Down economy = marketing opportunity.

• Author: Johnson, Jennifer
• Position: Chapter News: New York Metro Chapter - Reprint

No doubt we're all feeling the current economic climate in some fashion, but Metro New York Chapter members are especially affected. We sit in the financial capital of the world (according to flags that wave from street lamps on Wall Street!) and many of our members' firms focus on the financial services industry--a sector that is consolidating, changing and evolving in unpredictable ways. Other industries are feeling the pinch as well and, consequently, many firms are under pressure to take a close look at what the future may hold for them.

Here in the Metro New York Chapter, we have a sense of urgency about rallying behind our membership and helping them continue to shine in these uncertain times. Our chapter leaders are striving to be ahead of the curve in addressing the issues in our current marketplace; we are supercharging our efforts to provide crucial best-practice networking events, re-tooling our upcoming programming topics to focus on market related issues, developing focused roundtable discussions and are initiating a series of surveys to hear what matters most to our members. This is all being done in an expedited fashion so that we can quickly provide valuable information and insights that can add measurable value to members' firms.

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Our May luncheon exemplified this new focus. We rapidly changed gears from our pre-planned program on a general topic to inviting industry experts who could share with us specific ideas for what we as marketers should do to serve our firms in a recession. They offered a number of valuable suggestions, including:

* "Change always provides opportunity for law firms. The best way for marketers to add value in a down market is to provide relevant market and competitive intelligence to firm and practice group leaders and facilitate discussions about what new business opportunities will be created by market changes."--Wendy Bernero, chief marketing officer, McKee Nelson LLP

* "The bad news is your partners may be billing fewer hours...