As part of our 'meet the team' series, we talk to chief marketing and business development officer Maria Hall about taking on big projects, the firm’s commitment to sustainability and expressing her creative side.
Maria joined the firm in 2017. Since then, her role has expanded, taking on responsibility for the firm’s ESG (environmental, social and governance) in addition to heading up marketing and business development.
Colleagues credit her with having “genuinely transformed the firm” and say she is a “real role model” leading the way on diversity and inclusion.
She began her career in marketing when she was still at university studying English and European Literature, after her dad suggested she might be good at it.
“I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” says Maria. “I was creative, good at writing and communicating. My dad, who worked in sales at the time, suggested marketing might be a good fit and he was right!”
She wrote to marketing agencies local to Cambridge where her family lived and secured some work experience. “I spent a week working for the company and by the time I had finished I had convinced them to pay me to work for them two days a week,” she explains.
“I carried on working there throughout university, going full-time in the summer holidays. It meant that when I finished my degree, I had a head start on my contemporaries and landed a job working for a PR agency in London before I even graduated.”
Building up
Her first experience working in IP came when she applied for a job at IP solutions provider, CPA Global as its first ever marketing manager. “It was a time of considerable growth for them,” says Maria. “I set up their marketing team, which in the time I was there grew to 15 people with a multi-million pound budget. The job was a real gamechanger and started me off on a road to specialising in professional services.”
From CPA she joined top 30 law firm, Fieldfisher as head of communications eventually becoming their marketing director, before taking time out and working as a consultant after her son was born. She had always enjoyed working in IP so when she was asked by IP firm Rouse to make her consulting job there a permanent role as their Group Marketing Director, she took it, spending five years there and having her daughter during that time, before the opportunity to join Mewburn Ellis came along.
“Over the years, what I enjoy most about my job has changed,” says Maria. “It used to be the creative side, but these days I like focusing on areas where I can really make change. I’m more commercial in my focus, thinking about where the market is going and what is going to happen in the future and how we adapt the business to make the most of that.”
Bringing in specialists in marketing and business development has been an important step for Mewburn Ellis. According to Maria, the firm now has “a brilliant M&BD team” and one that “is more valued and works far more proactively and collaboratively with the rest of the firm than is usual in the IP sector.” She believes this gives them the winning edge.
Business advantage
Looking back, one of the most memorable projects she has worked on was a pitch to a well-known corporate client. “It was highly competitive and very long” says Maria. “It involved a lot of work from M&BD and we worked really closely with the fee earners as one big team. That’s when things work best when we all play to our strengths. It was a big win for the firm, bringing a significant amount of work.”
She’s also very proud of the firm’s growing sustainability credentials. “Last year we managed to achieve silver accreditation from EcoVadis. We are the only silver ranked European IP firm and it’s a big advantage when pitching for new business or attracting new recruits. Clients want to see strong ESG credentials when choosing IP advisers and when recruiting graduate trainees, the EcoVadis accreditation and our work in this area gives us an edge on the competition.”
Maria manages a team of eight who work on the day-to-day marketing and business development work, freeing her up to focus more on strategic projects. “It’s not always easy to fit everything in to my four-day week, which I’ve done since my kids were born, but I have a great team and I like to be busy. I’m pretty driven and love working on projects that I can drive through from start to finish. I look at problems and work out how I can solve them – my enthusiasm has served me well over the years and I’m told I’m known for getting stuff done!”
Grand designs
It's not just at work that Maria takes on big projects. She loves interior design and entirely redeveloped her house in north London. “It’s one of my favourite things to do,” she explains. “I’ve always had a creative side and if I hadn’t worked in marketing, interior design, or perhaps architecture, would have been my career of choice.”
Maria also took up weight training a few years ago. “It’s the only sport I’ve ever really got into,” she says. “I work out as much as I can and can now bench press 30kg which I’m quite proud of!”
Other pastimes include walking her whippet Bailey and flower arranging, “We grow a lot of roses in our garden, which is my favourite flower and so I like to use those. I’d love to do a floristry course in the future,” she says. “I’m also an avid reader, I read every day but despite studying literature at university, I rarely read classic works anymore, more likely a bit of romance or some sci-fi these days, I use up all my brain power at work!”
