Ask Jay what is the most important thing that he delivers to Jaffe PR’s clients and he answers in a flash – he believes in the criticality of making things happen. It is a credo that governs his own work and that drives the company he founded more than 33 years ago. Every day Jay leads his staff in a manner that allows them to be active and innovative reputation advocates for their clients. In 2010 he was recognized for making things happen as he was inducted into PR News’ Hall of Fame. PR News is our industry’s leading trade publication and named Jay to its 2010 Hall of Fame class. One newspaper reported on Jay’s inclusion saying, “PR News only recognizes PR veterans who have made career-long contributions to the industry.”
Jay is very proud of the fact that the editor of The American Lawyer once introduced him to a New York audience as, “The man who invented law firm marketing ...” Jay quickly denies the compliment, but those who know him say even if he wasn’t the inventor he certainly has been one of the most influential forces in the fledgling profession, pushing the creative and technology envelope every day and every step of the way. “Aggressive, effective law firm public reputation management is not for the faint of heart,” says Jay. Audiences who have heard him speak in the U.S., Canada and Europe know his message well: law firms, like the innovative businesses they represent, must be prepared to take the boldest steps possible if they want to achieve differentiation of their practices and prosper in today’s highly competitive and highly technical, global marketplace.
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About Jay
“It’s all happening so fast!”
Though he never counsels risky steps, he does urge clients to think in ways that are distinctly new to most professional firms. “You don’t survive in this competitive environment by fiddling around the edges. You survive and prosper by quickly embracing change and the unprecedented velocity at which it is taking place.”
For Jay, effective use of cutting-edge technology is a critical component of law firm public reputation management – and this is a position he advocates in his role on the Board of Editors of the ALM’s “Internet Law & Strategy” newsletter. “Too many firms still see the latest Internet technologies and social networking or search engine optimization (SEO) as add-ons or afterthoughts, and they still all seem to wait to see which law firms do what first,” Jay, who was the 11,474th member to sign up for LinkedIn, says. “In fact, today’s technology must be integrated into every aspect of a firm’s marketing and, at the velocity at which change is taking place, you can’t dawdle.”
Jay has made that happen in his own firm, a totally virtual consultancy with 30 professionals throughout the world collaborating via email, iChat, Skype, FaceTime, instant messaging and many other forms of Internet communications. In fact, Small Business Computing magazine once named Jaffe PR one of the “100 Most Tech-Savvy Small Businesses in America.” It highlighted Jaffe PR, as one of only ten firms out of the hundred profiled, in a feature aptly titled, “Virtually Brilliant.”
“PR had to become Public Reputation”
“Delivering results is important, and even more important is that the results are right for the client,” Jay says. He built Jaffe PR around the core competency of public relations in its broadest sense. He has assembled a multifaceted team of professionals that includes former practicing attorneys, more former law firm marketing directors than any other agency in the world and former print, broadcast and wire service journalists – including reporters and editors who specialized in covering the legal market.
The formula works. Repeated client successes have increased law firm profitability and the increasing demand for services has produced unparalleled growth at Jaffe PR as Inc. magazine named Jaffe PR to its list of the “500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies in the United States.”
Much of Jay’s present-day leadership is grounded in earlier career achievements as a commended U.S. Army broadcast journalist, an award-winning daily and weekly newspaper reporter, editor and publisher and as a television journalist, news director and anchorman. He gained significant expertise in crisis media relations in many positions, including four tumultuous years as spokesperson for the House Ethics Committee, when Congressional scandals swirled through the highest corridors of power.
Shortly after the Supreme Court struck down barriers to professional marketing in 1977, Jay saw the marketing potential for corporate law firms. He spent most of the 1980s trying to “make” this new market and found heavy resistance most of the way. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, when serving as the marketing director for an AmLaw 100 firm, that he was finally able to execute the innovative ideas that had been bubbling inside of him for a decade. One of his ad campaigns at Howrey was recognized by The American Lawyer as one of the top 25 events to have taken place in the first 25 years of the magazine’s existence.
By the time most professionals became aware of the mere possibility of marketing their services, Jay had already blazed the very rocky trail, developing many of the models that remain the standards of today. Over the years, Jay has brought niche specialties to the field of legal marketing, including: RankingsForLawyers™, WritersForLawyers™, LexSpeak™, PRism™ and the Jaffe Legal News Service™ (JLNS). In 2010, he renamed the company when it became evident to him that the term “public relations” was no longer an accurate definition for his work with law firms. The more accurate term, which he has shared with the legal marketing industry, is “public reputation,” a term that encompasses all of the promotional work a law firm needs to do, in various combinations, to sustain a reputation and build more business. His innovative concepts continually earn him accolades from the legal community, including being named to the “100 Legal Consultants You Need to Know” list by Lawdragon.
Jay has also served as crisis media or communications counsel to Timex Inc., The U.S. General Accounting Office, The National Bank of Washington, Clark Construction, The Building Owners & Managers Association, The National Grocers Association, The National Education Association and many others, including many major global law firms.
He regularly speaks about legal marketing subjects – frequently a guest on panels on media and crisis-media relations topics in North America and in the U.K. – and has been published in many distinguished trade journals. Perhaps management consultant Jeffrey Davidson best described Jay when he wrote in his book, “Marketing To The Fortune 500,” that Jay “typifies an effective rainmaker. He arrives at meetings with energy and humor, and ready for business.” Or perhaps Jay puts it best himself when he looks a client or co-worker square in the eye and challenges them to, “Make it happen!”