Advertising v. Public Relations

By: Burkey Belser and Richard S. Levick, Esq. |  8/2002

If you were given a hypothetical $250,000 to spend on law firm advertising and public relations this year, how would you spend it? On one or the other or both?

There will always be too few dollars and too many marketing opportunities on your wish list—even for KPMG which allegedly spent $60 million on marketing in 2000 or Accenture which spent $90 million in 2001. How do you determine your marketing priorities?

The easy answer is to spend your marketing budget on a broad mix of tactics that include advertising and public relations. The harder question is how you determine the strategy behind the tactics. You need to abide by ground rules in order to spend effectively:

"Life today is about selling: selling products, selling ideas, selling ourselves. Selling is the language of our time and advertising is its boldest manifestation. Like it or not, it is a pure expression of the world we live in today."
- Bernice Kanner, Author, The 100 Best TV Commercials

Expectations and Budgets Must Meet:

All things are possible in marketing, but budgets and expectations must be compatible. Howrey Simon was able to shock the law firm world a decade ago with an advertising and public relations budget of less than half the sum outlined in this article. Since that time the legal market has become far too cluttered for this amount of money to result in marketing that turns anyone's head. Brobeck spent around $7 million last year on all of its marketing, which included television advertisements revolutionary in the legal market. The results got the law firm world talking, and, with the likely return of a second technology boom (slower and wiser this time), will prove to be a precedent-setting marketing foundation for the legal industry. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars will not buy the results it did a decade ago.

Advertising—Be Direct and Communicate a Single Message:

In 1998, in a one-second commercial, a bullet pierced but could not break open a Master Lock. The message had been delivered. Law firms want to tell readers in their advertisements everything about themselves. Who cares? Advertising permits only enough time to get across a single idea. Make that idea the distinguishing characteristic that separates you from the competition.

Public Relations—Begin the Dialogue with Groups of Buyers:

Advertising communicates an overarching message to buyers. Public relations provides the opportunity to communicate how you solve buyers' problems to individual groups and industries. Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue can advertise itself as a global law firm, but its public relations efforts in Europe—which soon had it listed as the number two global law firm in London—started by focusing on a single group of buyers: tax. Prospective buyers don't care to read feature articles about law firms. They want to read about what solves their pressing problem. That's how to get their attention. Advertising, features and other marketing tactics have greater likelihood of piercing buyer consciousness if they believe what you have to say is important to them.

How do buyers buy?

Each day, we receive 3,000 to 5,000 messages, all of them competing for space in our memory. If we retain a half dozen, we've had a good day. We have all experienced the remarkable coincidence of seeing a band on television, only to soon find that their songs are on the radio "all of the time." This is the power of synergy. Buyers do not buy after a single marketing experience. Instead, they buy after they have received consistent messages reinforced in multiple ways -- by seeing an advertisement, reading an article, hearing a speech, receiving mail, eyeing a logo, obtaining a recommendation.

We do not market to get people to buy.

Marketing makes buyers more familiar and, as a result, more likely to be willing to let the lawyers get to the next stage—a telephone call or face-to-face meeting, with the listener and potential buyer thinking generally, "I've heard good things about them." No general counsel reads a single article or sees one advertisement and then has an "aha" experience declaring "This is my law firm!" Instead, marketing minimizes the chances the general counsel will unceremoniously say "no." The worst thing that can happen to a law firm that has finally made the short list is for the final arbiter to say "Who?" Research shows "familiarity" is consistently linked to "favorability."

Who are your buyers?

This is your communications target. The simple fact that most law firms organize by practice area rather than industry, says that law firms think like sellers, not buyers. Sellers focus on the needs of the firm and work to move inventory (read "billable hours"). Marketers focus on the needs of the buyers and organize their services around buyer needs. In most surveys, buyers of legal services—even sophisticated, world-class services—rarely talk about the quality of the work. Inevitably, buyers talk about the quality of the service because lawyers prove again and again they fail to understand buyer needs and values. Corporations survey customers frequently to sniff out trends, frustrations, enthusiasms. Law firms are still struggling to wrestle the rolodex away from individual lawyers.

What keeps your buyers up at night?

Too few lawyers read what their clients read and know what keeps their clients and prospects up at night. This is the opportunity. It tells you what you need to say (as opposed to, "We're smart and competitively priced lawyers who've been around a long time."). Research shows clients approach law firms wearing their industry hats. But few, if any, firms present industry focus, knowledge and awareness as part of their marketing pitch. Practice area focus—navel-gazing—rules.

What growing problem can your lawyers solve?

The old adage that clients come to law firms with business problems, not legal ones, is all too true. What problem do your lawyers solve? For what industries? What size firms? Where? With what unique challenges? Focus marketing on ascending markets where there is not an overabundance of competition and you have something differentiating to sell.

Richard S. Levick, Esq. is president of Levick Strategic Communications and can be reached at rlevick@levick.com. They have handled the media for more than 150 law firms worldwide.

Burkey Belser (bbelser@gbltd.com) is president and creative director of Greenfield/Belser, a brand design firm that has developed strategic marketing communications for over 200 law firms nationwide.