Challenge

With an ambitious growth strategy over the next five years, Irwin Mitchell asked Merkle B2B to bring to life their already established positioning, ‘Expert Hand. Human Touch’, to create a compelling and emotive brand campaign designed to drive awareness and positive engagement with their target audience.

Where ‘expertise’ is expected from a law firm, it was the connection on a ‘human’ level that would differentiate Irwin Mitchell from the pack.

We set out to develop a deeper meaning of what the ‘human touch’ meant across their B2B and consumer-facing service lines of business, where each audience has their own needs, challenges, pain points and the moments that matter to them when considering and choosing a law firm – whether that’s anger, vulnerability, doubt, uncertainty or insecurity, and how Irwin Mitchell’s approach took them to a more positive state of mind.

Services
B2B

Market
United Kingdom

Approach

The concept of the campaign was about connecting with clients on a human level. We brought to life the empathy that a B2B business like a law firm needs to have to understand the emotions of their clients. Featuring real Irwin Mitchell clients sharing personal stories, highlighting the positive impact of case outcomes.

But to make sure inclusivity was at the heart of the idea, we tapped into Irwin Mitchell’s commitment to become a leading responsible business with the way we tackled the production of the campaign. We created the opportunity to not just reflect inclusion on screen but to ensure that the production team was as inclusive as possible behind the camera. We set out with the ambition to create the campaign with as many creatives with disability as possible. A stark contrast to Advertising Association’s discovery that 9% of disabled talent are employed in the advertising sector, the campaign’s final team was made up of 30% disabled talent, with 60% in senior roles.

The production team included blind photographer Ian Treherne, wheelchair user, Owen Tooth, who was the film’s director and Musician Derek Paravicin who is blind and autistic, on piano.

Merkle B2B, oversaw the campaign with creative and production studio Annex and photographer and filmmaker Rankin bringing the project to life.

The campaign launched in National Inclusion Week 2021 and included TV, press, radio, digital and a suite of film content, highlighting the behind the camera talent.

Results

We are proud to say that we have had an impact on highlighting disabled talent within the advertising industry, with a view through rate on the videos smashing the industry benchmark, at 72%. The campaign and film have led to Treherne being commissioned for more commercial work, Tooth has signed on to Annex Films Directors roster, and the other team members continue their careers in the industry.

Not only did it show the wide range of talent available in the disabled community, but the campaign also raised the profile of Irwin Mitchell, with a 27% increase in brand searches since the launch, an increase of 12% in web traffic, and a 37% increase in PPC enquiries, with a cost per enquiry falling by 12%. Audiences of the campaign were overwhelmingly positive, able to recall and attribute the adverts to Irwin Mitchell, actively like the campaign, confirmed that it stood out vs competitors, improved the way they felt about the company, and importantly, confirmed a positive impact on brand consideration.

Keys to success

• People have now seen that working with disabled people is no different to working with a normal production crew.
• Team work: carving up the responsibilities carefully to get everything completed within tight timescales
• Merkle B2B are altering their recruitment process in light of this shoot and are working together with members from the Irwin Mitchell campaign production crew on a digital platform that will create access for the community and our industry
• Factors such as audience engagement, reach, brand awareness and positive impact/response received