How to Modernize Marketing in a Legacy Industry with Danielle Wuschke Paige

we do a client engagement survey annually and one of the most interesting findings from the our 2024 results was that our clients wanted to hear from us three times more than we actually communicated with them directly. So, the GCs are hungry for us to help them navigate everything that's happening at the speed at which it's happening for them. >> Hi everyone and welcome to the Marketing Vanguard podcast. I'm Jenny Rooney with Adweek [music] and I'm thrilled today to be joined by Danielle Wushke Page. She is the Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Nixon Peabody. Danielle, welcome. >> Thank you so much for having me, Jenny. It's uh great to be on today. >> Well, it's great to have you on. I know you and I have caught up before and it's been a pleasure getting to know you and I'm excited to learn more about you in this conversation. You know, as you may know with the Marketing Vanguard podcast, it's a real chance for for me to get to know and expand frankly my universe of the CMO community and and get to know new people, new ways of thinking, uh new ways of thinking about the practice of marketing, new ways of thinking about the CMO role and what marketing leadership needs to look like. Um certainly as we as we think about 2026 and and all the dramatic changes that continue to happen. But, um you know, what I'm really excited about is you come from a sector that I haven't spent a lot of time in and that is legal, the legal profession. >> I feel like you know, neither did I. >> I think that's what we're going to get into and I think that for our listeners, I think they'll find your personal career journey very, very fascinating. So, um let's start there. You know, why don't you tell us a little bit about you and and what brought you to this place? >> Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Um so, I am a born and raised um Massachusetts girl anchored in this market but always everywhere else. I think for a while my parents would say like do you still have an apartment here or you know, do you still live here? But you know, a ton of time in New York and San Francisco. I really have always spent time where my clients are. I spent the early part of my career actually started my career in Texas to age myself. So coming out of undergrad, you know, I had sort of grandiose ideas of being an academic um not so sexy in the late 90s so um you know, I looked around the environment at that time and technology companies were hiring people with the you know, sort of a wide variety of skills and for me technology in the late 90s felt like this hyper exciting place to learn something new. Um it felt really like a new language, a new set of skills that I would have to learn. Um and I went in through the avenue of sales and you know, sort of preliminary my sort of first foray into marketing but I spent that my time in the late 90s really starting to understand how important customer relationships are, how building relationships based on trust and expectations can really shape your career. Um I say to some of our you know, younger folks as they're joining you know, my team now spend the time learning those fundamental skills that make great leaders, sales people, marketers the best and that is really about putting client at the center taking this sort of you know, approach or philosophy always that is less about what you sell and more about satisfying a need and understanding where people are and I think that kind of point in time in tech there was tremendous innovation. People were, you know, still really reliant on trusted relationships. So, as much as I was learning tech at the time, my clients [snorts] were, you know, in the same boat learning the same and you know, serve helped me grow up and you know, learn my first you know, sort of new language of business. Um, after that I went to a consulting firm. Um, so it was really an outsourcer. Um, and I in that um, you know, role it was a strategic marketing. So, I was taking complex technology specs or information and making those palatable for our sales people at that time for um field marketers. Um, I just had this capacity to take complex information and kind of translate that. So, spent a couple of years in that role and then was lured over to the big bad agency world that I really, you know, I cut my teeth there but fell in love with you know, that community. I worked at Fleishman Hillard for about 11 years. So, in the Omnicom world and then went MSL for another call it five, six years. Um, so both of those experiences allowed me to take that sort of fundamental learning from my early career in tech and in sales and say, "How do I apply these sort of fundamentals in a client environment?" And I think a through line throughout my career has always been this real orientation toward clients and client needs and sort of building a great experience for clients. Um So, spent a few years there. Um I joined Nixon Peabody 6 months before the pandemic in my first CMO role in an industry I had never been in although I did have one legal client for about 6 months a million years before. Um and what was exciting or the most one of the most exciting things about the opportunity to join Nixon yes, it was a new industry, but it's an industry at that time that was really poised for change in marketing. Um the function itself had been pretty antiquated and I you know, I think I had an ungenerous description that it was always 10 years behind everybody else. Um it it was in some ways. It needed to find its momentum in the you know, in in the legal industry marketing did and that opportunity for me felt super super exciting. It felt like I could be at the forefront of continuing to evolve marketing as a discipline and do it in a space that you know, sort of needed a leader that spoke both languages. So >> So, let me make sure I'm clear. It was your first CMO role. Was it the first CMO role for the firm as well? >> No, it was not. They had had previous. So, typically so Nixon Peabody is an American Lawyer 100 firm, which means it's in the top 100 law firms in the world or in the United States and that is by size and revenue amount of lawyers etc. And typically in the Am Law 100, there is a CMO and there will be a fairly robust marketing team. Traditionally, a lot of those marketers were you know, planning golf events and making name tags and not doing a lot of business strategy. It was a lot more of that like old school fundamental marketing execution, you know, does the attorney have a pitch deck that looked right? Um, you know, there's there was not a tremendous amount of real strategic brand management. Um, typically not a lot of um, sophisticated advertising, nothing in that really in the paid space. It was like comms plus um, and really, really basic. Um, if you, you know, you think about it, lawyers don't advertise themselves so much of the way that they build their own portfolios and then their practices and you know, their firms it it is through reputation building. Um, so traditional earned media, a lot of sort of front foot content marketing is what has helped them raise their profile. I think the legal community understands now the real importance of that kind of omni channel approach, looking across what the business wants to achieve and by the business I mean the firm at large and then you break that down to practice specific growth, industry specific growth and then attorney specific growth. Um, so it's um, from a business planning perspective, it's really layered and I I think working at a law firm and leading a function like this requires me to always think about all of the business components of how this machine works together versus, you know, I rarely get that like broad brush opportunity um, because so many of those things interplay with one another. >> Yeah, I know, it's so interesting. It's such a different animal, right? That a CPG or an automotive marketer or a travel company or anything else that you can possibly think of. And remind me, the clients that you worked on at the agency side were in what categories? >> Sure, I was always B2B or technology. So, at Fleishman Hillard, I came in to work on a handful of tech accounts. That was my, you know, industry orientation when I joined. Um spent time, you know, sort of doing that professional services B2B consulting work. So, always in that space. Um I did take a few, you know, right or left turns trying to do a little consumer marketing, completely not for me. I was always the one like, if a cookie is just a cookie, let's call it a cookie. No one laughed at that. >> [laughter] >> Funny. >> Yeah. It just like it I couldn't do it. Um but then give me some like really complex new regulation that's coming out of the federal government and have me talk about how it's going to impact businesses in the next 5 years. Suddenly, I'm like, you know, that feels like nirvana for me, but people were like, get out of the, you know, the cookie pitch, not for you. >> Well, it I mean, it begs the question, it's not for everybody, right? So, >> 100% and I think as these big agency changes have happened and are happening, as we know, um you know, a a ton of former colleagues have reached out and said, "How did you make this switch to legal and what do you think now?" I think I First, let me start by saying, being at Nixon and being a CMO in this firm at this time in legal has absolutely been a career highlight. And that is because of the sort of openness of my firm to let me lead as a, you know, the marketer that I am, but also the change in the industry. But what I have said to colleagues, former colleagues who have reached out, like this is it it is a beast. and by that I mean it is complicated. It is emotionally demanding, intellectually challenging. The personalities within a law firm are, you know, highly intellectual. Often times, you know, confident and you know, lawyers have reputations like adding people, whatever. You know, that they are really tough and because they are on the forefront of you know, of creating laws, people in marketing in a law firm have to have that same sort of intellectual capacity to absorb what's happening in real time, be able to translate that, be able to connect that with our current client portfolios so that we can say we are building expertise in you know, X practice of the law and we're really close to this sort of industry where our clients live. And I think having the orientation to do that is not for everybody. This is not like, yay, fun, you know, New Year's Eve party kind of marketing. Not to say we don't have parties, but um, we're not doing that sort of thing. It's uh it's just a different kind of beast. >> What um do you consider yourself a B2B marketer? >> Certainly not a B2C marketer, so. >> Yeah, I'm a B2B marketer at heart, for sure, for sure. >> How do the how are the I talk I spend a lot of time with B2C marketers. I just spend a lot of time with um you know, marketers who have who are selling the cookies, for example. Um there is they quickly go to, you know, there's a lot of challenges around creative. There's a lot of challenges around um you know, speed, efficiency. There's a lot of challenges around platforms, optimization, you know, and how how would you best characterize like the you know, three biggest challenges, marketing challenges or um demands that you would that a law firm faces. Um >> God, that's such a great question and and I think complex um in that So, Nixon is really a sort of a quote-unquote full-service law firm in that we serve um a broad spectrum of clients. Um for sort of big bet litigation, um that's government investigations, that's complex commercial disputes, uh labor and employment, cyber, things like that. Um and then we have a full transactional practice, which is like your private equity, VC, or your healthcare transactions, anything that's happening in that business suite. We have uh um you know, one of the leading affordable housing practices in the US. So, a really a large and well-respected um real estate, infrastructure, um you know, sort of set of practices. So, just within that that within itself poses unique challenges from a marketing standpoint. Each of our practices their reputations are raised, the awareness of those attorneys, their reputations are raised and managed in a different way dependent depending on what their practice is and what industries they serve. So, we are constantly thinking about how to create yes, campaigns, but marketing strategies that are supportive of that particular individual, the strength of the practice, and awareness of that practice at a particular time, and then also managing Nixon Peabody at the brand level. You know, we want to show up consistently as a law firm. Um everything that we do and all attorneys do really kind of starts and stops with this idea of trust. So, it is paramount for us to always be putting that sort of core of trust in everything that we do. Um so, from a marketing standpoint, the challenge is that complex mix of the variety of different things that we serve at all times. Um we are really a content-first, I would say, kind of industry. Um people trust us if we are at the cutting edge of new, you know, regulation or new law that's coming out or have a perspective or a point of view on what can be happening and what businesses and individuals can expect from, you know, federal, state, and local, you know, laws and how those are sort of playing out in real time. So, they want our up-to-date guidance on that. Um and just a a little aside story, um we do a client engagement survey um annually, and one of the most interesting findings from the our 2024 results was that our clients wanted to hear from us three times more than we actually communicated with them directly. And they wanted to hear from us through content. And whether that was, you know, some sort of cutting-edge alert or, you know, up-to-date alert on a topic that was really relevant of that day, they wanted guidance on the, you know, complexities of their own industries and business, and they wanted our partners to be, you know, really feel like another, you know, executive in their mix. So, the GCs are hungry for us to help them navigate everything that's happening at the speed at which it's happening for them. Right? They're dealing with all the complexity of their own environment, never mind the legal environment that that it that sort of lives in. So, I would say complexity it you know, around managing a tremendous amount of content that we have to be sure is always accurate, always on time, always to the right eyes. Um and then you know, I would say third, it's not a hugely creative industry, right? So, if you looked at all of the websites and the brand when I first arrived, you know, it's it's really tired and I used to make a joke that like the the all the decks and the website, I was like I took a time machine back to 1995 and we're still using old fonts and you know, and to lawyers, they're like, "What are you talking about?" Going through a brand transformation was not something that they wanted to celebrate and that they were excited about until they really understood how that could potentially impact the success of our firm and how we perform and how we're perceived in the market. Um so, in the 6 years I've been here, I feel like I have done a lot of educating um to open minds absolutely. I think they want to understand always the why we're doing it, how it could impact their own practice, our firm's reputation, you know, what the client think of of us as a firm um over time. So, it's kind of a word story, but I think the context matters. You're not on TikTok, you know, from a platform standpoint. You're not >> [laughter] >> You're not thinking about Reddit forums. Like this is not the places that you So, what it what does the suite of tools, so to speak, look like for you? >> It is limited. Um, you know, I mean, we will we have active Instagram and and Facebook pages. Those are more, I would say, it allows us to have a persona within our communities. Um, for us, our brand is about delivering positive impact, and we we mean that very truly through our people, through the communities that we serve, through our clients, and the positive impact that we have within our firm, and how that acts in the community. So, I think we use social platforms like Instagram and Facebook to show up in that way, right? To demonstrate social giving, talk about case wins, talk about some accolades. Um, but we are really always focused on that content delivery, and it's not through platforms like you're describing. Um, because it's not where our buyers are consuming legal, you know, they're not looking for legal advice through that. So, it is also a ton of earned media. Um, we do a lot of content creation like this, a lot of podcasting. We create a lot of own content, um, that we share with, you know, all of our clients, anybody who subscribes, and we try to think about experiential, and not so much just our in-person panels that we host or client forums, but how do we then turn that content into alerts and, you know, pieces of content that that people beyond who are there want want to see. >> Sure. Do you think of your lawyers as thought leaders? And are you trying to, um, stand them up as individual brands? >> I think that is a primary in legal marketing. I think the reputation of the individual attorney is always it sort of wins the day. Um yes, people hire the firm and the firm brand certainly has equity. Um it's why the rankings are important Chambers and all you know, sort of all of the Am Law. I think at the end of the day when you have a you know, a certain persona or certain group of partners that are really well-known in specific industries, their brand carries a lot of business and that ripple effect brings their practices and their teams up and you know, um so yeah, I think we lead with a lot of that partner first reputation building. >> Do you work with outside creative agencies of any kind or digital agencies or >> Yeah, we work with Weber Shandwick. For for earned, for creative, we're doing a a few interesting sort of AI pilots with them um from a marketing standpoint. Um we work with Berkeer uh for our SEO um and some of our search engine you know, related stuff we work with One North on our website and creative. Let's see, who else is in our mix right now? Um we're not working with uh just a digital only marketing agency. Weber has a lot of capabilities and they're you know, sort of reach so I use them for comms and creative and because I'm a big agency girl at heart, I I love to have an agency and let them bring their resources to me. Um so I'll I will honestly come with a problem or say, "God, you guys must be hearing about a lot of things that I am not exposed to. Tell me what I'm missing." Um so I really value that and that big agency, you know, kind of relationship. >> Tell me about your marketing or of your marketing team. How many people are on it? How how what kind of capabilities do you have in house? >> Yeah, um, so today we have 68 internally, um, and just to give you a sense of perspective, we have about 1,300, 1,400 employees at Nixon, um, 650 plus lawyers and, you know, the balance of that are professional staff. Um, that's a about a normal mix for an Am Law firm, um, and our team is fairly, you know, sized correctly. I would say we're a little light, um, that is a product of the fact that during COVID, I took the team down during a transformation and rebuilt really, really carefully around marketing disciplines, um, versus saying like, "Okay, we have a need, let's just put another body there." So, um, you know, just under 70 people, um, in the, you know, sort of the in my marketing organization, it's, um, marketing and business development, which I'll explain that's really like practice support, um, communications, and you can think of all of the, um, sort of facets of comms in there, social and digital, um, all of design reports into me also, um, so we have a full team of designers, um, our comms team is, uh, internal, external, social media, um, a lot of they spend a lot of time helping to build attorney and practice specific platforms, and then they're promoting those, you know, within the industry through earned media, etc. Um, and also, they, you know, we have a robust, you know, PR team that Nick Brody leads, actually, who you met. Um, so that's from the comms perspective. On the marketing side, I essentially have what I call my board of directors and those are a layer of senior marketers that are focused in on the core marketing discipline. So, we sort of built a mini internal agency. So, we have um someone in charge of brand. Um we have someone in charge of client engagement and each of these people have their own teams. Um so, brand, client engagement, um what we call strategic pursuit. So, that is in the legal profession, it's dealing with the really large complex RFPs, RFIs, and panel. And under that is also pricing and competitive intelligence. Um so, anything that's in that sort of higher order magnitude of pursuits. Um I mentioned uh design and coms, I mentioned social on my board. Um I have a senior director of industry. So, um when we refreshed our strategic plan of several years back, we um added a sort of layer of that that is really an industry focused layer. So, with that comes a ton of you know, sort of marketing strategy and support that's needed and I brought someone over from agency to help me do that. So, he leads that and then I have three directors that are really focused in on department and practice support. So, that is the day-to-day delivery of attorney development um and sort of managing their profile, um helping them to target and grow their client base. It's a lot of that kind of um traditional inside business development activities. So, it allows the attorneys to be out servicing clients and billing time. Um so, anything else that that attorney might need so they can be focused on growth, our team really takes um the beginning of every year we're doing a individual business planning for partners, then we are doing strategy planning for a practice group. So, you know, what are our growth goals? How are we going to build marketing plans to execute against that? What does that look like relative to growing our existing clients, you know, building on um a portfolio that we have. So, those three directors all have teams under them that are servicing that sort of level of of client work. >> It's super interesting. I need to ask you this question and typically I'm going to I I ask the question in context of marketing, you know, how is AI disrupting marketing, but I'm going to ask you, how is AI disrupting the legal profession? And you know, if you could just speak to that from a high level and and how does that also then reverberate for you and honestly what you're what you're marketing? >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think like every industry, you know, AI put everybody back on their heels and everybody thought everybody else was further along than they are. Um I I think what is unique for legal um and and, you know, any industry that is, you know, highly regulated is we have to be extraordinary extraordinarily careful about what AI is used for. Um we cannot allow, obviously, the industry does not allow attorneys to provide any legal advice or legal services through the use of AI. And people get can have the potential to get themselves in trouble by, you know, at the beginning it was asking AI some perspective on something and, you know, there's funny cases now about how, you know, an attorney submitted a brief that they thought they got the right, you know, precedents from AI and it was all made up cases and, you You those judges were sanctioning those attorneys at you know, sort of at the you know, beginning of this kind of moving forward. That said, I think all of the Am Law 100 firms to some degree are using AI internally to really help with workflow and case analysis. Um, it has really become sort of like that second team member. Um, and for many of us including Nixon, we build our own sort of proprietary versions of it so that we can put our own internal client data information, do some analysis on firm performance, on you know, certain trends in the market. So we're using it in a way that obviously is within the law, um, is within you know, what the industry demands, but it has opened up a a new pathway for, I would say, innovation, for efficiency of running our business, for um, deeper layer of understanding what our clients' challenges might be and how we can serve those in a better way. Um, and from a marketing standpoint, you know, frankly, we're like a safe place to experiment with it. So we're thinking about it in every sort of component of what we do. How do we use AI to enhance this, to help our folks not just move more quickly, but you know, think in an expanded way. Um, and I will fully admit, confession time, that I was like, I don't want my junior people using AI because they will not know how to, you know, craft an original, you know, thesis because they won't be writing and you need to write in order to be good at it. It is a tool. You know, it is a way you have to work. And I still feel like that, but what, you know, we've really come to understand is it has helped that layer of people at the beginning of their career right with a different kind of context in the same way probably you and I were when you know, social media was being used in marketing. We were like, we're not going to use that. Our brain didn't work that way, but you know, this generation today has an incredible ability to adapt to new technology and if they understand that there are core disciplines in writing and communications or creative design that come from the human, um you know, it's important for us that as leaders that we're showing them that they can learn both things to succeed. And they have to, frankly. Um so I think yeah, it it's disrupting our industry um in a way that will probably make legal look different in 10 years and 5 years. Um the the delivery of legal services. Um but there's never going to be a day where you don't need that really skilled experienced attorney to you know, provide that perspective. Like there it's just not going to happen. And from my you know, all my wisdom. >> Of which there's many. No, I appreciate that tremendously and it and it makes sense. Um the last quick question and before I have you answer that uh or answer answer it, I'll preface by saying you know, I've loved talking to you because I think you're a great example and you probably are you know, for many people listening you are a representative of the wealth of opportunities in CMO roles that exist out there well beyond the bounds of your traditional go-to categories. And so I think there's something really interesting about that. Not to say to our earlier point that it's for everybody because not just anybody can kind of um be in in a role that is or in a category that's so nuanced, but all that said, who's next? Who's somebody that, you know, I should have on the show and it maybe it's somebody you know really well or maybe it's a CMO of a category that you've heard about or that you'd love to learn more about. Who should I bring on the show next? That's that's my final question to you. >> Yeah, so this is a funny one because Autodesk was my client for I don't know, 10 years. Um they their new CMO and I can see her face and because um Dara Yeah, Dara, thank you. I was going to I'm so glad you said that. She is I follow her you know, on LinkedIn. I've been watching the performance of Autodesk. I can't help it cuz they were a former client, but I think that she has taken that brand to a new place and it was sort of there in the years that we worked on it on the com side, but to see it come to life so spectacularly. I mean, for me everything she does seems like brilliant, like the next thing, like she's one step ahead. Um she's I and I don't know if you've had her on, but she's she's really tremendous. >> No, she is tremendous and Dara Treseder, if you're listening, uh your or not, your ears are burning right now and um I've had her show in a live context at an event. I would love to have her back on the show cuz she really is you know, such an incredible example of of what's possible. >> Absolutely. Um she's magnificent. Uh and I want to give a a plug to the folks who will who are coming out of those big agencies following the mergers. I you know, I spent the better part of my career with some of the smartest, most strategic folks in agency and I think we're going to have this wave of so many of them going in-house and finding CMO or leadership roles in industries that might be a surprise to them and we're going to see this new wave of sort of excitement and creative thinking and real strategic leadership. Um, you know, the agencies are so hierarchical and there's not a ton of opportunity for them to get visibility, but I do I I do I think the silver lining is going to be some really awesome marketing in the next few years. >> Mic drop. Love that. Fabulous. Great place to land and and so interesting and provocative, Danielle. Thank you so so much for for joining me. Um, you know, I think this has been certainly an education for me and an education for our our listeners and I look forward to continuing the conversation with you. So, thank you so much. >> as well and happy to talk anytime about legal or B2B or all the boring stuff that no one ever wants to talk about. Have a great holiday. >> Thank you so much. Take care. >> Thank you for listening to Marketing Vanguard, part of the Adweek Podcast Network and Acast Creator Network. You can listen and subscribe to all of Adweek's podcasts by visiting adweek.com/podcasts. Stay updated on all things Adweek Podcast Network by following us on Twitter at Adweek Podcast and if you have a question or suggestion for the show, send us an email at podcast@adweek.com. Thanks for listening.