Campaign-Led Growth
Series
Modern marketing, business development and organizational performance
Many firms treat thought leadership as output to produce, not performance to manage. Campaigns — done with discipline — are where that changes. They're where marketing and business development become visible, measurable and accountable to growth.
This is a series in three parts:
Part 1: The Real Test of a Modern Marketing Function - Why thought leadership campaigns are the operational proof
Part 2: Where the Hiring Decision Gets Made - How campaigns shape buyer consideration before firms enter the room
Part 3: The Discipline Behind Campaigns That Win - What sustained campaign capability requires of a firm
The Real Test of a Modern Marketing Function
Part 1
Why thought leadership campaigns are the operational proof
The biggest obstacle facing most marketing departments isn't strategy or talent. It's the constant churn of reactive activity: a bottom-up demand environment where urgent requests overwhelm coordinated execution and connected business impact becomes difficult to sustain.
In the face of this headwind, CMOs and directors are being challenged to modernize their functions and drive measurable performance in brand-building and new business through meaningful ROI, agile teams, cross-practice collaboration and digital reach.
Thought leadership campaigns are a uniquely effective response. They redirect daily energy into coordinated work that matters more to clients, turning dispersed effort into market momentum and producing the kind of measurable impact day-to-day output cannot. Most importantly, campaigns reshape how marketing, BD and partners think about what effective marketing actually is, making them the clearest signal a firm has built a modern marketing and BD function.
The demand is already there
The pressure to modernize isn't theoretical. Clients are already telling firms what they want from them. Thomson Reuters Market Insights finds 90% of general counsel are more likely to consider a firm because of its thought leadership. Passle's General Counsel Survey reinforces the point: 64% are more likely to request a conversation with a lawyer by name after reading their work.
Fragmented functions can't meet that demand at scale. Campaigns are how modernized ones do.
Campaigns are operational proof
A well-run campaign is evidence a firm can anticipate client needs, mobilize lawyers across practices, activate digital strategies and convert ideas into business. The capability and the output are inseparable. Firms that consistently produce high-quality campaigns have built the function to support them; firms that can't, haven't.
This is what makes campaigns diagnostic. They expose how the function actually operates: whether priorities can be set and held, whether lawyers can be mobilized across silos, whether marketing and BD can drive a sustained effort rather than respond to one request at a time.
Where campaigns change the operating picture
Campaigns shift specific behaviors and capabilities that fragmented functions struggle to develop:
Investment concentrates on a defined set of issues rather than dispersing across competing requests
KPIs are formalized at the campaign level, improving the firm's ability to measure and capture data in CRM
Cross-selling activates around shared topics, giving clients an integrated view of the firm
Marketing and BD operate as editorial advisers rather than service desks
Gartner research shows CMOs rank demonstrating ROI, achieving internal alignment and making smarter resource allocation decisions among their top challenges. Each one is a function-level problem. Campaigns are the mechanism that addresses all three at once.
Leadership creates the conditions
Campaigns succeed when leadership creates the conditions for coordinated execution. That means resolving prioritization across competing internal demands, directing resources toward strategic sectors and growth practices, and giving marketing and BD the authority to maintain focus once priorities are established.
Without that leadership cover, campaigns default to the same reactive dynamics that constrain the rest of the function. With it, campaigns generate urgency, give lawyers defined opportunities to act on BD activities they too often postpone, and build the muscle for sustained market presence.
What campaigns reveal
Responsiveness. Collaboration. Discipline. Measurability.
These are the capabilities a modern function runs on. Campaigns are where they show up — or don't.
Firms that cannot execute coordinated campaigns reveal structural weaknesses in how marketing and BD operate. The gaps don't close by producing more content. They close by building the function that makes campaigns possible.
Where the Hiring Decision Gets Made
Part 2
How campaigns shape buyer consideration before firms enter the room
Business development has entered a merit-based era. Relationships still matter, but the most important decisions are increasingly made before a firm is in the room. Gartner research shows 83% of a typical B2B buying decision happens during the independent research phase — where clients look for solutions and signals of credibility before contacting a firm.
In that environment, substantive insight and relevance become the currency that wins consideration. Thought leadership now ranks second only to trusted recommendations when decision-makers research outside firms for hire (Greentarget, 2025 State of Digital & Content Marketing).
Campaigns are how firms shape that stage with authority. They connect a firm's brand to the issues clients care about and give lawyers timely, urgent reasons to engage.
But not all campaigns deliver. The difference is visible in three patterns from the Am Law 100.
The Sunk Cost
A campaign on regulatory and operational challenges in life sciences produced a handful of articles, then fizzled. Lawyers disengaged after publication and rarely promoted the work. The business conversations that did arise were never shared with BD. Without a champion past launch, the effort became a classic publish and pray campaign — a sunk cost with no measurable return.
The Blockbuster
A campaign on how aviation innovation could reshape the e-commerce marketplace brought together a global team of lawyers around more than a dozen articles. The group chair served as visible champion, rallying colleagues, shaping content and working with BD to target specific clients. Firm leadership promoted the effort broadly. The campaign generated significant PR coverage, attracted new clients and delivered millions in new business. It also produced a high-profile speaking invitation that would otherwise have required major sponsorship. More than a year after launch, it continued to draw strong digital engagement.
The Strategic Connector
A campaign on supply chain challenges expanded as lawyers across practices and geographies joined in. More than 15 lawyers contributed 20+ posts spanning ESG, finance, trade and geopolitics. Unified branding tied the effort together and built momentum with subscribers. The campaign also forged new internal lawyer relationships across regions and practices — proof that campaigns can strengthen collaboration and cross-selling at the same time they build market presence.
What separates winners from sunk costs
The pattern is consistent. Campaigns succeed when a visible lawyer champion carries momentum past the launch phase. They succeed when BD is integrated from the start and tied to business priorities. They succeed when activation reaches clients across formats — podcasts, video, events, LinkedIn, alerts — rather than relying on a single channel. According to Passle, single-format content risks missing more than 80% of the market.
The Sunk Cost lacked all three. The Blockbuster and Strategic Connector had them in different combinations.
Where ‘content franchises’ gets built
Independent research is increasingly mediated by search and AI systems. What surfaces during that research is shaped by signals of authority a firm builds over time on a defined topic.
A campaign concentrates content, language and metadata around an issue, giving search engines and AI systems the consistent signals they use to identify a firm as a source. Scattered alerts and one-off articles produce neither the volume nor the coherence required. Campaigns produce both.
The implication is competitive. A firm that establishes a content franchise — sustained topical authority around an emerging client issue — becomes the firm clients find, the firm AI summaries cite, and the firm whose perspective shapes how the issue is understood. Firms that wait cede that ground to competitors who moved first.
Campaigns as the structure for modern BD
When decisions form during independent research, campaigns give firms the mechanism to shape that stage at scale. Lawyers gain a platform to engage clients with forward-looking perspective rather than reactive commentary. Edelman research shows 73% of decision-makers trust thought leadership more than marketing materials when assessing capabilities.
Larger firms are responding by building campaign infrastructure directly into their marketing functions — campaign managers, content strategists, digital specialists — to ensure campaigns operate as part of the firm's go-to-market strategy. Campaigns are no longer marketing activity. They are the operating discipline of modern BD.
Beyond the seat at the table
Campaigns are one of the most effective ways to earn a seat at the client table, shaping decisions long before an RFP is issued. But the larger return comes when firms move first on critical issues. When a firm sets the agenda on an emerging topic, clients stop shopping around — they hire the firm that defined the conversation.
In a market that increasingly values foresight and credibility over loyalty, that is the most durable return a campaign can deliver.
The Discipline Behind Campaigns That Win
Part 3
What sustained campaign capability requires of a firm
Most firms understand that campaigns matter. What they struggle with is sustaining them: building the muscle to run them repeatedly and producing measurable outcomes the firm can act on.
The gap isn't budget. It's the discipline of how campaigns are built, run and sustained.
Win-work, not output
Campaigns that deliver are built from the start with a defined commercial aim: to win business and reinforce the firm's position on issues that matter to clients. That aim shapes every operational choice — what topics get prioritized, how lawyers are recruited to participate, how content is shaped for client conversations and how outcomes are tracked.
Most campaigns fail because they're built around output rather than win-work. Articles get published. Activity reports get circulated. But the question of whether the campaign produced business gets quietly avoided. Firms that build campaign capability hold themselves to that question from day one.
Own a topic
The strongest campaigns concentrate firm authority around a defined client issue rather than dispersing across competing demands. Content Marketing Institute research shows 43% of B2B marketers struggle to differentiate their content from competitors. The firms that don't struggle are the ones building topic ownership.
Topic ownership operates at two scales. Larger campaigns establish market leadership through coordinated content, sub-branded hubs and sustained promotion. Lighter campaigns prioritize speed to market — coordinated alerts, posts and briefs that move quickly on emerging client issues under unified positioning. Both work when the topic aligns with client demand and firm priorities, when a critical mass of lawyers can support paid work in that area, and when activation is built into the plan from the start.
Activation is the discipline most firms underestimate. It includes PR, digital distribution and targeted outreach — but more importantly, it includes setting clear expectations for how lawyers will use the campaign in client conversations, and tapping leadership to drive cross-practice visibility internally.
But topic ownership becomes durable only when organizational conditions support it.
What winning campaigns share
Across the campaigns that produce sustained results, five conditions consistently hold:
Visible champions. Lead partners who give the campaign credibility and drive momentum past launch.
Editorial discipline. Client-ready, timely and practical content with clear takeaways clients can act on.
Cross-practice collaboration. Demonstrating how the firm solves problems that span silos.
Sustained activation. Continued lawyer engagement with clients well past launch — supported by PR and digital distribution, but driven by lawyer participation as ongoing operational behavior, not a one-time promotional push.
Business alignment. Topics that map to growth priorities and practices where the firm can command premium rates.
These aren't aspirational qualities. They're the operating conditions that separate campaigns that build the firm's position from campaigns that fade after launch.
Measure across the funnel
Campaigns earn credibility when their impact is shown in terms lawyers recognize. That requires measurement across the buyer journey — from awareness and engagement at the top of the funnel through speaking invitations, client inquiries, pitch activity, cross-practice referrals and matters opened at the bottom.
The accountability runs in two directions: Marketing and BD own the data, while lawyers turn content into client conversations and report outcomes back into the system. Without both halves, measurement collapses into activity reporting.
The 18-to-24-month horizon
Building sustained campaign capability is not a tactical adjustment. It's an 18-to-24-month organizational endeavor that reshapes how the firm operates: how priorities get set across competing demands, how marketing and BD work alongside lawyers rather than behind them, how outcomes get reported, how cross-practice teams form and dissolve around defined issues, and how commercial focus is held over time rather than fragmented by reactive demand.
Each campaign is a training ground for those behaviors. Done repeatedly, they compound into institutional capability the firm can carry across topics, practices and market cycles.
The payoff is meaningful. The 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn report on B2B thought leadership impact finds 60% of decision-makers say they will pay a premium to work with organizations that consistently produce high-quality thought leadership. Sustained campaign capability is more than a marketing investment. It's a path to higher-value business — and to the kind of market position competitors find difficult to dislodge.
Adapted from a three-part series originally published on Passle's blog, with related podcast discussion. Read the originals: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3.
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