or law firm, and “results in similar cases.” These three criteria ranked far above
others such as, “rankings in periodicals,” “size,” “geographic scope,” and “leverage.” Though
other factors are important and a small number of CLOs refer to objective criteria such as
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publicly available data, these three far outshine others as the main reasons why a lawyer or law
firm is selected for very significant matters.
A law professor at an accredited law school in the Midwest agrees that perceived quality of
service and reputation are the most important factors in whether a lawyer or law firm gets hired.
“A firm’s reputation is the most important thing. You can put everything else secondary to the
quality of work that a law firm does.” He also believes that while advertising may be useful for
new lawyers or law firms that have not established a reputation yet, it will not be as effective for
an established legal practice. He recommends for lawyers to write articles for trade publications
of industries they practice in as a way to position themselves as subject matter experts in front of
their target audiences. He also says that a social media strategy could be useful if it increased the
exposure of such content to target audiences, though he doesn’t have any direct experience with
social media marketing.
Legal marketing in the information age –
The first lawyers in history were orators in Ancient Greece who acted as the advocates of their
friends and pleaded their cases in public. These public speakers were not allowed to accept fees
for their services so they could not organize as a formal profession. Accepting fees for advocacy
was also banned in Ancient Rome, but this law was abolished by Emperor Claudius who allowed
the practice to become its own profession though he severely limited the size of fees lawyers
could charge for their services. The legal profession had become highly regulated by the early
4th century at the dawn of the Byzantine Empire.
It is perhaps in this tradition of ethical advocacy for one’s friends out of loyalty and not a desire
or opportunity for profit that the modern-day American Bar Association suggests standards for
state bar associations which regulate the practice of law in their jurisdictions. Though each state
has its own controlling rules of ethical standards its lawyers must follow to maintain their license
to practice law, these rules are largely based on the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional
Conduct. A lawyer who does not follow his state’s ethical guidelines or otherwise engages in
deliberate subterfuge for profit is known as a “pettifogger.”
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Rule 7 of the ABA’s Model Rules specifically addresses marketing for legal services and
stipulates what is and is not acceptable behavior for an attorney seeking new business through
marketing communications. Here is a brief and abridged summary of the rule’s requirements:
Rule 7.1: Information about legal services – “A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading
communication about the lawyer or the lawyer's services.”
Rule 7.2: Advertising – “A lawyer may advertise services through written, recorded or electronic
communication, including public media.”
Rule 7.3: Solicitation of clients – “A lawyer shall not … solicit professional employment when a
significant motive for the lawyer's doing so is the lawyer's pecuniary gain, unless the person
contacted is a lawyer or has a prior relationship with the lawyer.”
Rule 7.4: Communication of fields of practice and specialization – “A lawyer may communicate
the fact that the lawyer does or does not practice in particular fields of law. A lawyer shall not
state or imply that a lawyer is certified as a specialist in a particular field of law, unless the
lawyer has been certified as a specialist by an organization that has been approved by an
appropriate state authority or that has been accredited by the American Bar Association.”
Rule 7.5: Firm names and letterheads – “A lawyer shall not use a firm name, letterhead or other
professional designation that violates Rule 7.1. Lawyers may state or imply that they practice in
a partnership or other organization only when that is the fact.”
Rule 7.6: Political contributions to obtain legal engagements or appointments by judges – “A
lawyer or law firm shall not accept a government legal engagement or an appointment by a judge
if the lawyer or law firm makes a political contribution or solicits political contributions for the
purpose of obtaining or being considered for that type of legal engagement or appointment.”
As of 2011, 85 percent of younger lawyers were actively engaged in social media and older
lawyers were beginning to follow suit. A consulting industry has arisen solely for the purpose of
instructing attorneys in how to use social media to grow their practices. Because of the
marketing communications utility of social media and the therefore implied risks of ethical
19
violations in accordance with the ABA’s Rules of Professional Conduct, the ABA has taken an
interest in defining what acceptable behavior is for lawyers who use social media to grow their
practice. The ABA does not want to restrict lawyers’ use of social media as a marketing tool, but
wishes instead to protect the interests of lawyers’ prospective clients from unethical behavior.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, the government agency which regulates the financial
industry, has recently issued an opinion on the use of social media by financial professionals
including attorneys who work in finance. In a press release published on SEC.gov on April 2,
2013, it says, “companies can use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to announce
key information in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (Regulation FD) so long as
investors have been alerted about which social media will be used to disseminate such
information.
Jeremy Mishkin, an attorney specializing in internet privacy for the Philadelphia-based law firm
of Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads LLP, says of the SEC’s decision, “They
recognize that social media has become just as valid a channel for corporate communications as
any traditional media. An increasing number of people get their information from Twitter feeds
and Facebook updates, and the commission’s decision reflects that reality.”
The caveat for financial professionals who wish to use social media platforms as venues to make
disclosure is that the information must be accessible to anyone who wants it, and that notice is
given ahead of time where such information will be distributed and how to find it. “One set of
shareholders should not be able to get a jump on other shareholders just because the company is
selectively disclosing important information,” George S. Canellos, the SEC’s acting enforcement
chief, stated. “Most social media are perfectly suitable methods for communicating with
investors, but not if the access is restricted or if investors don’t know that’s where they need to
turn to get the latest news.”
This information is significant because the finance industry is highly regulated just like the legal
industry. The SEC recognizing the legitimacy of social media platforms as appropriate venues to
make serious disclosures sets a precedent other governing bodies of professional services
industries may follow.
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A specific social media marketing tactic that creates substantial concerns over ethical violations
is blogging, or in the case of legal blogging, “blawging.” Blawgs give lawyers the opportunity to
share their insights and experiences as well as other news and information relevant to their target
audiences instantaneously. In addition to allowing the instant transmission of information
relevant to target audiences, blawging also allows readers to comment and ask questions to
which the author may then respond publicly.
Jasmine Abdel-khalik, law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City says,
“Although I’m not in practice anymore, I have noticed that a number of law firms operate blogs
or prepare blog length postings (on open websites rather than intrawebs or via emails/newsletters
directed to clients) on legal developments within specific areas of expertise. It may be a subtle
way of demonstrating depth of expertise and the fact that the firm is up to date on the latest
developments without needing to charge future clients for as much research. Regardless, it’s a
relatively new development.”
Blawging and social media engagement in general create a series of potential ethical pitfalls for
attorneys. If an attorney-client relationship is formed as a result of any conversation between an
attorney and an individual whether on a website, a blog or in person, the lawyer now has ethical
obligations to that individual and this affects how she may proceed in the relationship. There can
be severe penalties for attorneys who mismanage attorney-client relationships including
sanctions and disbarment. Even casual, informal, off-the-cuff legal advice can create an
attorney-client relationship for which the attorney is completely responsible.
Evan L. Loeffler, a real estate attorney in Seattle, says, “Life would be a lot simpler if there was
theme music or a gong that would sound when something momentous occurs.” However, an
attorney-client relationship officially commences, “when there is a mutual understanding that the
client is going to confide in the attorney and the attorney is going to listen.”
This means that even if someone asks a vague, general legal question on Facebook and an
attorney on their friends list offers a vague, general legal answer, that attorney has just entered
into an attorney-client relationship with that person even if the original post is deleted and the
attorney is therefore responsible for the actions that person takes as a result of the legal advice he
21
received from the lawyer. Other ethical considerations for social media use is the practice of
“following,” “friending,” “liking,” “connecting,” or any type of engagement with social media
profiles of opposing counsel, judges, complainants, or anyone else who could possibly represent
a conflict of interest in the present or future of a lawyer’s practice. There is also the risk of the
transmission of confidential client information that would violate the sanctity of the attorney-
client relationship.
However, despite the dearth of case law or precedent regarding the ethical use of social media
for lawyers, there is an argument that much of what constitutes social media networking is not as
ethically risky as it may seem. Kevin O’Keefe, a former attorney and current CEO of Lexblog, a
legal blogging consultancy, says that so long as the same considerations given to advertising are
given to social media engagement, then the risk of an ethical violation is minimal. “I’d advise
lawyers who are blogging and using other social media to abide by legal ethics pertaining
to advertising or any other matter. It’s common sense and it’s not that hard,” he says. “But social
media, social networking, and blogging by lawyers, for those who have not tried it, is just the
same stuff lawyers have done for over a hundred years. It’s not all advertising. It doesn’t have to
be crass marketing.” Professor Abdel-khalik says, “When I was in practice, I don’t think there
were any social media sites for lawyers. Now, certain sites like LinkedIn seem necessary, and I
believe that many other firms use other sites, such as Facebook. Given how many commercial
entities use social media, lawyers may need to use such networking to respond to consumer
expectation.”
Further evidence suggests blawging is becoming the norm as a marketing tactic for lawyers and
law firms, and the majority of law firms in the AmLaw 200 are now blawging or have lawyers
with blawgs. LexBlog’s “State of the AmLaw 200 Blogosphere, 2012 in Review,” published in
conjunction with the ABA Techshow and the LMA Annual Conference on April 4, 2013, shows
that law firms with blogs have a distinct advantage over firms that do not from a marketing and
business development perspective. Some of the facts from the report include:
78 percent of the AmLaw 200 have blawgs or lawyers blawging, and this is a 71 percent
increase since LexBlog’s last report on the subject in 2010.
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Clients and potential clients do read blawgs as a part of their decision making process to
hire lawyers and law firms.
There is a correlation between blawging practices and revenue growth, and this trend is
becoming stronger
This graphic from the “LexBlog State of the AmLaw 200 Blogosphere, 2012 in Review” report
shows the distinctly upward trend of blawging among the 200 largest law firms in the U.S.
Revenue growth is a key factor in legal marketing strategy, and the evidence suggests blawging
is related to greater revenue growth in firms that use it versus those that don’t. Though a direct
causative relationship between blawging and revenue growth can’t be found with the data
available, there are several factors that shed light on the correlation including the fact blawgs are
no longer seen as “aggressive” or “controversial” marketing tactics in the legal industry, and
because social media marketing doesn’t require a large expansion of the investment of resources
to implement.
Based on this report, it would seem that blawging is becoming a necessity for legal marketers
who want to keep up with their competition. “Blogging is quickly becoming an expected part of
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any firm’s marketing arsenal. Those who do not use blogs are behind, it is that simple,” says
O’Keefe.
Samantha Collier, law firm marketing expert and blogger, lists the following considerations for a
law firm to make when planning to start a blawg:
Who will be writing for your firm’s blog? One or multiple authors?
Who will proofread and upload these blogs?
What type of blogging software will you be using? Blogger, WordPress, etc.?
How often will you publish blog posts?
Where will you get inspiration for blog posts?
How will you determine the success of your blog?
How much of your marketing budget can you spend on your law blog?
Collier cautions legal marketers who may be considering starting a blawg not to get too excited
about the outcomes they can expect; blawging is not a silver bullet or turnkey solution to
winning new clients on its own, but is instead another tool in the marketing toolbox to use in a
legal marketing campaign. She says, “Your clients and potential clients are mobile and using the
Internet. Will all of these people hire you based on your law blog? No. Having a law blog is an
additional tool in your marketing toolbox that may or may not matter to the people that hire
you.”
Competitors report – For the purposes of this report, Lathrop & Gage will be compared to three of its main
competitors. They are: Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP, Husch Blackwell LLP, and Stinson
Morrison Hecker LLP. These competitors are of similar size as Lathrop & Gage, they are all
headquartered in Kansas City just as Lathrop & Gage, and they all boast agribusiness-specific
law departments with active marketing communication strategies. Also, each organization
emphasizes its Midwestern roots and the implied price advantages versus coastal competitors in
their branding.
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Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP –
Shook, known as the “Big Tobacco” law firm and “The” law firm of Kansas City was founded in
1889 by Frank Sebree. It is named for partners Edgar Shook, David R. Hardy and Charlie
Bacon. Shook was named Kansas City’s first “Man of the Year” in 1939 for his work cleaning
up the corrupt Pendergast political machine, and according to former Missouri Governor Lloyd
C. Stark, Shook “led the transformation of Kansas City from a notoriously lawless and open city
with a gangster dominated police department to a city which is as well governed and as well
policed as any in America.”
Hardy was renowned for his ability to “see around corners” to anticipate upcoming opportunities
and was responsible for winning the business of the embattled tobacco giant, Philip Morris USA,
now Altria Group and five of the “Big Six” tobacco companies.
Shook, Hardy & Bacon employs 462 lawyers across eight offices nationwide in addition to two
international offices in Geneva, Switzerland, and London, England. It generated $316.8 million
in revenue in 2012. One of the firm’s unique differentiators is its staff of scientific research
professionals who advise the firm’s attorneys on issues pertinent to their cases. The firm’s
agribusiness division has 37 attorneys and is led by partners Mark D. Anstoetter and Madeleine
McDonough.
The “Agribusiness” page on the firm’s website is robust with up-to-date content and information
useful to the decision makers and referral sources of agribusiness companies including
newsletters authored by Anstoetter and McDonough as well as webinars and presentations on
agribusiness issues. Anstoetter has a presence on LinkedIn with a complete profile but few
connections and it appears he does not participate in group discussions or share content.
McDonough has a complete profile as well with several hundred connections. She is a member
of several groups though it does not appear that she shares content or participates in discussions.
Shook’s website has a clean design and prominently displays the firm’s accolades from various
organizations. The homepage also has a regularly-updated newsfeed about events happening at
the firm, and a collection of downloadable newsletters about different practice areas. Shook’s
LinkedIn site has 1660 followers which means that many people receive updates in their
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LinkedIn news feed whenever an update is added to the page; however, the page does not appear
to be updated with content regularly. The LinkedIn home page displays Shook’s distinction as
“The American Lawyer Product Liability Firm of the Year 2013,” and has an “About” section
with pertinent information about the firm. The “Services” page lists “legal services” and
contains a standard legal advertising disclaimer, “The choice of a lawyer is an important decision
and should not be based solely on advertisements.”
Husch Blackwell LLP –
Husch employs 520 lawyers in 13 offices nationwide as well as one office in London, England.
In 2012 it generated $282.2 million in revenue. It emphasizes its agribusiness industry
experience and recently resolved a $1 billion intellectual property dispute on behalf of its
agribusiness client Monsanto. Its branding also places a special emphasis on its deep legal
knowledge and industry expertise.
Partner James Ash leads 46 lawyers in the food and agribusiness group. He has an incomplete
LinkedIn profile and does not appear to share content or belong to any groups. There is
agribusiness-related content on the Husch website, but it is old and sparse.
The Husch Black well website home page has a news feed of current events at the firm. It also
has links to Husch’s official Twitter profile and LinkedIn page. The Twitter profile has 340
followers and is following 185; it regularly tweets updates from the Husch news feed as well as
Husch-branded newsletters written by Husch lawyers about developments in various legal
practice areas. Husch’s LinkedIn website has 1478 followers and publishes updates from the
news feed in the firm’s main website. There are no disclaimers anywhere on Husch’s LinkedIn
site.
Stinson Morrison Hecker LLP –
Stinson Mag & Frizzell PC was founded in 1878 by Frank Rozzelle. The firm merged with
Morrison & Hecker LLP in 2002. Stinson boasts deep connections to Kansas City; Rozelle was
the personal attorney of William Rockhill Nelson, founder of the Kansas City Star and for whom
the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is named, and Arthur Mag was Harry Truman’s personal
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lawyer. The firm has 305 lawyers in 10 offices nationwide. It generated $148.8 million in
revenue in 2012.
Parthenia B. Evans leads the 12 attorneys in the agribusiness industry group. There is some
content on the agribusiness page of the Stinson website, but it’s old and no longer relevant.
Evans does not have a LinkedIn profile and is apparently not engaged on LinkedIn.
Stinson’s website homepage contains a newsfeed with current events at the firm. Stinson’s
LinkedIn website has 882 followers but does not seem to update with content regularly. There
are no disclaimers on its LinkedIn presence.
Analysis –
Lathrop & Gage’s competitors have a generally strong online presence. Their websites are
search engine optimized, actively updated with fresh content on a regular basis, and are rich with
information about their firms and the attorneys who work there. Shook’s agribusiness page in
particular is quite strong because of the plethora of content available on it.
However, Lathrop & Gage’s agribusiness industry group has its competitors beat in search
engine rankings. When one types in “agribusiness law in Kansas City” into Google, the first
result at the top of the page is the FindLaw profile of Jay Felton, the leader of the Lathrop &
Gage agribusiness industry group. The third result is Lathrop & Gage’s agribusiness page on its
website. Shook’s agribusiness page on its website also appears on the first page of Google
search results, as does its agribusiness brochure and online profile of the head of its agribusiness
division, Madeleine McDonough.
While each of Lathrop & Gage’s competitors makes good use of online marketing tactics, there
are marked opportunities for Lathrop & Gage to outdo its competition through the consistent
creation and distribution of targeted content. Specifically, the Lathrop & Gage agribusiness
group would be able to differentiate itself from all of the aforementioned competitors by
regularly posting agribusiness-related legal content to the Lathrop & Gage website and social
media properties.
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SWOT analysis –
This is an analysis of Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys’ strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats in their efforts to win the business of large agribusiness clients.
Strengths:
Dedicated agribusiness industry group – Lathrop & Gage has a group of attorneys whose
experience in corporate law comes from the agribusiness industry. Other firms may have
attorneys who are competent in business law issues faced by agribusiness companies but
have not had specific experience in the agribusiness industry itself.
Personal agriculture experience – Attorneys in Lathrop & Gage’s agribusiness industry
group are farmers or ranchers themselves with direct experience of the issues faced by
agribusinesses. This gives them a unique perspective on the legal and business realities
of agribusiness, and the ability to empathize with the needs of agribusiness owners that
other lawyers without agribusiness backgrounds simply cannot.
Quality of experience and reputation – Lathrop & Gage’s agribusiness attorneys are all
highly-accomplished individuals with numerous honors, accolades and accomplishments.
Technology – Lathrop & Gage continually invests in technology to facilitate
communications between stakeholders in projects. It has an internal team devoted to the
production of electronically-stored information (ESI), and maintains cutting-edge video-
conferencing equipment so agribusiness attorneys, clients and staff can meet in real time
regardless of the distances between their physical locations.
Client feedback – Lathrop & Gage recognizes the value of ongoing relationships with
clients and knows the key to providing a lasting value is communication. As a result, the
firm routinely engages in client feedback interviews to better understand the needs,
thoughts and feelings of clients in regard to the quality of service the firm provides. The
results of these interviews are shared with the firm’s CEO as well as attorneys and
paralegals so all stakeholders know what their clients think about the service they have
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received. This allows agribusiness attorneys and staff to see how they’ve made their
clients happy as well as to identify opportunities for improvement.
Alternative fee arrangements – Besides the traditional billable hour, Lathrop & Gage
attorneys are available for compensation arrangements on a budget, component fees,
blended rates, success fees, and retainer. This gives agribusiness clients the ability to
strategically determine what fee arrangements will work best for them, and ultimately
creates more opportunities for Lathrop & Gage to engage clients.
Locations – Lathrop & Gage’s offices are mainly located in the Midwest, strategically
positioning the firm close to where the action is in agribusiness. In addition, having its
headquarters and the majority of its offices in the Midwest gives Lathrop & Gage the
opportunity to offer a more advantageous price point to its clients compared to its
competitors in major cities and on the coasts.
Weaknesses:
Content – There is a dearth of agribusiness-specific content on the Lathrop & Gage
website and social media presence. Without a consistent flow of new content, Lathrop &
Gage agribusiness attorneys miss out on opportunities to brand themselves as experts,
differentiate themselves from their competition, and remain top-of-mind to the people
who can hire them and refer business to them.
Underdeveloped social media strategy – While Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys
generally do engage in a certain amount of social media networking, there are missed
opportunities to optimize their social presence to generate leads and referrals. They are
not fully utilizing social media networking as a means to build and maintain relationships
with clients and referral sources.
Inconsistent voice and messaging – The Lathrop & Gage agribusiness department has a
plethora of experts in myriad legal topics all relevant to agribusiness, but there is no
centralized hub of communication from the Lathrop & Gage agribusiness industry group
29
to the external audience, nor can external audiences communicate to the agribusiness
group as a whole.
Opportunities:
Relationship development – There are opportunities to build and develop relationships
with clients and referral sources through the creation and distribution of content relevant
to audiences interested in agribusiness. If the Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys
pool their knowledge it in a centralized location easily accessible to external audiences
and created simple means to engage in a dialogue on the topics of their expertise, they
would have an advantage over their competitors in developing relationships that could
lead to more business.
Increased social media engagement – The number of people joining social media
networks is increasing every day, and this is true of lawyers and people in professional
services who would serve as referral sources, as well as CLOs and CEOs of agribusiness
companies who would drive the decision making process to hire outside counsel. This
creates new opportunities to communicate with people who would otherwise be out of
reach with content and messages to demonstrate the expertise of Lathrop & Gage
agribusiness attorneys for the purposes of business development.
Changing competitive landscape – The legal industry has changed significantly in the
wake of the recent economic crisis and the development of new communication
technologies and platforms such as social media. There are fewer opportunities for new
lawyers in large firms, and large firms have had to change their practices to suit an
increasing demand for a demonstrable return on investment in the marketplace. These
factors give Lathrop & Gage agribusiness lawyers opportunities to create a niche and
position themselves as subject-matter experts and thought leaders in their areas of legal
specialization relative to agribusiness.
Threats –
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Agile competition – Lathrop & Gage attorneys not only face competition from other large
law firms for agribusiness work, but they also must deal with smaller and more agile
competition. The combination of the lack of opportunities at large firms for qualified
new lawyers and the development of communication technologies that make it easier to
connect with decision makers at agribusiness companies enable smaller, younger firms to
compete with attorneys in larger firms for the same business in ways that would have
been impossible 10 years ago.
Economic uncertainty – Despite recent gains in the stock market, there is still a high
degree of uncertainty as to whether the economic recovery will be sustained. Large
companies and agribusiness firms have reacted by clamping down on the amount of work
they outsource. It is crucial for Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys to take advantage
of opportunities to establish, build and maintain relationships with decision makers and
referral sources that could lead to more business in the future.
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Lathrop & Gage Agribusiness Content Marketing Strategy –
One of the most marketable assets Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys bring to the table is
the legal knowledge and experience they possess relative to the needs of the agribusiness
companies they can help. The purpose of this marketing communications strategy therefore is to
bring this expertise to the forefront of the minds of decision makers and referral sources that can
create new business opportunities for Lathrop & Gage attorneys.
Based on the external review of the legal industry, the internal review of Lathop & Gage LLP,
and the SWOT analysis, the following key principles are crucial to the development of a legal
marketing communication plan to facilitate business development on behalf of Lathrop & Gage
agribusiness attorneys:
CLOs and CEOs are the primary decision makers in a corporation’s choice of outside
counsel and they tend to hire lawyers, not law firms, and preexisting relationships are
virtually a prerequisite both for attorneys to be hired and for CLOs and CEOs to hire the
attorneys they want to work with.
Corporations maintain a list of about 15-20 preferred service providers they have existing
long term relationships with that they regularly send work to, though they will look
outside this group for subject matter experts if special legal needs arise.
Quality of service and reputation are the most salient factors in the decision whether or
not to hire a particular attorney or law firm over another, and these factors are perceived
subjectively based on the opinions of the individual CLOs making the decision.
Goals: With these principles in mind, the Lathrop & Gage agribusiness marketing communications
strategy has three goals:
1. To facilitate relationship building between Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys and
CLOs at large agribusiness companies.
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2. To get Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys on “the list” of preferred service providers
for large agribusiness companies and to enshrine the expertise of Lathrop & Gage
agribusiness attorneys and the quality of their services for display when an agribusiness
company needs someone with specific legal knowledge or experience in a particular area.
3. To facilitate the development of Lathrop & Gage attorneys’ personal branding and
network development.
These goals can be accomplished by pooling the knowledge and expertise of Lathrop & Gage
agribusiness attorneys into a single outward-facing communications hub with information useful
to agribusiness CLOs and referral sources, and using it as a platform to distribute content to these
audiences to facilitate relationship building. The following is a content marketing strategy to
achieve these objectives:
Target audiences:
The target audiences for a marketing communication plan to help Lathrop & Gage agribusiness
attorneys win the business of large agribusiness companies would be the chief legal officers,
their C-suite colleagues and board members of these companies. The following is a list of the
top decision makers in the largest agribusiness companies in the Fortune 1000. The needs and
interests of these individuals are what should guide the inspiration of content for this marketing
communications strategy. Those individuals who names are italicized are on the social
networking site LinkedIn and can be immediately reached with content. The rest are people who
can be found, researched and reached with traditional marketing means such as direct mail,
phone calls, and joining trade organizations, groups or associations they are a part of.
o Cargill
Gregory R. Page, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
David W. MacLennan, President and Chief Operating Officer, Chief
Financial Officer
Emery N. Koenig, Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer
Laura Witte Corporate Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate
Secretary
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o Monsanto
Hugh Grant, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Pierre Courduroux, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Janet Holloway, Vice President, Chief of Staff and Community Relations
Board of Directors:
David Chicoine, President of South Dakota State University and
professor of economics
Laura Ipsen, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Corp.'s
Worldwide Public Sector organization.
Janice Fields, Former President of McDonald’s USA, LLC
Arthur Harper, Managing Partner of GenNx360 Capital Partners.
Gwendolyn S. King, President of Podium Prose, a speakers
bureau
o John Deere
Samuel Allen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Max Guinn, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Communications,
Public Affairs, and Labor Relations
Mary K. W. Jones, Senior Vice President and General Counsel
James H. Becht, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel,
International
Timothy V. Haight, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel
Michael A. Harring, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, North
America
Marc A. Howze, Vice President, Global Human Resources
Bradley D. Morris, Vice President, Global Labor Relations
Laurie S. Simpson, Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer
Gregory R. Noe, Corporate Secretary and Associate General Counsel
Board of Directors:
Crandall Bowles, Chairman, Springs Industries, Inc.
Chairman, The Springs Company
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Vance Coffman, Retired Chairman
Lockheed Martin Corporation
Charles O. Holliday Jr., Chairman
Bank of America Corporation
Dipak Jain, Dean INSEAD (France)
Clayton Jones, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Rockwell Collins, Inc.
Joachim Milberg, Chairman, Supervisory Board
Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) AG
Richard Meyers, Retired Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Retired General, United States Air Force
Thomas Patrick, Chairman New Vernon Capital, LLC
Aulana Peters, Retired Partner Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
Sherry Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial
Officer SUPERVALU INC.
o Archer Daniels Midland
Patricia A. Woertz, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Ray G. Young, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Craig E. Huss, Senior Vice President and Chief Risk Officer
Michael D’Ambrose, Senior Vice President, Human Resources
Mark A. Bemis, Senior Vice President and President, Corn Business Unit
Matthew J. Jansen, Senior Vice President and President, Oilseeds
Business Unit
Marschall I. Smith, Senior Vice President, Secretary & General Counsel
Joseph Taets, Senior Vice President and President, Agricultural Services
Business Unit
Shannon S. Herzfeld, Vice President, Government Relations
Stuart E. Funderburg, Assistant Secretary and Assistant General
Counsel
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Mark L. Kolkhorst, Vice President and President,
Milling and Alliance Nutrition
Michael Lusk, Vice President, Insurance and Risk Management
Vikram Luthar, Group Vice President, Finance
Board of Directors:
George Buckley, Retired Chairman, President and Chief
Executive Officer of 3M and Chairman of Arle Capital Partners
Limited
Terrell Crews, Retired Chief Financial Officer, Monsanto
Alan Boeckmann, Retired Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
Fluor Corporation
Mollie Hale Carter, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
Sunflower Bank and Vice President of Star A, Inc.
Donald Felsinger, Executive Chairman of Sempra Energy
Patrick Moore, President and Chief Executive Officer of PJM
Advisors, LLC
Kelvin Westbrook, President and Chief Executive Officer of KRW
Advisors, LLC
Pierre Dufor, Senior Executive Vice President, Air Liquide
Group; President and Chief Executive Officer of American Air
Liquide Holdings, Inc.
Antonio Maciel Neto, Chief Executive Officer of Suzano Papel e
Celulose
Thomas O’Neill, Principal of Ranieri Partners Management, LLC
Daniel Sinh, Deputy Chairman and Executive Director, Stella
International Holdings Limited
o Cummins
Tom Linebarger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
M. M. (Marya) Rose, Chief Administrative Officer
Patrick (Pat) J. Ward, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
36
Board of Directors:
Robert J. Bernhard, Vice President for Research and Professor of
Engineering at the University of Notre Dame
Robert K. Herdman, Managing Director, Kalorama Partners LLC
Alexis M. Herman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, New
Ventures LLC
William I. Miller, President, The Wallace Foundation
Georgia R. Nelson, President and CEO, PTI Resources, LLC
Carl Ware, Retired Coca-Cola Executive and President and COO,
Ware Investment Properties LLC
Franklin Chang Díaz, Chairman and CEO, Ad Astra Rocket
Company
Stephen B. Dobbs, Senior Group President, Fluor Corporation
o Caterpillar
Doug Oberhelman, Chairman & CEO
Brad Halverson, group president and CFO
James Buda, Executive Vice President, Law and Public Policy of
Caterpillar Inc.
Kimberley Hauer, Vice President of Caterpillar Inc. with responsibility
for the Human Services Division.
Kathryn Karol, Vice President of Caterpillar Inc. with responsibility for
global government and corporate affairs
Jananne A. Copeland, Chief Accounting Officer
Christopher C. Spears, Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer
Board of Directors:
David L Calhoun, Chief Executive Officer and Executive
Director of Nielsen Holdings N.V.
Daniel M. Dickinson, Managing Partner of HCI Equity Partners
Juan Gallardo, Chairman and was Formerly CEO of Grupo
Embotelladoras Unidas S.A.B. de C.V.
37
David R. Goode, Chairman, President and CEO of Norfolk
Southern Corporation
Jesse Green Jr., Vice President of Financial Management and
Chief Financial Risk Officer of International Business Machines
Corporation
Jon Huntsman Jr., Former United States Ambassador to China
and Former Governor of Utah
Peter Magowan, President and Managing General Partner of the
San Francisco Giants and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
of Safeway Inc.
Dennis Muilenburg, Executive Vice President of The Boeing
Company and President and Chief Executive Officer of Boeing
Defense, Space & Security
William Osborn, Formerly Chairman and CEO of Northern Trust
Corporation
Charles Powell, Chairman of Capital Generation Partners
Edward Rust Jr., Chairman, CEO and President of State Farm
Mutual Automobile Insurance Company
Susan Schwab, Professor at the University of Maryland School of
Public Policy and a Strategic Advisor for Mayer Brown LLP
Josh Smith, Chairman and Managing Partner of the Coaching
Group, LLC
Miles White, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Abbott
Laboratories
o Tractor Supply Company
Gregory A. Sandfort President and Chief Executive Officer
Anthony F. Crudele Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
and Treasurer
Benjamin F. Parrish, Jr. Senior Vice President-General Counsel and
Corporate Secretary
38
Kimberly D. Vella Senior Vice President, Chief People Officer
Board of Directors:
James Wright Executive Chairman of Tractor Supply Company
Cynthia Jamison Chief Financial Officer of AquaSpy Inc. since
2009
John Adams Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for
AutoZone, Inc.
Peter Bewley Former Senior Vice President-General Counsel and
Secretary of The Clorox Company from 1998 to 2005
Jack Bingleman President of JCB Consulting LLC
Richard Frost Former Chief Executive Officer for Louisiana-
Pacific Corporation
George MacKenzie non-executive Chairman of American Water
Edna Morris CEO at Range Restaurant Group
o Ingredion
Ilene S. Gordon, President and Chief Executive Officer
Cheryl Beebe, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Board of Directors:
Richard Almeida, Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
of Heller Financial, Inc.
Luis Aranguren-Trellez, Executive President of Arancia
Industrial
Paul Hanrahan, Former President and Chief Executive Officer of
The AES Corporation
Karen Hendricks, Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
of The Baldwin Piano & Organ Company
Wayne Hewett, President and Chief Executive Officer of Arysta
LifeScience Corporation
Gregory Kenny, President and Chief Executive Officer of General
Cable Corporation
39
Barbara Klein, Former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial
Officer of CDW Corporation
James Ringler, Chairman of the Board of Teradata Corporation
Dwayne Wilson, President and Chief Executive Officer of
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC
o Seaboard Corporation
Steven J. Bresky, President and Chief Executive Officer
Robert L. Steer, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
David M. Becker, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary
Barry E. Gum, Senior Vice President, Finance and Treasurer
Ralph L. Moss, Senior Vice President, Governmental Affairs
David S. Oswalt, Senior Vice President, Taxation and Business
Development
John A. Virgo, Senior Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief
Accounting Officer
Board of Directors
David A. Adamsen, Former Vice President - Wholesale Sales
C&S Wholesale Grocers
Douglas W. Baena, Self employed engaging in facilitation of
equipment leasing financing and consulting.
Edward I. Shifman, Jr. Retired, Former Managing and Executive
Vice President of Wachovia Capital Finance
Joseph E. Rodrigues, Retired, Former Executive Vice President
and Treasurer
o Chiquita Brands International
Edward F. Lonergan, President and Chief Executive Officer
Kevin R. Holland, Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer
Brian W. Kocher, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
40
Manuel Rodriguez, Senior Vice President Government & International
Affairs and Corporate Responsibility Officer
James E. Thompson, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and
Secretary
Allyson Bouldon, Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer
Joseph B. Johnson, Vice President, Controller and Chief Accounting
Officer
Board of Directors:
Kerrii Anderson, Former President and Chief Executive Officer
of Wendy's International, Inc.
Howard Barker Jr., Former Partner, KPMG LLP
William Camp, Former Executive, Archer Daniels Midland
Company
Dr. Clare M. Hasler-Lewis, Executive Director, Robert Mondavi
Institute for Wine and Food Science at the University of California
at Davis
Jaime Serra, Senior Partner of Serra Associates International, and
Former Secretary of Trade for Mexico.
Jeffrey Simmons, Senior Vice President Eli Lilly Company and
President Elanco Animal Health
Steven Stanbrook, Chief Operating Officer, S.C. Johnson & Son,
Inc.
The Lathrop & Gage Agribusiness Law Blog –
It is the recommendation of this report that in order to reach target audiences with information
about the reputation and quality of service Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys offer and to
facilitate the relationship-building process crucial to the procurement of new business, the chief
marketing officer of Lathrop & Gage authorize and oversee the creation of a blog devoted to the
agribusiness industry group; an agribusiness law blog or “AgBlawg.”
41
The AgBlawg will benefit the marketing efforts of Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys by
displaying their knowledge and expertise, assisting with search engine optimization and
facilitating the distribution of content they can share with prospective and current clients along as
well as with referral sources.
The AgBlawg will be richly populated with information on legal topics relevant to agribusiness
and written to an agribusiness audience. The information will come in the form of posts of 200
to 300 words each that are published at least once per week. Lathrop & Gage agribusiness
industry group leaders Jay, Wally and Dan will be the AgBlawg’s editors because they are
already at least partially engaged in online marketing and social media for their practices. Their
contact information along with links to their attorney profiles on the Lathrop & Gage website
will be displayed prominently. The “agribusiness” page of the Lathrop & Gage will have a link
to the AgBlawg next to the “Description and “Attorneys” tabs.
The AgBlawg content will be written by someone in the Lathrop & Gage marketing department.
This person will research topics in areas of legal specialization practiced by the agribusiness
industry group leaders, and write articles for their review to be published on the AgBlawg with
their approval. For example, an article could be about “Retirement planning ideas for farm
owners,” “The tax benefits of turning your ranch into an ESOP” or “Here’s what the ‘Monsanto
Protection Act’ means to your seeds”; anything relevant to the legal business needs of
agribusiness owners.
These articles or posts will appear at least once a week. In addition, Jay, Wally and Dan will be
encouraged to write and publish their own articles based on their knowledge and expertise in
their areas of specialization, as well as stories or anecdotes indirectly related to their practices.
Or to save time they can simply offer their commentary periodically if an article is directly
relevant to their practice area.
Legal alerts about the agribusiness industry will also be published on the AgBlawg. Another
idea would be to create podcasts and videos of agribusiness attorneys discussing legal topics
relevant to agribusiness. Audience members will be interested to see and hear the attorneys as
they express their knowledge, and this will lead to increased interest and feelings of familiarity
with them. Finally, links to other news articles or blogs on the topics of agribusiness and
42
agribusiness law can be posted on the AgBlawg as well. This will increase the richness and
depth of the information available to target audience members as well as lend enhanced
credibility from multiple sources of information. There will always be a steady flow of fresh
content on the AgBlawg, and this consistent posting of keyword-rich information will gradually
enable search engine optimization so that when someone types words relevant to agribusiness
law into a search engine, the AgBlawg will be more likely to be among the first few pages. This
will make it easier for people looking for agribusiness lawyers to find the attorneys in the
Lathrop & Gage agribusiness group.
The AgBlawg will need to be designed by a professional website designer who can create an up-
to-date and appealing look while managing the under-the-hood aspects of website development
such as HTML, CSS and other coding languages, as well as integration of Google Analytics as a
means to track website traffic and calculate return on investment for this strategy. It is
recommended that the AgBlawg be designed in WordPress because it is a widely-used
application in website design and because it has turnkey functionality to ensure that it can be
regularly updated with fresh content without the assistance of a designer.
The design of the AgBlawg should contain symbols, colors and imagery that are reminiscent of
agriculture and agribusiness. This will impact the branding because viewers will come to
associate the AgBlawg as having direct relevance to agribusiness. Finally, a disclaimer
reminding viewers that no part of the AgBlawg is meant to convey legal advice in line with the
Missouri Rules of Professional Conduct should be included on the site. The Missouri Bar
Association can also be consulted to ensure the creation and implementation of a website such as
this is appropriate within its guidelines.
After the initial launch of the AgBlawg, a media relations campaign to announce the blawg’s
launch will direct attention to it. Journalists and publications relevant to agribusiness and
agribusiness law will be identified, and will be sent press releases about the AgBlawg and the
information it provides. The AgBlawg website address should be included on all marketing
collateral for the agribusiness industry group including business cards of Lathrop & Gage
agribusiness attorneys, their email signatures, and agribusiness law CLE materials and brochures.
43
Once the AgBlawg is established and is populated with two to three months worth of content, it
can be submitted to the American Bar Association Blawg Directory. The ABA maintains a list
of blawgs on various legal topics relevant to lawyers and the consumers of legal services. It
serves as a way for people to find blawgs on topics they’re interested in to stay up to date on
current trends in various aspects of law. If the ABA decides to publish the Blawg then it will add
legitimacy as well as help people who are interested in agribusiness law to find the AgBlawg.
Adding a link to the AgBlawg to the ABA Blawg Directory page will create what’s called a “link
exchange” that will facilitate search engine optimization so that when people type in search
terms relevant to agribusiness law they will be more likely to find the AgBlawg. Other blawg
directories the AgBlawg can be submitted to include Justia.com, Blawg.com, and the Law Blawg
Yahoo directory. Once listed on these sites, the AgBlawg can include links to them as well to
create link exchanges to facilitate search engine optimization.
Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys can then send content from the AgBlawg to their contacts
to stay in touch and add value. This is a means to stay top-of-mind with their prospective clients,
current or past clients, and referral sources without being intrusive. Articles can also be sent out
in the form of legal alerts to people who sign up to receive them.
Social media distribution –
In addition to traffic generated by organic search engine optimization, email and including the
AgBlawg’s website address on Lathrop & Gage agribusiness marketing collateral, social media
networks offer an opportunity to reach target audiences with content to drive traffic as well.
Each social media network is different in terms of its layout and how it functions so each
requires a unique content distribution strategy. However, the goals of each strategy are basically
the same: to reach target audience members with content and drive traffic to the AgBlawg which
will facilitate relationship-building between Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys and
prospective clients and referral sources, with the end result being more business opportunities.
Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys should all have robust social media profiles on LinkedIn,
Twitter, and Google+ and should have links to those profiles in their email signatures and
attorney bios on the Lathrop & Gage website.
44
LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is a professional networking social media platform. Lathrop & Gage agribusiness
attorneys can use it to connect with prospective clients, current clients, professional contacts,
friends and other referral sources. The more contacts an attorney has on their profile, the more
people are likely to see the updates they publish to their profile. Whenever an attorney meets
someone at a networking event who could be a prospective client or referral source, they should
reach out to connect with that person on LinkedIn to stay in touch and share valuable information
of mutual interest. This is important because every time the AgBlawg is updated with a new
piece of content, attorneys in the Lathrop & Gage agribusiness group should publish a link to it
on their LinkedIn profile. Publishing links this way will help drive traffic to the AgBlawg site as
well as assist with the attorneys’ personal branding as a source of valuable information and a
thought leader on the subject of agribusiness law.
Once a link is published on a LinkedIn profile, it can then be shared in LinkedIn groups. Groups
are discussion boards where members can dialogue with each other on topics of mutual interest,
and there are many groups dedicated to agribusiness where the types of articles published on the
AgBlawg would be appropriate to share. Group members receive email digests of recently
published topics and the group’s commentary up to that point so they can easily read what other
people have said and join in the conversation. Publishing AgBlawg articles to LinkedIn
agribusiness and legal interest groups would generate traffic to the website, position the attorney
who published it as a thought leader on the topic, and spur online conversations that could lead to
real life relationships that could themselves lead to new business. Also, members of LinkedIn
groups can send messages directly to each other through LinkedIn. This creates an opportunity
to send personalized messages to individuals along with links to content on the AgBlawg to
facilitate the development of a relationship.
Finally, links to the AgBlawg content should be added to the Lathrop & Gage LinkedIn page.
This will make it so all the followers of the Lathrop & Gage page on LinkedIn receive a link to
the AgBlawg content in their newsfeeds, and will help facilitate search engine optimization.
45
Twitter:
Twitter is a micro-blogging site where members post or “tweet” up to 140 characters of content.
When people “follow” a person’s Twitter profile, that profile’s posts show up in their news feed.
Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys should create complete Twitter profiles and follow the
profiles of people they want to build and maintain relationships with so those people will follow
them back. Then they should post links to AgBlawg articles when they come out so those links
appear in the newsfeeds of people who follow them. Finally, the Lathrop & Gage Twitter profile
should retweet links from its agribusiness attorneys to maximize exposure.
Google+:
Google+ is a new social media network that allows people to add their contacts to their “circles”
then choose which content is exposed to each circle. Because it is a Google property, content
shared publicly on this site is given special priority in the Google search engine. Lathrop &
Gage attorneys should add prospective clients, current clients and referral sources to their circles
and share links to articles from the AgBlawg on their profiles.
Facebook:
Facebook is the epochal social media network and allows people build networks of contacts that
will receive updates whenever content is posted on their profile. Lathrop & Gage has a
Facebook presence it uses to share content to its followers, and this would be a good place to
share AgBlawg content as well in order to increase exposure and serve as another means to drive
traffic. However, this report breaks from Facebook as a marketing communications tactic in that
it does not recommend the Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorneys to create Facebook profiles
for the purposes of business development.
It is the opinion of this report that Facebook is primarily useful for staying in touch with friends
and family, sharing photos and inviting contacts to personal events. Though this report does not
discourage Lathrop & Gage attorneys from joining and enjoying Facebook for the personal
benefits it offers, and certainly concedes the potential marketing benefits of staying in touch with
people who could refer them business or who are both clients and friends at the same time, the
46
general opinion is that Facebook is not the appropriate forum for the sort of professional
relationship-building recommended in this report. That is not to say that some lawyers do not
use Facebook successfully for the purposes of business development, but this report simply
recommends there are better venues in which to pursue business opportunities for professional
services providers.
Google Analytics:
This is a tool to measure website traffic and engagement. Once it’s integrated with the AgBlawg
website, it will tell how many people have visited the site in a given time period, where they are,
how they found the site, what content they viewed, what links they clicked on, and how much
time they spent on the site. This information will show what content people prefer, where the
majority of people find the site, and how successful the site is at helping to achieve our
marketing goals. It will also help determine if people are going on to other sites such as the
Lathrop & Gage website or sharing content with their networks. This information can be used as
part of a metric or formula to calculate return on investment for this marketing strategy.
Heuristic development:
A heuristic is a patently simple way to engage in problem solving when an exhaustive method
would be impractical; a heuristic is a “rule of thumb.” Because there is no way to tell the direct
impact of sharing a single piece of content online relative to how much new business it does or
does not generate, data from Google Analytics along with a simple marketing database can be
used to develop heuristic strategies to calculate and maximize return on investment of the
Lathrop & Gage content marketing strategy.
For example, if a Lathrop & Gage agribusiness attorney consistently bills “X” number of hours
per month before the implementation of the content marketing strategy, then within several
months after the implementation of the strategy there’s a significant amount of traffic on the
AgBlawg website and the lawyer begins to bill “Y” hours per month consistently and “Y” is
greater than “X,” then we can reasonably say the content marketing strategy likely had
something to do with the increase, and we can calculate the ratio of traffic on the website to the
47
increase in billable hours or any other fee arrangement the attorney utilizes. So we can arrive at
a heuristic formula that says: “For every “X” blog posts that generate “Y” hits or more within a
given time period, Lathrop & Gage attorneys will bill “Z” number of hours which is “XX” more
hours than this time last year before the implementation of the content marketing strategy.
Lathrop & Gage content marketing manager – The consistent implementation of this strategy would require a member of the Lathrop & Gage
marketing department to work full time creating, distributing and measuring the return on
investment of content, as well as to be on call at all times when an agribusiness attorney requires
assistance or training on how to use social media for the purposes of business development. As a
result, this creates the need for a new position in the Lathrop & Gage marketing department
specifically to plan, implement and drive the content marketing strategy for the agribusiness
group.
Job description – The content marketing manager benefits the attorneys of Lathrop & Gage in three specific ways:
Creation of relevant content Lathrop & Gage attorneys can share with prospective clients and
referral sources to establish themselves as thought leaders
Optimization of the Lathrop & Gage website to help prospective clients and referral sources
find Lathrop & Gage on search engines
Differentiation of Lathrop & Gage from competing law firms with a unique strategy to build
relationships with prospective clients and referral sources through social media
The CMM is responsible for managing the Lathrop & Gage agribusiness content marketing
strategy. Their job involves creating, publishing and distributing agribusiness law content on the
Lathrop & Gage Agriculture Law Blog or “AgBlawg.” The CMM will write articles to be
reviewed by the attorneys and published on the AgBlawg. Once per month, the CMM will
prepare an analytics report of traffic that has been generated on the AgBlawg site and what the
degree of lift in revenues for the agribusiness industry group can be attributed to the content
marketing strategy.
48
The CMM will serve as a social media consultant and create a cohesive social media strategy to
generate a measurable return on investment. Specific issues the CMM will address include: how
to optimize your social media presence; how to build a following; how to share and curate
content to position yourself as a thought leader; how to participate in groups; how to make your
own groups; and how to use social media as an icebreaker that leads to real life conversations.
Deliverables:
Consistent content updates to the AgBlawg and Lathrop & Gage social media channels
On demand social media consultation
Monthly analytics and ROI report
Specific duties:
Create and follow editorial calendar for content to be produced and published online
Plan and implement a social media strategy to reach target audiences with content
Stay up to date on social media trends as they pertain to law firms and lawyers
Serve as social media consultant for firm attorneys
Be on call for content creation or consultation on short notice
Develop a system to measure return on investment
Requirements:
A bachelor’s degree from an accredited university in journalism, marketing, or
communications
Three to five years of experience in a marketing communications capacity
Solid understanding of online, social, and traditional marketing concepts and processes
Comfortable managing successful professional relationships with stakeholders at all
levels
Time management skills and ability to work under deadline
Exemplary written and verbal communication skills
Ability to craft an engaging narrative from a series of data
Strong presentation skills
49
Willingness to be on call and work evenings and weekends as needed
Preferred characteristics:
Master’s degree
Intimate understanding of LinkedIn as a marketing and business development tool
Marketing communications experience in a law firm or professional services environment
Costs: Because this is a full-time position requiring a mid-career level of marketing communications
knowledge, experience and education, as well as specialized experience writing content for
social media on behalf of professional services providers, the compensation would have to be
competitive with other jobs at a similar level in marketing departments and advertising agencies.
The potential to work long and irregular hours creates a need for an exempt, salaried position.
Similar job titles include: social media specialist, content manager, and media relations
specialist. The salary for these jobs can range between $40 thousand to $60 thousand per year.
In order to be competitive for top level talent while remaining economical to maintain a focus
on value to the firm’s clients, this report recommends offering a salary of $52 thousand per year
as well as a comprehensive benefits package including health, dental and vision insurance, as
well as a retirement plan.
50
Conclusion – Lathrop & Gage is a strong brand with a successful business model and a powerful marketing
message. Its agribusiness attorneys are among the best in the country in terms of the quality of
services they provide. A strategically implemented content marketing plan would augment the
firm’s existing marketing efforts by creating additional opportunities for Lathrop & Gage
agribusiness attorneys to develop professional relationships that lead to more business.
The AgBlawg would amplify the online presence of the agribusiness attorneys and Lathrop &
Gage itself, adding to the already renowned reputation of the firm and its attorneys and creating
opportunities for professional relationships that simply did not previously exist. Blawging and
social media marketing are future of legal marketing, and Lathrop & Gage has a chance to get
ahead of its competitors through the implementation of a content marketing strategy such as the
one suggested in this report.
Newsletters “Thanks, you’re doing a great job.”
– Patrick K. McMonigle, Shareholder/ Director at Dysart, Taylor, Cotter, McMonigle & Montemore, P.C.
Rotary Club 13 Buzz Saw This Week’s Meeting—Muehlebach Hotel, Noon, Trianon Room, Oct. 6, 2011
Top Stories
Speaker: Jan Marcason, 4th District councilwoman, ―Changes in the City‖
Honor Kansas City and Rotary 13 with Your Presence Oct. 13
Thank You from the Camp Enterprise Committee
Help Deliver Dictionaries
Rotarians Play Crucial Role in Missouri Korean War Veteran Memorial Dedication
Committee Meetings
New Member Orientation—Lido, Oct. 6, 10:45 a.m.
New Member Involvement—Burgundy, Oct. 6, 11 a.m.
Camp Enterprise—Nixon, Oct. 6, 11 a.m.
Membership C&Q—Roosevelt, Oct. 6, 11 a.m.
Youth Camp Board—Hoover, Oct. 6, 11 a.m.
Entertainment—Trianon, Oct. 6, 11 a.m.
Education Excellence—Municipal Auditorium Room 201, Oct. 13, 11 a.m.
Rotary Club 13 Office - 1219 Wyandotte - Kansas City, MO 64105 - 816-842-2322 www.rotary13.org VOL. XCV / No. 39
Greeters New members and their sponsors will serve as our greeters this week
Upcoming Speakers and Events Oct. 4: Tyro Cocktails @ Christy Chester’s 158 NW Pointe Dr. Gladstone, MO 64116 5—7:30 p.m.
Oct. 13: Business Executive of the Year @ Municipal Auditorium 301 W. 13th St. Kansas City, MO 64105
Invocator Welcomer
Mike Griggs Tim Tholen
Rotary Club 13 Buzz Saw This Week’s Meeting– Muehlebach Hotel, Noon, Trianon Room, Oct. 6, 2011
Rotary Club 13 Office - 1219 Wyandotte - Kansas City, MO 64105 - 816-842-2322 www.rotary13.org VOL. XCV / No. 39
“Changes in the City” Jan Marcason, 4th District councilwoman
Jan Marcason was born and raised in Kansas City. She
received a master’s in business administration from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and a bachelor’s in
education from the University of Kansas.
Jan served as executive director of the Mid-America Assistance Coalition; was a founding board member of the
Ivanhoe Neighborhood Front Porch Alliance; serves on the Maternal and Child Health Coalition Advisory Board; was
president of the Women’s Political Caucus; and was appointed by Governor Mel Carnahan to the Missouri
Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline of Judges.
As a leader of the Junior League, Jan helped start the
Jazzoo fundraiser that has brought millions of dollars to
help the Kansas City Zoo. Jan is a member of Citizens Association and the Committee for County Progress.
Contribute to your KC
Rotary Club Foundation
The Rotary Youth Camp provides camping experiences available to youth service organizations in the Greater K.C. area without regard to race, color, national origin, age, sex
or disability.
Call 816-842-2322 Or email [email protected]
Want More Rotary 13? Connect to the Rotary 13 community by visiting the Downtown Kansas City Rotary Club Facebook page.
Get up-to-the-minute reports on Rotary and Kansas City by following the Rotary 13 Twitter page.
Missed a meeting with a speaker you wanted to hear? Listen to the podcast.
Get to know more of what Rotary 13 is all about by watching our Rotary Youth Camp YouTube video.
Rotary Club 13 Buzz Saw This Week’s Meeting– Muehlebach Hotel, Noon, Trianon Room, Oct. 6, 2011
Rotary Club 13 Office - 1219 Wyandotte - Kansas City, MO 64105 - 816-842-2322 www.rotary13.org VOL. XCV / No. 39
Come Enjoy the Fall Fireside Meetings To all Club 13 members. Don’t miss these Fall Fireside visits to get to know one another better and participate in important Club 13 discussions. The two-hour home meetings are hosted by five of our
members and offered over a 3-day period. There are still a few open slots, so please SIGN UP NOW.
Wednesday, Oct. 12 7:30 p.m. - Karl Roscoe, 8210 Locust, Kansas City, MO (816) 361-8874
Thursday, Oct. 13 6:00 p.m. - Ron Dillon, 13405 W. 83rd Street, Lenexa, KS (913) 894-6735
7:30 p.m. - Al Tikwart, 2040 Brookwood Road, Mission Hills, KS (913) 432-0304
TYROS – Earn 10 points for each meeting you attend!
To register, simply email [email protected] or call 816-842-2322 by Oct. 7.
Boland Named Grand Champion Barbeque Artist
Our friend and fellow Rotarian Chris Boland is to be congratulated. His team enters barbecue contests
all over the city, and at the Shawnee Great Grillers State Championship of Barbeque they took down the grand championship in all categories; ribs, brisket, chicken and pork. This was a first for Chris, who has
won first place in individual categories before but never for the entire contest. Congratulations, Chris.
Rotarian Chris Boland on left
Rotarians Play Crucial Role in Missouri Korean War Veterans Memorial Dedication
Rotarians Debra Shultz and Jim Shultz, Jr. provided coordination for the construction and dedication of
the Missouri Korean War Veterans Memorial, which was a dream of their father, Jim Shultz. Other Rotarians involved in the project include Carl DiCapo, Karl Roscoe, Ed Knisley, and Yong Kim. Click
here for a photo album from the event.
Rotarian Debra Shultz on right
Rotary Club 13 Buzz Saw This Week’s Meeting– Muehlebach Hotel, Noon, Trianon Room, Oct. 6, 2011
Rotary Club 13 Office - 1219 Wyandotte - Kansas City, MO 64105 - 816-842-2322 www.rotary13.org VOL. XCV / No. 39
Rotary Club 13 Buzz Saw This Week’s Meeting– Muehlebach Hotel, Noon, Trianon Room, Oct. 6, 2011
Rotary Club 13 Office - 1219 Wyandotte - Kansas City, MO 64105 - 816-842-2322 www.rotary13.org VOL. XCV / No. 39
Honor Kansas City and Rotary 13 with your Presence Oct. 13
Every year, the Vocational Services Committee of the Kansas City Rotary Club seeks nominations for a
successful businessperson who has made a positive impact on the community. After much discussion, they decide who they believe has made the most significant contribution. This person is then recognized
in a special ceremony.
This year, the Business Executive of the Year Award ceremony will be held in conjunction with the 75th
Anniversary of Municipal Auditorium. Rotarians are encouraged to attend and bring honor to the city and
the club. No-cost tickets for admission can be attained from the Rotary Office, 816-842-2322,
[email protected]. Here is the schedule of events:
10 a.m. – Setup for event
11 a.m. – Doors open with ongoing entertainment from Shrine, costumed entertainers, and exhibits
12 p.m. – Rotary program begin in Arena
12:15 p.m. – President Marc Horner speaks to Arena crowd
12:20 p.m. – President Marc invites Rotarians and others to join us in the Little Theater for the
presentation of the Business Executive of the Year
12:30 p.m. – President Marc convenes the meeting in Little Theater
1 p.m. – President Marc adjourns the meeting
Help Deliver Dictionaries
Here’s your chance to make a significant impact on dozens of kids for just a small investment of time. And it’s
an impact that will reap benefits over and over again.
Grab a teammate and sign up to deliver super-dictionaries and Rotary-imprinted pens to third graders in one of 24 area elementary schools in the Kansas City area.
It’s all part of the annual Dictionary Project of Kansas City, sponsored by Reading Reaches, Inc., a local
nonprofit organization dedicated to making sure every third grader has a dictionary.
For details, download the attached that explains the program and includes a list of schools. Choose your school or we’ll assign one to you. Then email Jane Lee at [email protected] to let us know your name, email
address, school preference, if any. Let us know the name of your teammate or if you’re going solo.
We’ll even provide a script so you don’t have to worry about what to say during your 15- to 20-minute
presentation to the kids.
Once we hear from you, we’ll confirm your school choice and provide details on when and where to pick up your dictionaries and pens. This is fun event. You won’t want to miss it. TYROS, you get 6 points!
Tyro Cocktails @ Christy’s Oct. 4
Dear Tyros,
Christy Chester will host a cocktail party just for you on Tuesday Oct. 4 from 5-7:30 p.m. The Tyro
Committee and the Board of Directors are invited and encouraged to attend. Christy lives at 158 NW Pointe Dr. Gladstone, MO 64116.
If you need directions, call Christy at 816-842-5852 or email [email protected]. If you plan
to attend, please RSVP to Tyro Committee Chair Teresa Montgomery at (913) 905-2103 or email [email protected].
Rotary Club 13 Buzz Saw This Week’s Meeting– Muehlebach Hotel, Noon, Trianon Room, Oct. 6, 2011
Rotary Club 13 Office - 1219 Wyandotte - Kansas City, MO 64105 - 816-842-2322 www.rotary13.org VOL. XCV / No. 39
Thank You from the Camp Enterprise Committee
Elliott Goldstein and Paul William Camp Enterprise was held the weekend of Sept 17 – 18 this year. We had a fantastic group of high
school juniors representing eighteen different schools in the greater Kansas City area. In addition to a great group of students, we had great volunteers who made the camp a success. We want to take this
opportunity to thank those who did volunteer. Without them, this Rotary 13 event would have never happened.
First, we would like to thank Randy Sisk, our program chair, who put together a terrific program by
finding the excellent speakers that came to talk to the kids. Our opening speaker was Gail of Gail’s Harley-Davidson, who got the camp off to a great start with her motivating talk. Wes Wingfield then led
some ―Ice Breaker‖ games that got the kids meeting their fellow campers. Sean Stormes introduced the
students to marketing, which he says is the most important part of any business. Late Saturday afternoon, we had a panel discussion that included Jan Marcason, a Rotary 13 member and
representative to the KC City Council from the 4th District, Henry Sandate from the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Airick West of the Kansas City School Board, and Karen Orosco of H & R Block. The title of
the panel discussion was, ―The Role of Business in the Community and Giving Back‖. The panelists gave great presentations and the questions from the students were even better. It was definitely a highlight
of the weekend.
On Sunday morning Colonel Ted Dalberg held an Ecumenical service. Right after lunch on Sunday, Judy Roetheli, the founder of Greenies Dog Treats, spoke to the students about developing a business.
Sunday evening, Tom Freeman (Gene’s son) gave the closing talk letting the kids know that they can accomplish anything they want through perseverance and hard work.
During the entire weekend, the students participated in a business simulation where groups of 4 or 5
students formed a company and competed against each other for financial supremacy. The top winners received Camp Enterprise Bucks that they could spend during our live and silent auctions toward the end
of Sunday. We want to thank Diane Scott and Dennis McKeehan for getting most of the items that
were available at the auction and Bob Lager for providing MTV branded t-shirts that were popular. We also want to thank Dan Nenonen for setting up the auction and Jason Roske, our auctioneer. One of
the items in the live auction was a 2 hour limo ride, which was purchased by the 4 students from Raymore-Peculiar High School. They didn’t have a destination in mind for the limo but were looking
forward to having it pick them up on a Friday afternoon from school.
We want to say a special thank you to Teresa Montgomery and Gene Freeman for recruiting the terrific students we had at camp. Also a special thank you to Mark Lee, who did a fantastic job in
recruiting volunteers for the weekend. The following were the volunteers who acted as discussion leaders: Gene Freeman, Tom Van Dyke, Jerry Cooke, Steve Nichols, Debra Shultz, Henrik
Andersen, Jerry Munson, David King, Marc Horner, Tim Tholen, Mike Griggs, Don Stebbins, Don Giffin, Jim Hill, Eric Bubb, Joshua Hill, Bob Kroenert, and Roxana Shafle.
Those that stayed overnight to sleep in the cabins acting as chaperones were: Gene Freeman, Henrik
Andersen, Tim Tholen, Jerry Cooke, Christy Chester, Roxana Shafle, Sally Baehni and Ramelle
Timm.
Bus greeters were: Curt Watkins, Ray Delia, Marc Horner, Julie Cogley, Rick Powell, Ramelle Timm, Teresa Montgomery and Eric Bubb.
Kitchen helpers were: Paul Searcy, Robert Moffat, Ray Delia, Mary Kingsley, Phil Kinney, Jan
Armstrong, Alan Warne, Denny Bolte, Dennis McKeehan, Diane Scott, Dick Retrum, Jerry Munson and Teresa Montgomery. And a special thank you to Laurie Mozley who, as always, did a
great job with the meals and snacks; David McCaughey, who helped us dig out of some computer problems on short notice; and Tom Van Dyke, who made all the arrangements for the student’s bus
transportation.
We also want to thank Patty Mathis-Zollars, who was our nurse on Saturday and overnight until Sunday morning. Thank you to Carol Retrum who came on Sunday when Patty had to leave and stayed until the
end of camp. Fortunately, we had no serious illnesses or injuries to deal with, but we were glad to have
the medical help there, if necessary.
To everyone who made a contribution to Camp for Kids that enabled us to double the amount for Camp Enterprise, we thank you. Camp Enterprise would not have happened without your financial support.
Rotary Club 13 Buzz Saw This Week’s Meeting– Muehlebach Hotel, Noon, Trianon Room, Oct. 6, 2011
Rotary Club 13 Office - 1219 Wyandotte - Kansas City, MO 64105 - 816-842-2322 www.rotary13.org VOL. XCV / No. 39
Last Thursday, Sept. 29, 2011
Pete Burgess
Last Thursday was a gorgeous top-down early fall day and perfect for
Gail of Gail’s Harley Davidson to talk about her outstanding and enthusiastic life experiences in the Harley-Davidson motorcycle
business. The Communications Committee did the greeting on the way in. President Marc Horner called us to order and asked Bob
Lager to lead us in singing. Carl Bolte was unavailable to lend support to Bob’s great voice. Marc called on David King for the
invocation. Roxana Shaffe welcomed our seven guests and a Rotarian visiting from Denver.
Ken Beardsley should be home from St. Luke’s on the Plaza where
he had knee surgery and joins several ―finally home‖ members now free from various hospital stays. President Marc
commended the Community Service Committee and volunteers who helped paint at Cristo Rey High School, then recognized the
volunteers who participated in Rotary Camp work on the same day.
Marc proudly displayed the Star’s front page photo of Debra Shultz at the Korean War Memorial
dedication and Debra stood to acknowledge the great help she got from supporting members. Jane Lee called for volunteers to help the Literacy Committee with the Dictionary Project.
Pat Dunn pitched the ―Cocktails at Christy’s‖ Tyro party at Christy Chester’s home Oct. 4. The Fall
Firesides are Oct. 11-13, and our Oct. 13 club meeting will be held in Municipal Auditorium to celebrate its 75th Anniversary and our Business Executive of the Year ceremony.
Gail of Gail’s Harley Davidson
Karl Roscoe introduced Gail ―The Biker Lady,‖ owner of Gail’s Harley Davidson. Gail is packed full of
energy and spoke as though her electricity was shooting out through the audience. Her high-energy straight talk presentation made it clear why her personal philosophy of ―positivity‖ comes together in a
perfect storm of success. We had to love this refreshing presentation. Thanks Gail.
Buzzsaw Office Hours Monday—Thursday: 9 a.m.—5 p.m. Friday—Sunday: Closed
For comments, questions or suggestions, please contact Stephen G. Nichols, interim managing editor of
the Buzzsaw, [email protected] or call 913.486.4177.
Publications“I have confidence in Steve Nichols”
– Myron Sildon, Managing Director of Sildon Law Group
11/6/2014 4 Ways to Avoid Holiday Debt | How Life Works
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Last Updated: 11/04/2014 14:50 PSTTweet 2
4 Ways to Avoid Holiday Debt
It’s that time of year again — time to trim the tree, bake gingerbread cookies, and whistle Christmas carols in the shower.
For many, the holidays mark a challenge to stretch every last penny to buy presents, food, and decorations to create happy memories. There’s always that must-have toy that’s impossibleto find on Black Friday, leaving you watching eBay like a hawk to outbid other parents.
The National Research Federation anticipates that holiday spending will reach $616.9 billion this year, and you can bet it won’t all be part of a well-thought-out budget. Overspending duringthe holidays can have serious financial consequences, but there are ways to keep your shopping in check without feeling like Ebenezer Scrooge.
1. Create a budget and stick to it.
Disciplined planning is the best way to avoid spending more than you can afford. A detailed budget will help you determine what’s important. That roast goose with plum pudding mightimpress your in-laws, but a regular turkey and mashed potatoes work just fine.
By avoiding the “bigger is better” mentality, your Christmas spending won’t leave you broke in the New Year.
2. Ask your family to pitch in.
I have a large extended family, with lots of nieces and nephews. When my wife and I invited everyone to celebrate the holidays at our new home, we went $1,000 over budget buying foodto feed 40 people, plus a gift for every child. It put us in a tight spot for several months.
While we loved making our family happy, we asked everyone to pitch in the next year. Little things go a long way toward keeping you under budget — even a 12-pack of soda or a carton ofeggnog.
You can also host a potluck if you can stand the possibility of having more than one fruitcake left over.
3. Pay with cash, not credit cards.
Credit card debt sticks with you long after the yuletide cheer has faded. You can minimize this by planning as early as January for holiday expenses at the end of the year.
Create a “holiday jar” to collect spare change in anticipation of your holiday shopping, or set aside a bit of your every paycheck to prepare.
4. Use every deal and discount you can find.
The Internet makes it easy to find free shipping and special deals. Use sites like RetailMeNot, Coupons.com, and Groupon, or peruse the Sunday paper for sales to help your dollars gofurther. Keep an eye out for “buy one, get one free” promotions and gift cards in exchange for in-store purchases.
See whether your favorite stores have apps that offer exclusive deals for buying online. Like Marv, the hapless burglar, says in “Home Alone 2,” “Every little bit helps.”
Having a happy and memorable holiday shouldn’t leave you penniless. As long as you stick to your budget, ask everyone to pitch in, save during the year, and take advantage of deals,you’ll come out with good memories — not debt.
As the founder of DebtConsolidation.com, Daniel Wesley strives to educate and help consumers with all their financial needs.
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11/24/2014 4 Tips for Handling Customer Complaints Without Compromising Your Values | Inc.com
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PEOPLE
4 Tips for Handling Customer ComplaintsWithout Compromising Your Values
Customer backlash is unavoidable as a B2C brand, but it's crucial to be proactive in
monitoring conversations and aggressively engaging unhappy customers to
acknowledge their problems.
BY YURIY BOYKIV @BOJKIW
IMAGE: Getty Images
Warren Buffett once said, "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes toruin it."
This is especially true for consumer-facing brands in an age when customers rely onreviews and social media to determine which products to buy. When you're buildingyour brand, your reputation is everything. You could have an awesome product, but ifyou upset your customers and ignore them when they complain, you can expect big
11/24/2014 4 Tips for Handling Customer Complaints Without Compromising Your Values | Inc.com
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trouble.
A poor customer service experience, raising the price of your product, or releasing aproduct that doesn't fulfill customers' expectations are all common causes forcomplaint. Of course, not every customer complaint will be justified--and not everysituation will call for an apology--but it's important to acknowledge that customersare unhappy and formulate a plan of attack to protect your brand.
1. Don't overpromise. Companies spend a lot of time building anticipation aroundthe launch of their products. But if you overhype your product, only to have itunderperform when it gets to your customers, they won't be happy. Make sure yourmarketing reflects the benefits your products can realistically provide withoutoverpromising.
2. Listen and respond to customer complaints. Customers tend to sharenegative experiences much more than positive ones. This can kill your chances ofsuccess in the age of social media. If you don't already have someone monitoring yourreputation online, hire someone to do that today.
When someone does make a complaint, you should respond with the aim of solvingthe problem and making the customer happy the way UPS does when fielding angrycustomer tweets. If you do it right, you could earn a testimonial from the customerabout the positive experience she had with your brand.
3. Have a plan for when misunderstandings happen. No matter how well-meaning your advertising is, sometimes your communications won't resonate withpeople. Recently, Kellogg received some criticism for joining the ranks of brandsproducing pro-LGBT advertising with its sponsorship of Atlanta's Gay Pride March.Despite complaints from certain consumer groups, Kellogg has stuck by its values.
When producing your brand's messaging, you need to be prepared for all the waysyour messages could be interpreted and then come up with ways to proactivelymanage backlash when it occurs. You can take the same approach to customerservice: Think strategically about all the negative situations a customer could possiblyexperience, and then develop solutions to turn those situations into positiveinteractions.
4. Don't worry about pleasing the jerks. Finally, it's important to remember thatnot all customers are suited for your product or brand. They may not align with yourcore values or beliefs, and having them as customers could actually be bad for yourbrand. There are others who just like to complain for the sake of it.
11/24/2014 4 Tips for Handling Customer Complaints Without Compromising Your Values | Inc.com
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Don't worry too much about what these people think. In many cases, it's better to letthem go. When Coca-Cola released its "America the Beautiful" campaign, some peoplewent so far as to say they would never buy a Coke again. In that case, saying goodbyeto those customers was a good thing.
Customer backlash is unavoidable as a B2C brand, but it's crucial to be proactive inmonitoring conversations and aggressively engaging unhappy customers toacknowledge their problems. Just remember that you can't please everybody, so focuson appeasing the people who matter the most. If you can get ahead of negativefeedback, you'll be one step closer to building a successful company with a stellarreputation.
LAST UPDATED: NOV 24, 2014
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20 AWESOME PRODUCTIVITY TRICKS ANYONE CAN USE
Even though we all want to be more productive, it’s hard to make major changes. Smallchanges are easy– and can be incredibly powerful. That’s why the following 20 tips are simpleenough you can immediately incorporate them into your daily routine. Some tips will help youbetter use your time. Others will help you harness your energy. Others will help you stay morefocused. No matter what, they all work. So try a few – or try them all!--Jeff Haden
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– Marc Horner, Past President of theRotary Club of Kansas City, Missouri
Website
“Steve, you rock. Heart and soul of the team, man.”
– Brian Schwartz, Manager of Commissioning at Burns & McDonnell
White Papers
“You’ve carried a tremendous burden and gotten across the finish line each time. Thank you.”
– Brian Lindstrom, Principal and Director at Burns & McDonnell
The Commissioning Process: A Step-by-Step Guide
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Authors:
Brian Lindstrom, PE, DCEP National Director of Commissioning Burns & McDonnell 210 S. Clark St., Suite 2235 Chicago, IL 64114 312-608-9826 [email protected]
Brian Schwartz, CxA, CCP, LEED AP BD+C Manager of Commissioning Burns & McDonnell 8201 Norman Center Drive, Suite 300 Bloomington, MN 55437 952-656-6003 [email protected]
A solid understanding of the commissioning (Cx) process — what it is and how it works — can provide a range of benefits for building owners and facility managers. Commissioning is a process designed to optimize the built environment for energy efficiency, leading to reduced energy costs and enhanced building performance. It is also a way to verify that a new building’s processes operate according to the owner’s project requirements (OPR).
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) defines Cx as “a quality-oriented process for achieving, verifying and documenting that the performance of facilities, systems and assemblies meets defined objectives and criteria.” Cx is the integration of the planning, delivery, verification and risk management of a building’s functions. It is not another layer or step in the design-build process; rather, it is a means to produce buildings that do everything they are supposed to do throughout the building’s life cycle.
What Commissioning Does
One easy way to illustrate the effects of commissioning is to compare a building to a human body. Both have an outer layer of skin that protects the inner functions from the elements. Both have an electrical system, a heating and cooling system, a frame to support their weight, and even a plumbing system — as well as a distinctive personality expressed by their appearance.
Now, imagine a person’s body could be commissioned to function at optimal levels. It would have no health problems. It would never get sick. It would have perfect vision and perfect hearing, and it would perform any physical task with athleticism. Cx plays the combined roles of personal trainer and doctor for your building, producing an alpha structure that far outperforms its non-commissioned counterparts.
According to the National Institute of Building Sciences’ “Whole Building Design Guide,” one of the main benefits of implementing Cx is cost savings. Cx produces a monetary and emotional return on investment with reduced energy costs and peace of mind in the form of reduced change orders, reduced contractor claims, reduced contractor callbacks, avoided project delays, improved project scheduling, improved documentation development and improved communications to keep the project team focused on properly turning over a facility.
Other benefits include a more comfortable environment for building occupants, improved air quality, increased reliability and uptime, reduced maintenance and longer life cycles for building equipment. Cx can be implemented with many systems across a range of projects and at any stage of a facility’s life cycle.
The Commissioning Process: A Step-by-Step Guide
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Types of Commissioning
There are four primary types of Cx:
New construction commissioning — This begins when the building is just an idea, a drawing or a schematic and is typically just called “commissioning.” It is a systematic process of verifying and documenting that a facility and all of its systems and assemblies are planned, designed, installed, tested, operated and maintained to meet the owner’s project requirements (OPR). Ideally, the commissioning process begins in predesign, continues into the warranty period for a minimum of one year after construction, and involves the proper preparation of operations personnel.
Re-commissioning — Also known as ongoing Cx, the Cx process is repeated after a project has been commissioned previously. This may be preferred option as system performance drifts and/or technologies change and advance over time, making it possible to restore the efficiency of a previously commissioned building and potentially enhance optimization further.
Retro-commissioning — When the Cx process begins after a building has already been built but has not been put through the commissioning process, a building’s systems are tested and tuned to perform optimally for the current facility requirements. Low-cost and no-cost improvements such as energy conservation measures or reliability enhancements are also recommended, implemented and then commissioned to ensure proper performance.
Monitoring-based commissioning — Known as MBCX, this process involves innovative commissioning techniques combined with new technology to integrate energy management, utility and building automation data with analytical and diagnostic algorithms that identify actual energy savings and performance enhancement opportunities in real time and ongoing. MBCx seeks to resolve performance issues as they surface and continually refine facilities so that greater than design performance (i.e. technical potential) is achieved over time.
Commissioning first gained prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Walt Disney Co. included commissioning in the design, construction and startup of Epcot Center in 1981. In 1984, the University of Wisconsin-Madison began to offer classes in commissioning, and in 1989, the University of Michigan established a commissioning group as part of its institution. And in 1994, Executive Order 12902 established that a commissioning program is required for all federal agency buildings. Commissioning has become an integral piece of sustainable building practice, and some level of functional commissioning is required for a building to attain LEED certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The Commissioning Process: A Step-by-Step Guide
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Implementing Commissioning
The Building Commissioning Association (BCA) publishes a series of best practices to aid the successful implementation of Cx for design-build, retro-commissioning or recommissioning projects. The BCA is a nonprofit organization with the stated purpose of “creating and supporting the highest standards for the commissioning profession” and a charge to “champion industry standards, policies and building codes that meet the future as challenges arise.” The material that follows is derived from the BCA’s publication, “New Construction Building Commissioning Best Practice.”
The commissioning authority (CxA) leads the Cx process like a coach leads a sports team, so the selection of a CxA is a critical decision. When evaluating who to hire as the CxA for your project, consider:
• Previous experience as a CxA on similar projects. • Ability to serve as your advocate independent of the desires and opinions of the design
or construction team; the CxA should understand the owner’s goals. • Communication and interpersonal skills — a CxA should be able to point out
inconsistencies and make suggestions for improvement with diplomacy and without confrontation. A CxA should be able to communicate effectively to work cohesively with the project team to help build trust and create an environment where creative ideas and problem solving are welcomed and encouraged.
• Field experience in construction, O&M, testing and troubleshooting building systems. • Credentials, background and education, company focus, client testimonials, and local
presence for accessibility.
Cx is most effective when it begins in the predesign phase. A building owner or the owner’s representative should assemble the commissioning team and begin to define the OPR. The commissioning team includes the owner or an owner’s representative, a commissioning authority (CxA), the design team, operations and maintenance (O&M) personnel, the construction team, and, preferably, someone to speak for the occupants who will use the building once it’s complete.
The OPR communicates the owner’s expectations, goals and success criteria with measurable benchmarks to the rest of the team. It should be developed during the predesign phase with the input and guidance of the CxA, who will help the owner objectively incorporate input from the design team, construction team, O&M personnel and the building’s occupants. The CxA also defines the scope of Cx for the project as part of the Cx plan and incorporates this information into the project’s overall schedule and budget.
During the design phase, the CxA verifies the design development is consistent with the OPR. The CxA’s objectives are to communicate the Cx requirements to the project team members, perform an independent review of the design documentation, verify that Cx is included in
The Commissioning Process: A Step-by-Step Guide
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construction documents, and facilitate cooperation among the project team members. The CxA creates a Cx plan to document the Cx process, roles and responsibilities, systems commissioned, and Cx schedule, and communicates the Cx plan to the contractor during a commissioning kickoff meeting.
During the construction phase, the CxA verifies that equipment and systems are properly installed and integrated per the design to meet the OPR by performing installation site observations, witnessing system startups and third-party evaluations such as testing and balancing (TAB) or InterNational Electrical Testing Association (NETA) testing, and verifying prefunctional checklists completed by the contractor.
As the building nears substantial completion, the acceptance phase of commissioning begins. The CxA works with the project team to complete functional performance testing, integrated systems testing, and training to verify successful turnover to O&M personnel, optimize building performance and evaluate project success. The CxA works with facility maintenance personnel to develop a commissioning manual for ongoing maintenance.
Finally, during the occupancy phase, the commissioning authority makes periodic trips to the project site to perform any deferred or seasonal testing. A review of the entire facility is conducted 10 months into the warranty period and a final commissioning record is developed.
This outline represents a typical approach to commissioning a new facility. An appropriately planned and executed process should be adapted suit project scale, complexity, criticality and unique client needs regarding level of assurance required. Variants of the process exist for specialty industries such as mission critical, health care, pharmaceutical and others; they should be considered when scoping commissioning and selecting a CxA.
Systems Commissioned
The types of systems that can be commissioned include but are not limited to:
• Mechanical o HVAC o Chilled water o Hot water o Steam o Piping o Plumbing
The Commissioning Process: A Step-by-Step Guide
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• Electrical o Generators o Switchgear/transformers o UPS systems o Grounding/bonding o Lighting and lighting control o Photovoltaic o Electrical metering
• Fire & Life Safety o Fire suppression o Fire alarm
• Integrated Systems o Building automation o Direct digital controls (DDC) o SCADA
• Specialty Systems o Security o Voice/data o Automated manufacturing o Airport baggage handling o Nurse call o Wastewater treatment o Fuel cells o Renewable energy o Vertical and horizontal transport o Combined heat and power (CHP)
• Building Envelope o Wall assemblies o Fenestrations (windows and doors) o Roof construction o Waterproofing
Conclusion
In the end, the building owner, facility manager and design team can be confident that the systems installed and spaces created will function according to their original design intent. Over the life of the building, its performance will be optimized to save energy and reduce costs. Other benefits, defined by the “Whole Building Design Guide,” can include a safe and healthful facility, well-trained O&M personnel, and better building systems documentation. Owners may also
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achieve savings of $4 in the first five years of building occupancy for every $1 spent on commissioning, according to the guide. The cost of not commissioning may well be even higher.
To circle back to the analogy comparing the commissioning process to the human body, the commissioning process is like an apple a day and a personal trainer. It helps keep the building in tip-top shape, so that it performs at its optimum level.
Additional Resources
• The Building Commissioning Association (BCxA), www.bcxa.org • Associated Air Balance Council (AABC) Commissioning Group, www.commissioning.org • Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), www.aeecenter.org • The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers
(ASHRAE), www.ashrae.org, and ASHRAE Guideline 0, https://www.ashrae.org/education--certification/instructor-led-courses/commissioning-process--guideline-0
• The National Institute of Building Sciences “Whole Building Design Guide,” • www.wbdg.org • The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), www.usgbc.org • The National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO), www.naesco.org • The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), www.energy.gov
About the Authors
Brian Lindstrom, PE, DCEP, is the commissioning practice leader at Burns & McDonnell. He has commissioned more than 14 million square feet of complex and critical facilities valued at more than $6 billion and been responsible for retro-commissioning more than 10 million square feet of existing space worldwide. He is a registered professional engineer, certified data center energy practitioner and earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Kansas State University.
Brian Schwartz, CxA, CCP, LEED AP BD+C, is a manager of commissioning and has developed automation solutions and performed the necessary commissioning and training activities to demonstrate the systems’ performance. His experience has given him exceptional strengths working in a team environment and providing effective project documentation. He earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Retro-Commissioning:
Why, When and How?
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Authors:
Brian Lindstrom, PE, DCEP National Director of Commissioning Burns & McDonnell 210 S. Clark St., Suite 2235 Chicago, IL 64114 312-608-9826 [email protected]
David Meyers, AIA, CxA, PMP, LEED AP Manager of Commissioning Burns & McDonnell 425 S. Woods Mill Rd., Suite 300 Chesterfield, MO 63017 314-682-1500 [email protected]
If you are the owner or a facility manager of a building that was not originally commissioned,
efficiency issues with your facility will cost you a significant amount every year in lost energy and
sub-optimal building performance. That waste is permanent — and unnecessary. Fortunately,
the retro-commissioning (RCx) process provides a path to resolve these issues and produce a
return that pays for itself.
Do you remember the television show, “The Six Million Dollar Man”? It was about a pilot who
barely survives a devastating plane crash. His mangled body is rebuilt using cutting-edge
technology. He emerges “better, stronger and faster” than he was before. The series follows him
on death-defying adventures using the abilities granted by his new bionic implants. RCx
enhances your existing building in the same way: making its systems more efficient and reliable.
It is part of a continuum of processes that optimize a building’s systems throughout its life cycle,
from the design phase onward. These processes include:
New construction commissioning — This begins when the building is just an idea, a
drawing or a schematic and is typically just called commissioning (Cx). It is a systematic
process of verifying and documenting that a facility and all of its systems and
assemblies are planned, designed, installed, tested, operated and maintained to meet
the owner’s project requirements (OPR). Ideally, the commissioning process begins in
pre-design, continues into the warranty period for a minimum of one year after
construction, and ensures operations personnel are properly prepared.
Recommissioning — Also known as ongoing Cx. The Cx process is repeated after a
project has been commissioned previously. This may be a preferable option as system
performance drifts and/or technologies change and advance over time, making it
possible to restore the efficiency of a previously commissioned building and potentially
enhance optimization further.
Retro-commissioning — When the Cx process begins after a building has been built but
has not been commissioned, a building’s processes and systems are tested and tuned to
perform optimally for the current facility requirements. Low-cost and no-cost
improvements such as energy conservation measures or reliability enhancements are
also recommended, implemented and then commissioned to ensure proper
performance.
Monitoring-based commissioning — Innovative commissioning techniques combined
with new technology integrate energy management, utility and building automation
data with analytical and diagnostic algorithms that identify actual energy savings and
performance enhancement opportunities in real time and in an ongoing basis. MBCx
seeks to resolve performance issues as they surface and continually refine facilities so
that greater than design performance — technical potential — is achieved over time.
Retro-Commissioning:
Why, When and How?
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Commissioning first gained prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Walt Disney Co.
included commissioning in the design, construction and startup of Epcot Center in 1981. In 1984,
the University of Wisconsin-Madison began to offer classes in commissioning, and in 1989, the
University of Michigan established a commissioning group as part of its institution. And in 1994,
Executive Order 12902 established that a commissioning program is required for all federal
agency buildings. Commissioning has become an integral piece of sustainable building practice,
and some level of functional commissioning is required for a building to attain Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
Why Retro-Commission?
RCx generates a monetary and emotional return on investment through the energy savings,
increased reliability and decreased liability that accompanies the optimization of an existing
building’s processes, assemblies and equipment. Once the energy savings begin to be realized,
there is a payback period that represents the amount of time before retro-commissioning pays
for itself and begins to produce a return.
A study published by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2004 called "The Cost-
Effectiveness of Commercial Building Commissioning: A Meta-Analysis of Existing Buildings and
New Construction in the United States" found that the payback period for a retro-commissioning
project is normally no greater than two years and is sometimes less than a year. The value of
retro-commissioning in terms of energy savings is typically between 11 cents and 72 cents per
square foot. The value in terms of non-energy savings is typically 10 cents to 45 cents per square
foot. Non-energy savings opportunities include the extended life of building equipment,
improved occupant productivity, improved safety and reduced liability, first-cost reductions, and
fewer change orders and warranty claims. If your facility has 100,000 square feet, retro-
commissioning creates an opportunity to produce up to of $117,000 in combined energy and
non-energy savings.
When Retro-Commissioning Pays Off
The study aggregated the results of RCx for 100 buildings and found that the resulting electricity
savings ranged from 5 percent to 15 percent; gas savings ranged from 1 percent to 23 percent.
The dollar amount of savings had a median of $45,000 and went as high as $1.8 million. The
payback period for these results ranged from 0.2 to 2.1 years. Larger buildings tend to have
shorter payback periods, especially buildings with more than 100,000 square feet. Payback
periods are also shorter for facilities with typically high energy costs, such as laboratories and
data centers.
Retro-Commissioning:
Why, When and How?
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For the owner or operator of an income-producing property such as an office building or an
apartment complex, RCx creates the opportunity to augment the value of assets by increasing
net operating income. This is because buildings that have been retro-commissioned can be more
comfortable than those that have not. The increased comfort of a building may help retain
occupants and attract new ones — and allow higher rental rates so that the payback period is
decreased correspondingly to the increased revenue.
Regardless of whether a property produces income or not, retro-commissioning will produce a
benefit for the bottom line by increasing energy efficiency and enhancing building performance.
Systems that can be retro-commissioned include, but are not limited to:
Mechanical
o HVAC
o Chilled water
o Hot water
o Steam
o Piping
o Plumbing
Electrical
o Generators
o Switchgear/transformers
o UPS systems
o Grounding/bonding
o Lighting and lighting control
o Photovoltaic
o Electrical metering
Fire and life safety
o Fire suppression
o Fire alarm
Integrated systems
o Building automation
o Direct digital controls (DDC)
o SCADA
Specialty systems
o Security
o Voice/data
o Automated manufacturing
o Airport baggage handling
o Nurse Call
o Wastewater treatment
o Fuel cells
Retro-Commissioning:
Why, When and How?
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o Renewable energy
o Vertical and horizontal transport
o Combined heat and power (CHP)
Building envelope
o Wall assemblies
o Fenestrations (windows and doors)
o Roof construction
o Waterproofing
The costs of retro-commissioning are unique to each situation, but variables include:
Rates of the retro-commissioning service provider
Complexity of the project
Sophistication and number of systems to be retro-commissioned
Facility square footage
Age and condition of existing equipment
Knowledge of on-site staff
Extent of current operations and maintenance (O&M) program
Implementing Retro-Commissioning
There are four basic phases of the retro-commissioning process, according to Portland Energy
Conservation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainability:
Planning — The building to be retro-commissioned is selected and goals are defined.
The commissioning authority (CxA) is chosen and assembles a team to develop a retro-
commissioning plan that includes projected costs and savings. The scope of work is
negotiated between the commissioning authority and the owner and provides an
outline of the procedures to be carried out, a schedule of activities, the defined roles of
each team member, and forms to document the team’s activities.
Investigation — Once the project plan is in place, the CxA surveys the facility occupants,
O&M staff and building’s systems to identify their purposes and how they are operated
and maintained. The service CxA performs functional testing, looks for efficiency issues
and then determines the most cost-effective potential improvements. An ideally
performed investigation effort includes a high degree of O&M staff involvement so that
small repairs and tune-ups can be made to provide an immediate return on investment
through energy and performance enhancements as well O&M staff systems training. At
the end of the investigation phase, the CxA reports the findings to the owner, who then
chooses which changes to implement.
Retro-Commissioning:
Why, When and How?
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Implementation — Once the owner selects the opportunities to pursue, the retro-
commissioning team implements those changes. The team verifies that the measures
are performing as expected. This verification serves as a benchmark to track the
systems’ performance after retro-commissioning is complete and when ongoing
commissioning is enacted.
Hand-Off and Implementation of Persistence Strategies — At the end of the process,
the CxA commissions the implemented changes and produces a final report to
document final conditions meet the new facility requirements. The building’s O&M staff
is trained in sustaining the efficiency of the building’s processes. A closeout meeting is
held with the owner. At the end of the retro-commissioning process, persistence
strategies such as ongoing commissioning and monitoring based commissioning should
be discussed to maintain the benefits of retro-commissioning throughout the building’s
life cycle.
Conclusion
Retro-commissioning processes yield a facility capable of performing more efficiently at lower
costs than it had previously, in the same way that the Six Million Dollar Man emerged from the
laboratories able to do things better, stronger and faster than ever before. Putting a building
through the retro-commissioning paces increases reliability and makes it a more desirable asset.
The potential savings for building owners and operators can be substantial and pay for processes
in less than two years, in most cases. As the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study
indicated, the larger the building, the faster the payoff. RCx is also often most beneficial for
facilities saddled with high energy costs — and the best potential for improvement.
Retro-Commissioning:
Why, When and How?
Eng ineer ing , Ar ch i t ec ture , C ons truct i on , En vir on men ta l and C onsu l t ing S olut i ons
© 201 4 B ur n s & Mc Don n el l
art ic l e s@ b ur ns mcd .com
WHITE PAPER
www.burnsmcd.com
Additional Resources
The Building Commissioning Association (BCxA), www.bcxa.org
Associated Air Balance Council (AABC) Commissioning Group, www.commissioning.org
Association of Energy Engineers (AEE), www.aeecenter.org
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers
(ASHRAE), www.ashrae.org, and ASHRAE Guideline 0,
https://www.ashrae.org/education--certification/instructor-led-
courses/commissioning-process--guideline-0
The National Institute of Building Sciences “Whole Building Design Guide,”
www.wbdg.org
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), www.usgbc.org
The National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO), www.naesco.org
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), www.energy.gov
Biographies
Brian Lindstrom, PE, DCEP, is the commissioning practice leader at Burns & McDonnell. He has
commissioned more than 19 million square feet of complex and critical facilities valued at more
than $8 billion and been responsible for retro-commissioning more than 10 million square feet
of existing space worldwide. He is a registered professional engineer, certified data center
energy practitioner and earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Kansas
State University.
David Meyers, AIA, CxA, PMP, LEED AP, is a certified commissioning authority who has overseen
commissioning of construction worth more than $4.4 billion and has been responsible for the
retro-commissioning of more than 8 million square feet of existing building space. He earned his
Bachelor of Science in business from Miami University and his Master of Architecture from
Washington University. He is involved with the American Institute of Architects, a member of the
Architectural Review Board in Kirkwood, Mo., and a member of the Project Management
Institute.
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