60-second interview: Hayley Geffin, comms and PR manager, Mishcon de Reya
What new initiatives has Mishcon de Reya begun?
At Mishcon de Reya we serve an international community of clients, providing advice regardless of geography. Post Brexit, we felt we needed to reassert this fact and show in a meaningful way that we retain our international outlook. To do this, we are developing four international, locally-hosted websites for Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Our Asia site is already live at asia.mishcon.com with regional editorial from journalists and podcasts from the FT.
Tell us about the business development team.
The business development staff are split into smaller teams sitting within our five departments, which are corporate, dispute resolution, employment, private and real estate. They handle all our digital marketing, business insight, communications and public relations, events, social impact and project management work. The firm’s revenue has seen a 130 percent increase over the last five years and we have doubled our headcount since 2010. The business development team has grown in proportion to this and is a similar size to one of our smaller fee-earning departments.
What have you learned this year?
That having a great story is everything. Two of our partners, Anthony Julius and James Libson, were featured in a Hollywood film Denial which gave us an opportunity to create our own documentary which gained over 1,400 views in its first week and can be viewed on our YouTube channel; host an exclusive screening event for clients and this all helped our communications planning in 2017.
Do you spend time assessing your competitors, and if so, how?
We have a business insight team that keeps an eye on our competitors. We do, however, like to do things a little differently and while it’s always important to know what’s going on around you in your industry we’re quite happy to stand out from the crowd.
What types of social media do you use regularly and why?
In 2016 Mishcon de Reya added Instagram to its Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin presence. We’ve found that social media is a great way to interact with others, from prospective clients to journalists to parties interested in our ongoing cases. In acting for Gina Miller in 2016, and sadly alongside some less positive material, we received an outpouring of support from individuals across our Facebook and Twitter accounts, in particular.