Annual CEE Best Brand in Practice Award 2003
The Best Brand in Practice in CEE for 2003 was awarded this year to the Prague practice of Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker (see below). But unlike the previous years there were only two runners up who equally shared this award as "Joint Runners Up".
The photo to the left shows all of the awards as they were displayed at the entrance to the first annual CEE Regional Summit that was held this year in Prague on 6 November.
Winners
Judges' comments: “C&W has been awarded PM Forum 2003 CEE Best Brand in Practice for proving that being distinctive, relevant to clients, coherent and adding value makes for a better business as well as a strong brand. They have a clear position in the marketplace as the only firm offering a full range of services and a distinctive emphasis on trust. They attract very positive feedback from clients who appear willing to work exclusively with them. They understand that aligning values requires training staff in how to be seen as trusted and innovative business partners. They have high staff retention and describe themselves as the most profitable office in terms of return on cost, due to high levels of repeat business rather than high fees. They not only understand the importance of listening to their marketing team, but encourage the senior marketer to earn consultancy fees. Our congratulations are due to the whole team.â€
Winner’s comments: “The strength of our brand and our people is what keeps our Czech practice growing year-on-year in terms of profitability, client base and profile. This coveted award underlines that in the 10 years we have operated in this market, we have succeeded in developing excellent long-term partnerships with our clients as well as nurturing a committed team of creative professionals.â€
Jonathan Hallett
Managing Partner
Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker, Prague
“We are delighted to receive this award. It underlines the efforts made locally as well as globally. As a firm we aim to be the trusted and innovative business partner of all our clients. Our brand is invaluable in developing our business in all the countries we operate in.â€
Jane Petrie
Marketing & Communications Manager
Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker, Prague
www.cushmanwakefield.com
Joint Runners Up
Judges' comments: “How can a Czech boutique approaching its tenth anniversary be the local firm of choice for such legal titans as Jones Day, Freshfields, Slaughter & May and Hengeler Mueller? Three elements make the firm different according to founder Vladimira Glatzova: technical excellence; international education; and making sure that clients receive relevant legal and business information when required. The judges were particularly impressed by the firm’s investment in its people. In lieu of administrative tasks, interns are given challenging work and expected to research the client’s business. As their career develops, they may be seconded to an international law firm. The outcome is a virtuous circle: low staff turnover, satisfied clients, high profitability and well-regarded lawyers.â€
Winner’s comments: “We are delighted that the firm’s commitments to the excellence of its staff and the satisfaction of its clients have been recognised by PM Forum CEE's Joint Runners Up Award. Thank you very much, Jeffrey for organising this year’s contest and providing such a terrific forum for the exchange of ideas about and recognition of professional branding.â€
Vladimira Glatzova
Managing Partner
Glatzova & Co., Prague
www.glatzova.com
Judges' comments: “The excellence of the firm in delivering services relevant to clients has resulted in it being rated by Chambers as the top law firm in Poland. It also received more recommendations in the Legal 500 and Rzeczpospolita than any of its competitors. A key element of the firm’s profile raising strategy has been to cultivate contacts with key journalists, carefully analyse which messages will appeal to particular publications, and then set up exclusive interviews with senior lawyers. As a result of this targeted approach, the number of mentions in the business press increased ten fold in less than a year. Indeed, the firm was sufficiently confident to stop publishing paid articles. The judges hope that the savings were offset against the salaries of the marketing team.â€
Winner’s comments: “We are delighted that our efforts to adopt a client-focused approach to our marketing have been both successful with clients and recognised by experts. We will continue to develop our services in line with client demand.â€.â€
Witold Danilowicz
Managing Partner
White & Case, Warsaw
www.whitecase.com
International recognition for C&W/H&B Prague
In addition to receiving the awards pictured above, C&W/H&B Prague was profiled in the Winter issue of professional marketing, which is the worldwide journal of marketing professional services published by the PM Forum in London.
This marks the first time that a professional service firm in Prague was profiled in this journal. You can read the "practice profile" below from the Winter 2003 edition (reprinted here with permission from professional marketing) or download it in pdf format by clicking here.
Business on a personal level
A year after potentially disastrous floods, the Prague office of international real estate consultants Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker won the award for being the 'CEE Best Brand in Practice' at the PM Forum 2003 CEE Summit. Neasa MacErlean reports.
If buildings are your business then the last thing you want is for those properties to be destroyed or damaged. But this is what the floods of August 2002 threatened to do in Prague.
However, C&W/H&B acted so fast and effectively that it not only made life bearable for clients but it strengthened its relationships with them. "The day of the floods we set up an action team to help all clients," says Jonathan Hallett who took over as managing partner in June. Working without electricity or land telephone lines in its own office, the firm managed to get an emergency telephone line installed, contacted clients, organised teams for each building that was affected, worked with sub-contractors as soon as the waters subsided, identified offices that were suitable for immediate occupation, arranged for short-term leasing of furniture and managed to help "a number of occupiers to maintain operations in this difficult time".
This potential catastrophe demonstrates, in a rather dramatic way, two of the 'four pillars' on which C&W / H&B, one of the three predominant global real estate consultancy firms, says it is built - innovation and partnership. (Best practice and coverage are the other two pillars in this worldwide practice of 11,000 people.) The firm's response to the flooding of the Vltava also says something about the strength of its relationships with its clients. "We want to establish long-term relationships," says Jane Petrie the firm's marketing manager for both the Czech Republic and Hungary. "We aim to be your trusted and innovative business partner." The firm's Prague office was started ten years ago by Healey & Baker, one of the first Western real estate consultancies to open up there. Planning restrictions are very tight in this historic city (in contrast, for instance, to the far more modern Polish capital of Warsaw). Such difficulties have forced the firm to be innovative and encouraged it to work very closely with its clients. This has resulted in good relationships - as noted by the judges of the 'Best Brand in Practice' award who say: "They have high staff retention and describe themselves as one of the most profitable offices [in Europe] in terms of return on cost, due to high levels or repeat business rather than high fees." Jane Petrie says that C&W/H&B is also the market leader in the Czech Republic in terms of profits, its client portfolio, the deals done and its profile.
So how do the 43 partners and staff at C&W/H&B Prague build these fine relationships? "By doing a good job," says Hallett, as well as "making sure that everything we do for our clients is a pleasure", aiming to provide a full service (from, for example, providing development advice, leasing the property and then selling it on later), getting to know customers "to the best of our abilities", entertaining clients, reinventing "ourselves with our clients" and meeting with them regularly. Jane Petrie adds: "We monitor client satisfaction - and we try not to let technology take over. Our business is conducted on a very personal level." These personal relationships are supported by technology, of course - including a customer management system, a global Executive Information System (which tracks deals, properties, customers and markets), the CWeb intranet site which provides market research information to all Cushman personnel and CW-One, a client extranet which gives clients access to plans, market reports, research documents, updates on their own matters and other useful information.
Marketing takes place on a worldwide level as well as in Prague itself. With the Czech Republic due to join the European Union in May 2004, Prague will become an even more attractive location for foreign investment. C&W/H&B - which has established 'very close' working relationships with the local inward investment body, Czech Invest - believes it is well-placed to benefit from such growth. C&W/H&B actively works with Czech Invest to promote Prague as a business location, recently presenting the benefits of Prague in conferences organised by the inward investment agency in Munich and Brussels. In a sense, C&W/H&B is marketing not just itself but the whole city of Prague to the rest of the world. Its annual research report 'European Cities Monitor' has charted the progress of Prague from being 23rd placed out of 25 cities in 1990 - in terms of its attractiveness to business - to being ranked 17th in Europe in 2003. Prague is rated 1st in terms of 'cost of staff'.
Hallett says that the firm is constantly ready to innovate to meet client needs. An example is its management of Excalibur, "the first factory outlet centre in the Czech Republic" - for which "we invested in sending our employees around Europe to see other projects and to learn from people experienced in leasing such projects".
Many of these marketing developments would be impressive in their own right - but they take place against a background of change in the firm as a whole. In 1998, the UK firm of Healey & Baker (the firm which had set up the Prague office in 1993) merged with the US firm Cushman & Wakefield - leading to the 2002 renaming of the European arm of the firm as Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker, with its European headquarters in London.
The European marketing function has made great strides since 2002, says Jane Petrie who meets quarterly with her nine European counterparts and who also does a fair amount of client marketing work in Athens. "Marketing is now seen as a much more important function than it was two years ago," she says. She is delighted that the Prague office won the 'Best Brand in Practice' award - but feels that her other charge, the Hungarian practice, would have stood an equally good chance of winning if it had also put in an entry. We will have to see what happens next year.
It could be that the issue of sustainability will be a major theme underlying any entries from Cushman & Wakefield offices. "Our clients are telling us that this is the next big thing," says Petrie. "We are just exploring it now." Environmental issues are "becoming more and more important," says Hallett. If the firm does decide to go big on the theme, it will spread the word from its offices across Europe. Petrie says: "More than ever, in the last couple of years, we are trying to integrate all our corporate messages."
Download a reprint of this profile in pdf format by clicking here.
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