Greentarget

Greentarget

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Greentarget developed a targeted media relations strategy to secure meetings with top business and financial reporters, strengthening the client’s visibility and long-term media relationships

Challenge

A partner and leader of a global law firm’s Government Relations and Public Affairs practice was scheduled to attend the 2026 Milken Institute Global Conference, one of the world’s leading gatherings of business, finance and policy leaders. As a former senior House leadership staffer and experienced congressional lobbyist, he was well positioned to provide insights on the rapidly evolving policy landscape in Washington in the runup to the 2026 midterm elections. But with several high-profile sources competing for reporters’ attention at the conference, the law firm needed a targeted strategy to stand out. 

Approach

Greentarget developed a proactive media engagement strategy in the weeks before the conference, identifying priority reporters who were expected to attend and positioning the partner as an authoritative source on the intersection of politics, public policy and business. To maximize the impact of each meeting, Greentarget prepared tailored briefing materials, including reporter biographies, recent coverage, interview tips and key discussion topics. The team also worked closely with the partner to refine timely messaging that aligned with reporters’ interests.

Results

Greentarget secured six meetings with reporters from leading national outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico and Bloomberg News, along with a live interview on Bloomberg TV. The interview was featured on Bloomberg’s website and aired during the Bloomberg politics show Balance of Power, extending the law firm’s visibility to a national audience, including a client who reached out to schedule lunch after seeing the interview.

The effort resulted in the partner’s highest number of reporter meetings in 12 years of attending the conference, strengthened relationships with influential journalists and created opportunities for future commentary. The partner noted that the connections Greentarget helped build are going to be “very beneficial to the firm, not just me and the GRPA team.” When the same partner visited New York two months later, Greentarget set up in-person follow-up interviews with many of the reporters he had connected with at Milken, further cementing these relationships.

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Most firms know their marketing and business development functions are under pressure. Fewer know exactly where the pressure is coming from, or how their peers are handling it.

In late 2025, Greentarget spoke with chief marketing and business development officers from the legal, consulting, and accounting industries to find out. The conversations surfaced four recurring pain points that cut across sectors: talent development, sustainable growth amid economic uncertainty, keeping pace with AI, and the persistent struggle to measure marketing’s real impact.

The resulting report goes deeper than survey averages. You’ll see how priorities differ by industry, what leaders are actually worried about versus what they say publicly, and which AI tools are in active use (and for what).

You’ll also find:

  • What the pressure from leadership, clients, and investors looks like right now
  • How firms are thinking about AI in both operations and client-facing work
  • What marketing and BD leaders say they’re prioritizing in 2026

If you lead marketing or business development at a professional services firm, this report offers a clear view into what your counterparts are working through and where they’re focused next.

Fill out the form to access the full key findings.

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When Lathrop GPM discovered that none of its competitors were actively marketing to closely held businesses, they enlisted Greentarget to help mine this untapped client segment

Challenge

In 2024, the Business Development team at national law firm Lathrop GPM discovered that nearly one-third of the firm’s top 250 clients were closely held businesses (CHBs)—and none of its competitors seemed to have a focused marketing strategy directed at this audience.

Unfortunately, neither did Lathrop GPM. Despite key practices areas serving this clientele—including Business Transactions, Litigation and Private Client Services—the firm lacked targeted thought leadership materials to support outreach. Word-of-mouth and general marketing efforts, then, remained the primary channel through which CHB owners discovered Lathrop GPM.

To increase both internal and external visibility of the firm’s strong track record with CHBs, the firm turned to Greentarget for help.

Approach

Lathrop GPM kicked off the initiative by revamping the firm’s CHB-focused webpage and creating a “Closely Held Business Institute” logo to unify branding across thought leadership, products and outreach. They also developed a tailored email list representing 80% of the firm’s largest CHB clients, prospects and referral sources.

From there, the firm partnered with Greentarget’s Content & Editorial team to launch the CHB Institute newsletter in August 2024, with three subsequent editions released in 2025. Each newsletter features a thought leadership article by Lathrop GPM attorneys, a “success spotlight” showcasing a firm win on behalf of CHBs, a curated list of relevant news stories from the firm’s client alerts and published thought leadership and upcoming events/milestones. Core messaging emphasized the firm’s ongoing work with CHBs across multiple practice areas, reinforcing its capability and commitment to this client segment.

Greentarget helped create the newsletter’s template/structure, content and design, which uses clear visual breaks to distinguish content types and improve readability; high-res attorney headshots; and modern iconography to add visual interest and a contemporary feel.

Once each newsletter was sent, a link was shared via the firm’s LinkedIn account and it was made available for individual attorneys to share with their contacts, with paid spend placed behind the most recent issue.

Results

Initial results from the first three newsletters demonstrate an impressive return on investment:

– The average open rate across all three newsletters was over 50%, far surpassing the industry average of 32%. Similarly, the average click-through rate was ~7%, more than twice the industry average.

– The initial distribution list nearly doubled from 471 to 909, indicating a steep rise in interest.

– Paid LinkedIn engagement for the July 2025 issue led to 25,863 impressions, 744 clicks and the re-engagement of two highly qualified referral sources.

– The CHB newsletter campaign was recognized with a Gold 2025 PRISM award from the Greater Kansas City chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, which celebrates outstanding PR campaigns and professionals in the KC area.

The firm plans to continue releasing and improving the newsletter in 2026, further cementing Lathrop GPM’s reputation as a leading provider of legal services to closely held businesses.

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Inside the pressures facing marketing and business development leadership—and how professional services firms are adapting

The CMO and CBDO roles at professional services firms are being fundamentally rewritten. Growth expectations are rising, technology is accelerating, and accountability has never been more critical—yet many leaders are navigating these pressures without a clear playbook.

In late 2025, Greentarget launched a research initiative to understand how senior marketing and business development leaders across the legal, accounting, consulting and professional services organizations are responding to this moment and how they are preparing for what comes next. We termed this the Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer Outlook.

Drawing on in-depth conversations with C-suite executives, CMOs, CBDOs, and industry consultants, our research examines the concerns and priorities shaping their agendas, as well as the strategies peers are using to address them. Among the most pressing issues:

  • Growth and competitive differentiation 
  • Talent and resource constraints 
  • AI and technology adoption  
  • Cross-functional collaboration 
  • Accountability and measurement 

Our goal was to surface practical guidance that reflects how senior marketing and business development roles are evolving inside complex, high-stakes organizations.

What follows is the first in a series of short insights drawn from this work and from internal working sessions with Greentarget senior leadership. Each piece focuses on a single pain point or opportunity emerging from the research, and the guidance we suggest for firms moving forward.

Measurement Is Valued, But Rarely Trusted

If one theme consistently surfaced across our Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer Outlook conversations, it was frustration with measurement.

That’s not because leaders doubt its importance. Quite the opposite—measurement is widely viewed as essential as marketing and business development leaders face growing pressure to demonstrate impact, justify investment, and connect their efforts to firm growth.

The challenge is that in professional services, measurement rarely behaves the way leaders want it to.

Influence builds over time. Yet firm leaders, boards, and finance and operational teams increasingly expect clear proof of ROI and business impact quickly.

A core tension emerged in our discussions: measurement isn’t failing because firms lack data. It’s failing because of the widening gap between what leaders are asked to prove and what measurement can realistically show.

The Competitive Set Is Often the First Thing That Breaks

One of the clearest pressure points is how firms define who they are measuring against.

Competitive sets are frequently too broad to be meaningful. Teams attempt to measure against “everyone”—which makes comparison and insight nearly impossible. Even when competitors are defined, there is often little clarity around what firms are trying to measure—visibility, authority, relevance, or business influence.

Effective measurement starts with disciplined choices:

  • Narrowing the competitive field to a small, relevant peer set 
  • Aligning competitors by practice, industry, or buyer type 
  • Acknowledging the difference between aspirational and actual competitors 

Without this clarity, measurement struggles to answer even the most basic strategic questions.

Qualitative Impact Still Carries Disproportionate Weight

Another recurring theme was the imbalance between quantitative and qualitative insight. Many of the most meaningful outcomes such as partner conversations, inbound interest, or credibility in a pitch never show up cleanly in dashboards or reports.

These signals often live with partners and business development teams, yet firms often lack structured ways to capture or value them. Elevating qualitative insight from anecdote to intentional input remains one of the biggest opportunities to improve how firms approach measurement.

Data Exists, But Insight Doesn’t Travel

Silos further compound the problem. Another recurring theme was the disconnect between the different teams responsible for generating, interpreting, and acting on data.

Marketing, business development, and digital teams often measure different things, in different ways, and for different reasons. What insights exist are rarely shared or translated into collective decision-making.

Measurement breaks down not because firms lack sophistication, but because data is siloed, teams don’t share a common definition of success, and insight isn’t consistently used to inform strategy.

In this environment, measurement becomes a reporting exercise rather than a strategic tool.

Vanity Metrics Persist Because They’re Easy

Volume continues to dominate many measurement conversations. Our research indicates that’s because metrics like impressions or follower totals are familiar and easy to count—not because they meaningfully informs decision-making.

Several leaders emphasized that metrics only become meaningful when placed in context against a baseline, a peer set, or a clearly defined business objective. Without that framing, activity can look impressive without actually informing decisions.

What this suggests is not a need for more measurement, but for better framing. Clearer choices about what matters. Greater alignment across teams. And a willingness to let go of metrics that don’t serve a strategic purpose.

What This Signals for Firms Moving Forward

Measurement in professional services will never be perfect. But when approached intentionally, it can still be one of the most powerful tools firms have to guide strategy, align teams, and support growth.

The firms making progress aren’t chasing more data. They are making clearer choices about what matters, aligning teams around shared priorities, and using measurement to inform strategy rather than justify activity.

As the CMO and CMBDO roles continue to evolve, measurement will remain a point of tension—but also a powerful lever for firms willing to rethink how and why they use it.

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Greentarget and BRG Win Gold MarCom Award for ThinkSet Magazine 
 

CHICAGO, IL (October 20, 2025) – Greentarget today announced that the firm, in partnership with its client BRG, was awarded a gold medal at the 2025 MarCom Awards in the “Publications | Magazine | Corporate” category. The firms were jointly recognized for their work on BRG’s ThinkSet magazine, particularly its Spring 2025 “Antitrust Across the Atlantic” issue.  

ThinkSet aims to provide nuanced, multifaceted thinking and expert guidance to help organizations adopt a more strategic, long-term mindset. Each quarter, BRG releases an issue featuring Q&As, infographics, op-ed style pieces and more, devoted to analyzing an emerging theme from different angles in the business landscape. The “Antitrust Across the Atlantic” issue considered whether a new era of antitrust and competition policy is on the horizon, with nine articles from 12 BRG experts around the world and a podcast with David Teece, BRG’s cofounder and chairman emeritus. 

“In professional services, thought leadership can seem endless—and separating your best content from that of competitors requires a strategic plan to highlight insights with the greatest relevance, utility, urgency and novelty,” said Joe Eichner, Vice President of Greentarget’s Content & Editorial team. “That’s been our North Star with ThinkSet, and I look forward to continue working with our excellent partners at BRG to create the high-impact content ThinkSet readers have come to expect.”   

MarCom is administered by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. The MarCom Awards honors excellence in marketing and communication while recognizing the creativity, hard work and generosity of industry professionals. The award-winning issue of ThinkSet drew on BRG’s leading Antitrust & Competition practice to introduce a collection of global insights on shifting competition policies, the impact of new technologies on antitrust enforcement and burgeoning market trends across the U.S., EU, U.K., Asia-Pacific and Africa. 

“Since its inception in 2017, ThinkSet has evolved to become a go-to resource for some of BRG’s best thought leadership,” said Matthew Caselli, Editor-in-Chief of ThinkSet and Senior Content Manager at BRG. “The content in this and other issues exemplifies that in-depth thinking on complex topics does not have to be filled with dense, jargon-filled text. Our goal, in collaboration with Greentarget, is to craft clear, succinct and engaging content that doesn’t waste our business audience’s most valuable asset: time.”  

The next issue of ThinkSet—a 2026 outlook series—will be released later this fall. Explore even more of what BRG’s ThinkSet magazine has to offer here.  
 

About BRG 
BRG combines world-leading academic credentials with world-tested business expertise, purpose-built for agility and connectivity, which sets us apart—and gets our clients ahead.  

Our top-tier experts include experienced industry leaders, renowned academics and leading-edge data scientists. Together, they bring a diversity of proven real-world experience to economics, disputes and investigations; corporate finance; and performance improvement services that address the most complex challenges for organizations across the globe. 

Our unique structure nurtures the interdisciplinary relationships that give us the edge, laying the groundwork for more informed insights and more original, incisive thinking from diverse perspectives that, when paired with our global reach and resources, make us uniquely capable to address our clients’ challenges. 

Visit thinkbrg.com to learn more. 
 
About Greentarget 

Greentarget is a strategic public relations firm focused exclusively on the communications needs of highly competitive professional services organizations. We counsel those who counsel the world’s leading businesses and direct smarter conversations among their most important audiences to help deepen the relationships that impact the long-term value of their organizations. For more information, visit www.greentarget.com. 

 

 

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Audiences crave what a machine can’t have: an authentic personality 

As writing and critical thinking are increasingly outsourced to AI, the internet is becoming less and less human. A 2024 study from the Amazon Web Services AI Labs found that 57% of all web-based text is either AI generated or has been translated through an AI algorithm—a share that has likely ballooned even further in 2025.  

Yet as human voices disappear in a sea of online AI slop, the ones that remain are becoming more and more influential. That’s because even though large language models like ChatGPT were trained on incomprehensibly vast volumes of human writing, their outputs often lack the color and creativity that human beings provide. Audiences are noticing, and many don’t like what they see. 

For lawyers, consultants and professional services firms selling their perspectives as experts, this is a major opportunity to reinforce authority and engage with audiences. Maintaining the human touch with a distinct voice can build relationships that drive better conversations (and more business). Here’s how to write authentically, memorably, and uniquely in the Age of AI. 

Write How You Speak 

Each of us has an idiolect. Unlike a dialect shared by a group, your idiolect is unique to you—a verbal fingerprint. You may not realize it, but you favor some words and phrases over others and have unique grammatical styles that can help identify you. Just think of how Ernest Hemingway writes compared to Jane Austen.  

Linguists are increasingly concerned that AI could wipe out these idiolects in favor of something far duller. Language consultant and professor Tony Thorne, for example, told The Guardian that “AI is nudging us towards a neutral language that is much less rich.” When a language model is trained on what word will come next based on probabilities, it’s easy to see how the more interesting and unconventional choices are discarded, replaced by forgettable words and phrases.  

To preserve your voice, resist the temptation to outsource the entire writing process to AI. You can use AI as an ideation tool, but also consider talking out your argument first before putting it to paper. If you’re struggling to get started, try writing for just 10 minutes with no distractions; you might be surprised by what takes shape (and how authentic it sounds). And if using AI as an editor after the fact, make sure it isn’t removing too much what makes your writing yours. 

For example, Katie Parrott, a writer who focuses on AI and even trained a GPT to help edit her work, noticed that the tool repeatedly tried to tone down her language, a role she dubbed the “timid scribe.” But as she points out, sometimes the ideas that challenge, provoke, or explore new territory can’t be conveyed in mild, emotionless language. Forcing a reader to confront an idea requires the phrasing, tone, and emotion that naturally stem from your passion for the topic. 

Have a Strong POV 

Voice comes easier when you have something to say. In a world where content is generated in seconds, audiences are tuning out anything that feels generic, recycled, or uncommitted. What they crave instead is a clear point of view—a signal of confidence, experience, and originality. 

A strong POV doesn’t mean being provocative for its own sake. It means understanding the landscape, identifying what’s missing or misunderstood, and offering a perspective that is both informed and uniquely yours. Why does this issue matter now? What’s being overlooked? These are questions that invite bold, substantive answers that only real experts can provide. 

A summary of what’s in the federal budget, for example, can come from anyone. But an analysis of why new tax provisions will stimulate middle-market M&A activity in the coming year? That requires real insight and perspective that can only come from experience. It goes beyond just “what is it,” instead exploring “what does it mean” and “why does it matter” to prompt debate and discussion. 

For lawyers, consultants, and advisors to complex industries, having a strong POV also reinforces your authority. Clients want more than just credentials, instead seeking out judgment, interpretation, and clarity. They want to know where you stand and why. A watered-down or overly cautious stance doesn’t inspire trust; a thoughtful, well-argued position does. 

Ask yourself: 

  • What do I believe that others in my industry don’t talk about enough? 
  • What experience gives me a right—or even a responsibility—to speak up on this issue? 
  • If my name were removed from this article, could people still know it came from me? 

When you answer questions like these honestly, your writing becomes stronger. People remember the thinkers who take risks, who challenge assumptions, and who don’t just summarize the news, but drive the conversation. 

The Value of Voice 

In an era dominated by AI-generated noise, your distinct voice is more valuable than ever. Whether you’re looking to sharpen your point of view, refine your writing, or explore the right platforms for your message, we’re here to help.  

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