Editor: I understand you have some exciting news to share at the upcoming ACC Annual Meeting.
d'Alencon: I am delighted to announce that our weekly eDiscovery industry cartoon, Case in Point, is turning three and will celebrate its third anniversary at the ACC Annual Meeting in Denver!
Editor: That's a significant milestone. Can you tell our readers a little bit about how Case in Point got started?
d'Alencon: Turn back your calendar to the summer of 2008. Chris Kruse and I were having a discussion about starting a creative marketing program of some sort that would enable us to connect with clients, prospects, partners and the industry at large without being a "me too program." Chris said, "Hey, I know a cartoonist, maybe we could start a cartoon?" And the idea for what became Case in Point was born (http://www.casecentral.com/case-in-point/). I spent about three months coming up with the concept and the name, determining the publication frequency and building the infrastructure to support it. The cartoon was launched at the 2008 ACC Annual Meeting in Seattle and has been running every week since then for three years!
Editor: How do you come up with all the Case in Point cartoon ideas and who draws them?
d'Alencon: The ideas for cartoons come from everyday news and events, from many funny people inside of CaseCentral, from the cartoonist and from me, but most importantly, our readers supply us with some fantastic ideas (http://www.casecentral.com/ caseinpoint/idea/), for which they receive a signed, framed copy of the final cartoon based upon their idea. Our cartoonist is Tom Fishburne, also known as The Marketoonist (http://tom-fishburne. com/). We consider ourselves partners in comedy.
Editor: Has the Case in Point cartoon been a success?
d'Alencon: That first Case in Point cartoon reached a couple of hundred readers. Today, our cartoons reach nearly 50,000 people a week in over 20 countries worldwide. We have evolved to use a variety of distribution channels, including the Case in Point cartoon blog, RSS feeds, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, opt in email, a mobile application for iPhones and Blackberries - and even Case in Point computer screen savers (http://www.casecentral. com/case-in-point/resources/). And Case in Point is published with permission to reproduce, so the cartoons have found another use, illustrating key points in the presentations, lectures and conversations of lawyers, professors, industry professionals and others.
Editor: What are some of the highlights of the cartoon this past year?
d'Alencon: We began the year at LegalTech New York where the cartoonist, Tom Fishburne, joined us in our booth to meet readers, exchange ideas and sign cartoons. We were amazed at the number of people who came over to meet him. We also began a project, "Where in the World is Case in Point?" We made a cutout of the IT guy from the cartoon and took him on the road with us. He has been to a number of industry events in places like Las Vegas, Miami, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Nashville and met many industry leaders, including George Socha and Tom Gelbmann at the EDRM kickoff meeting and Peggy Wechsler at ILTA. We regularly post Case in Point's travels in a photo album on the CaseCentral Facebook page. Also, we ran a New Yorker-style caption contest, which was a lot of fun. We received entries from around the world and ended up with a very funny final cartoon. Most recently, we were honored that Case in Point was featured in a recent Forbes piece, "Data Security and the Imperative of Private Clouds," http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkerschberg/2011/09/09/electronic-discovery-the-imperative-of-private-clouds/ by Ben Kerschberg.
Editor: Are there any other lessons you've learned from producing Case in Point?
d'Alencon: Yes, it's a lot harder to be funny on a deadline every single week than you would think! More seriously though, Case in Point is a great example of the use of visual marketing techniques, presenting simple and memorable images to our audience. We are careful never to use Case in Point to directly promote CaseCentral products, but to provide a funny take on some event or concept. Watching the readership of the cartoon balloon from a few hundred at the 2008 ACC AM to nearly 50,000 now also paints a picture of a maturing market that increasingly involves people from many different walks of life, including educators, lawyers, paralegals, IT staff, consultants, vendors, bloggers and authors. We are looking forward to starting our fourth year!
Published October 4, 2011.
