Is your firm “Committed to Mediocrity™”?

Tag lines are hard – a few strategically selected words that encapsulate everything you stand for and want your target audience to know about you. It’s the slogan that tells your own people how to act, what makes them different, and help them bring in business. Does your firm have one? Does it stand out? Is it unique and memorable?

Consider FedEx’s brilliant “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” Nine simple words that tell FedEx buyers precisely what they’re going to get, while simultaneously informing all of its employees what their mission is, and its vital importance.

Law firms tend toward weak platitudes like “Committed to clients” or “Results Matter!” or “When Success Matters!” These vague “we’re totally awesome” statements makes a firm feel good about itself but aren’t specific enough for your lawyers or employees, or differentiating for your target market. They apply equally to nearly every firm in the market (when don’t results matter…?). They’re easy for a committee to agree on (“Good idea; let’s tell people we’re smart!”), but they don’t set you apart in a strategic way that generates revenue. What if FedEx’s slogan was “We mail things!”?

Would Nike be as successful if it allowed a marketing committee to red-pencil “Just do it” into “When you need great shoes”? How would BMW’s vision change if “The Ultimate Driving Machine” became “Your Car Matters!”

Here are law firm tag lines from the Feb-April 2011 issues of Inside Counsel magazine, a publication where many large firms advertise.

• National Firm. Midwest Value.
• Driving Business Advantage.
• The confidence to proceed.
• Canadian Lawyers.
• Deep relationships. Forward thinking. And not just one lawyer. A team.
• More together.
• Top of Mind.
• Singular focus. Outstanding results.
• Intellectual property law by the numbers.
• Driving Business Advantage.

Do you know which law firm is “More together?” Which firm gives you “the confidence to proceed” or “drives business advantage”? How does “Top of Mind” benefit a client?

Here are some examples of brand-related messages we’ve created that are clearer and catchier. They help define the firm internally and externally. They set the tone and help the firm stand out in a meaningful way. They give the lawyers something to say in new-business meetings when the prospects ask, “How is your firm different?”

They act as the platform for a larger campaign that helps the lawyers sell new business. It aids recruiting by defining the personality type and skill set of the laterals they should seek to hire.

Below are twenty law firm tag lines to compare and consider, that support a range of firms, practices, industries, and strategies. They are, of course, just a small part of larger campaigns, but their role can be significant in setting the tone, breaking the ice, and helping create a dialogue. OK, maybe they’re not the nation’s 20 absolute best law firm tag lines, there are some pretty good ones out there, but these are a pretty good start.

Two hours. Period.™

Laner Muchin, Chicago. The world’s most-responsive law firm. A labor and employment boutique where every client phone call is returned within two hours, even less in emergencies.

Seriously Unbelievably Client Service.™

Sandberg Phoenix, St Louis. The nation’s first firm to offer clients a written service guarantee. Their clients rate them an A+ in objective surveys.

Small but mighty.™

Novack and Macey, Chicago. A small litigation powerhouse with an amazing record of success at trial.

The Art of Law.™

Williams Parker, Sarasota, FL. High-quality full-service lawyers targeting a conservative tax and estate-planning audience in arts-oriented Sarasota, FL.

A law firm that really moves.™

Goldberg Simpson, Louisville. A dynamic, entrepreneurial, full-service firm.

Bigger is good. Smarter is better.™

Schopf & Weiss, Chicago. High-powered litigation boutique that beats larger firms by finding the uniquely creative, winning strategy.

Our name is easy to remember. Our work is hard to forget.™

Bryant Miller Olive, Florida. A finance-oriented firm using an “Olive”-themed campaign to generate name recognition (See www.bmolaw.com)

Putting Imagination to Work.™

Shefsky & Froelich, Chicago. An innovative full-service law firm whose culture teaches its lawyers to find the unique solution to its clients’ problems.

Product LiABILITY™

Carlton Fields, Florida. National products liability-specific practice campaign for prominent Florida-based firm.

Ready for Trial.™

Murphy & Hourihane, Chicago. Trial-oriented litigation boutique that declares that they are “Ready for trial” in nearly the first court status call.

Fewer Lawyers. Bigger Impact.™

Massey & Gail, Chicago/DC. Dynamic litigation boutique intending to stay small and highly skilled, with minimal leverage.

Bug Law™

Crosslin Slaten & O’Connor, Alabama. Full-service firm that targeted and dominated the pest control industry.

The Label is as Important as Your Wine.™

FB Rice, Australia. IP practice, brand-protection for the Australian wine industry.

Lawyers You Want to Know.™

Gordon Arata, Louisiana/Texas. Full-service firm with a friendly, client-oriented culture. They handle tough litigation cases, but their clients love them.

Extremely Floridian™

Gray Robinson, Florida. Full-service firm with statewide coverage, and a unique understanding of Florida.

For Litigation Results. Come to our House.™

Hinkhouse Williams Walsh, Chicago. Experienced litigation boutique, building name recognition around its unique name.

Built for Speed.™

Levenfeld Pearlstein, Chicago. Aggressive, full-service firm with especially dynamic leadership.

Vedder Price. Vedder Equipped.™

Vedder Price, Chicago/NY/DC. Practice-specific name-reinforcing campaign for one of the world’s leading Global Transportation Finance practices.

The Lettuce Lawyers.™

Noland Hamerly, California. Full-service firm’s targeted agricultural industry campaign.

We make the complex simple.™

Segal McCambridge, Chicago. National class action defense firm that emphasizes winning at trial by simplifying the issues for the juries in complicated cases.

Consider whether your tag line is equally applicable to your competitors. If it is, your marketing is wasting an opportunity. Take a step back, rethink your strategy, and focus on a message that helps you stand out and achieve measurable ROI for your marketing investment.

MAY 4 UPDATE:

Honored to have been picked up in Non-Sequiturs: 05.04.11 by the must-read Above The Law Blog:

“* Law firm taglines. If I had a firm, mine would be: “If I wouldn’t vote for you, I sure as hell won’t represent you.” But that’s probably why I don’t have a firm. [Ross's Law Marketing Blog]“

A number of years ago, after speaking on marketing and branding at an association of court reporters, we’d received a lot of interest in developing some brand-related ads for smaller, local and regional court reporting companies.

There were a few large national companies that were consolidated collections of smaller companies, but much of the industry was small local companies that couldn’t afford to create the high-quality marketing materials used by the national giants.

At the request of a number of smaller court reporting companies, we developed a series of visually interesting ads and materials with headlines that could be tailored to help smaller firms convey their message and differentiation, like this Steno version.  We license them locally, providing one cost-effective solution to one of their marketing challenges. Here’s one below.  Others are online here. 

If you’re interested in learning more about them, or possibly using them to market your own court reporting service, please contact Ross Fishman at 1-947.432.3546 or moc.gnitekramnamhsifnull@ssor.

Ads and images (c) Copyright 2012 Fishman Marketing, Inc.  All rights reserved.

“Defense Lawyers.  Defense Leaders.”

We developed an integrated marketing campaign for FDCC, the Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel.  It’s an international honorary association of 1,000 of the absolute best defense litigators and in-house professionals.  ”From the courthouse and in-house.”

It’s an astonishingly credentialed organization; I’m not sure the CIA vets its spies as vigorously or rigorously as the FDCC does its members.

There are a handful of these types of groups, and many of them look somewhat alike.  The challenge is to figure out the difference, and market it effectively.  One of the problems is its tag line, although technically accurate, is a bit more descriptive than memorable.  Here’s what they had been using: 

“An organization of recognized leaders in the legal community dedicated to representation of insurers and corporations.”

Technically accurate, but a bit generic, and entirely too bland for a dynamic group like this. 

Instead, we’ve recommended, “Defense Lawyers.  Defense Leaders.”

Four words. Alliterative.  And it says who they are, what they do, how they do it, and includes both the lawyers and litigation managers who may not be lawyers, but are leaders nonetheless. 

Pretty good, we think.

There’s a lot more to this campaign we’ll write about later.  But this is a nice start.

I have to say, if I need a litigator in some geographic area where I don’t know someone, I’d look hard at the FDCC member.  They’ve vetted their members far beyond the ability of any individual client or prospect to have done so.  We just need to tell their story more visibly – it’s pretty compelling. 

Not only do they ask for references, they seek information from the judges they’ve practiced in front of, the opposing counsel they’ve tried cases against, co-counsel, clients…  They send dozens of letters seeking comment – often over 100 or 200 distinct communications looking for feedback.  No, really. They’ll send as many as 200 info-seeking letters, calls, and emails to judges, former clients, etc.

I’m only glad my wife didn’t seek this enhanced level of scrutiny before saying “I do.”

At Fishman Marketing, we’ve been pretty proud of our work over the years.  We’ve represented hundreds of firms in integrated, multi-faceted marketing campaigns — powerful differentiation programs that helped firms of all shapes and sizes dominate their chosen practice, industry, or geographic markets.

Websites, micro-sites, print and electronic advertising campaigns, SEO and social media, public relations — soup to nuts.

Click here to take a look — see if something relates to your firm’s particular situation.  You can sort the results 20 different ways, e.g.:

• tool (e.g. website, advertisement),
• type of project (branding, recruiting, new-office),
• culture/style (e.g. edgy),
• type of firm or practice (litigation, boutique, international),
• industry (oil and gas, forestry, pest control)
• and many more.

All of them come with some background information to put them into context.

Browse around, see if any get your creative juices flowing.  And if you want to discuss them in greater detail (no secrets, obviously), give us a call, any time.

Possibly the best lawyers we’ve ever worked for.

We absolutely love these guys.

The water you’ve been drinking.  And cooking your spaghetti in.  And bathing your children in. And actually, it’s been toxic for maybe 20 years, and your own government knew about it, but never told you.

More poor families are getting help who would otherwise have had no recourse. (They’re usually poor neighborhoods.  As Shawn Collins says, “Rich people don’t have landfills in their backyards.”)

One of the draft ad concepts.

In this branding overhaul, we gave them the TPL name, developed their branding message and strategy, designed the visual platform and a couple different targeted ad campaigns.

We developed their logo/identity, created both a blog and website, handled their public relations, and developed a business-development strategy to get them into social-media conversations with the aggrieved homeowners.

Sure, as a marketing firm, it’s a win for Fishman Marketing every time one of our law firm clients get hired to handle a big piece of litigation, or prominent corporate transaction, or see their revenues skyrocket.

But when Shawn Collins, Norm Berger, Ed Manzke, or Mike Hayes get hired, it means that potentially dozens or hundreds of families won’t be breathing polluted air in their own homes or drinking polluted water much longer.

Sure, we love all of our clients and value the work that they do.

But c’mon, these guys are special. Spread the word.

What’s nice about eye-track testing is that it shows precisely what grabs your viewers’ attention, what they see, in what order, and how long they linger at each point.

That’s incredibly powerful data.
Litigators don’t guess in important cases what’s going to work with the jury, they find out — they conduct jury research. Then they use that data to improve their results. Of course, that’s not to minimize the significant value of decades of hands-on experience. But when you can get accurate data, use it.
Market research is expensive; it’s not possible in many situations. But when it’s cost-effective, it can take something great and make it even better.

So here are two website designs we developed for 250-lawyer Vedder Price, two different ways to convey the same message regarding the firm’s new London office and English-Law Aviation Finance lawyers, see GlobalTransportationFinance.com. (We wrote in detail about this last week, including showing the integrated campaigns tools, including ads, websites, etc. Click here, then scroll down to see it all.)

The website design one on the left (“HATS”) has a big photo that is more visually interesting, and the overall campaign is designed to be a tad more humorous. The right website (“ICONS”) also has a strong conceptually theme in the Hero/Banner section, but is more focused on the content. (The six ads supporting these two examples are shown at the bottom of the same link.)

In our experience, both would work great, easily achieving the firm’s goals. But which one accomplish those goals more effectively? Testing can help you find out. Here’s how:

In the highly visual one on the left, the vibrant Beefeater hat is what you see first (see “Fixation Order” graphic), which holds viewers’ attention for an average of 5.5 seconds (see “Average Time Spent…”), before they get to the headline, which they read for 1.5 seconds. In the version on the right, they go straight to the critical headline.
What’s also important is that although 100% of the viewers saw the big black hat, only 81% noticed the headline below it (see “Percentage Seen…” below).

That indicates that if we selected the “Hats” version we should probably enlarge the headline, (which would likely cause our designers to complain just a bit about hurting their aesthetic. Well… tough.) Contrast that with the overwhelming 96% who read the headline in the “Icons” design on the right.

In both layouts the firm name is the third place viewers’ eyes go. Excellent.
In the “Icons” design, the important content headline, “Vedder Price’s New London Office” is the fourth visual point, and viewers spent 2.5 seconds reading it, then spent 4 seconds scanning the supporting News paragraph. That’s good.

In the “Hats” layout, the actual information we want them to remember is not noticed until the SEVENTH Fixation Point. This layout takes a bit too long to get to the real information, and we risk losing the viewers before they learn what we want them to know.

When the viewers DID get to that paragraph on the “Hats” design (left), they only spent a scant 2.5 seconds reading it. Contrast that to the “Icons” layout (right), where they stayed for 4 seconds — spending substantially more time reading that same paragraph.

What’s the point?
Great web design doesn’t just make something attractive. It makes it effective.

Which website design works better?

We’re using some pretty amazing technology to (1) help select the most effective campaign, (2) ensure that viewers focus on our message, and (3) optimize the design and layout.  Check this out:

Here’s the story: These two home pages are intended to help the same firm convey the same message, they just use different visuals and layouts.

If your firm had to choose between the two designs below, which would you select?  How would you know if you were making the right decision?

Two finalist campaigns. Both effective — which would work better?

Does this help?

Now let’s take a closer look at that heat map.  It shows what caught the viewers’ attention, where their gazes lingered, and for how long. It provides concrete data of whether your message is getting through.  (Fishman Marketing is the only firm in the legal profession using this new eye-tracking technology to test ads, marketing campaigns, and websites.)

Here are the comparative Opacity Maps:

These are just the home page designs — a critical element in a comprehensive, multi-faceted marketing campaign designed to convey a message and achieve a specific goal. These two designs are simply visually different ways of conveying the same strategic message.What’s the intended message? Very simply: “Vedder Price opened a new London office supporting its Aviation Finance practice.” Vedder Price is a 250-attorney full-service Chicago-based law firm with offices in NY and DC. Within this firm is one of the world’s leading Transportation and Equipment Finance practices. Two prominent Aviation Finance partners (Gavin and Derek) and five associates, all from Magic Circle firms, would be joining Vedder Price and opening its new London office, particularly to support the Global Transportation Finance (GTF) group. (More info here.)

To convey this information quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively, Vedder needed an integrated program, using a variety of traditional and online marketing tools.

We had just three weeks to develop and launch the entire campaign…

Working closely with Erin Veazey, the firm’s terrific Director of Business Development, we developed six different campaigns for their numerous target audiences.  Consider, the practice has a complex interlaced variety of audiences — internal and external, client and prospect, US/UK/international, general and aviation industry.  Each target requires different information and amounts of detail.

We had previously worked with the GTF group to develop industry-specific campaigns for each of their specialty asset-finance areas, aviation, maritime, railcar, and general equipment (below).  These were designed to run in narrow industry publications, which are saturated with each industry’s stereotypes.  Like gavels, columns, and skylines in legal publications, ads in aircraft publications are all illustrated by planes.

Therefore, we simply referenced the industry while creatively going the opposite direction — showing the contrail instead of the plane.  In rail publications, we showed the tracks, not the train. Etc.

The Aviation Finance ad:

Headline: “Leasing aircraft doesn’t have to be done on a wing and a prayer.”

The Maritime Finance and Railcar Finance ads:

In launching new offices or practices, a firm’s existing website will often suffice, perhaps simply adding a new section or landing page to showcase the new information.  Here the firm’s website would not work.  It was too traditional and US-focused, and listed Aviation Finance as one of over 230 identified practice areas.  They were updating the site, but it wouldn’t be done in time for this launch.

Although Vedder’s GTF practice was large and well known (led by Dean Gerber, one of the best lawyers in the business) they were competing against big-name global law firms typically ten times their size, e.g. Clifford Chance or Clyde & Co., which had dozens of international offices.

The Firm’s Existing Website

This launch required a tailored Aviation- and London-focused approach.  When you’re the smaller firm, you have more to prove; you must do all the little things well.  And we could control the variables if we controlled the process and materials.  This was critical because time was of the essence.

One campaign, “Hats,” was humorous and visually powerful, while still appropriate and professional. It was built off of stereotypic English “hats” like a British bowler, Beefeater hat, or Queen’s crown.  We really liked this campaign; we knew its strong, unique look would cut through the clutter, quickly grab readers’ attention, and be easily remembered.Further, the airplane contrails in the background supported the visibility they’d previously earned with their existing GTF Aviation campaign (above).  (The queen/crown one made us smile.)  This campaign would clearly jump off the page as a magazine ad, but was it right for the group’s central website?

The other finalist, “Icons,” was clever but more traditional, using simple, similarly shaped, juxtaposed icons from both sides of The Pond, like the Brooklyn Bridge and London Bridge, or the Statue of Liberty and Big Ben.  A plane icon visually connected them, highlighting the aviation industry, headline, and London-office message.

That is, when we test our advertising or marketing campaigns or websites, we want to see what actually works, not what people say works.  I want data, not opinions.

So we conducted cutting-edge eye-track testing on both designs, to see what people were looking at.  What grabbed their attention first?  In what order did they look at the various design elements, and how long did they linger on each?  Were they looking where we intended them to look?  Participants can’t fudge this data.  We’re offering this with ALL new Fishman Marketing marketing campaigns and websites.  It’s incredibly powerful.

 

Below is the Fixation Order – showing what grabbed their attention first, second, and so on.

 You can see that in the Icons design on the right, viewers read the all-important headline first.

Next week in a related post, I’ll discuss how long viewers lingered on various sections, what it means, and how the different campaigns tested in terms of Creativity, Professionalism, Trust and other adjectives, as well as technical skills, and how this information helped us tweak the effectiveness of the final site.