5 Surprising Lessons from the Most Repugnant Professional Services Marketing Ad Ever

A Little Bit of Discomfort Might Be Exactly What Your Marketing Needs to be Great

Before you dive into this week’s blog, I want you to stop and take a minute or so to view—from start to finish—this marketing communications gem from attorney Bryan Wilson, the Texas Law Hawk.

Once you’re done viewing, if you feel it necessary to run to the facilities and wash your eyes, by all means feel free to do so.

Oh. Two things to think about before you start: the piece was approved by the Texas Bar Association and it’s been viewed on You Tube about 1.4 million times.

Will Something Like This Work for Our Firm?

I would love to be a fly on the wall to be able to see you take an idea like the Texas Law Hawk piece, create some story boards, and pitch ideas like these to your Executive Team:

“I’m TONY AUDIT and I got yer FASB right here!!!! You call me in the next 5 minutes and I’ll give you our special two-for-one opinion pricing!”

“We take the SH out of IT when it comes to your computers!!! Call never-down always-up HANK “the GEEK” Byter right now!”

“You want staff training? WHIIIP!!! CRACKKK!!! You need certifications? WHIIIP!!! CRACKKK!!! I’m Debby the Drill Sergeant Licatto and I whip employees into shape!!”

For most of you this type of in your face / over the top marketing communications just isn’t going to work because it doesn’t fit the personality of your firm or the integrity of the brand you work so hard to build and maintain.

But instead of focusing on executions, production values or crude attempts at humor, maybe you should be discussing the strategy behind the ad. You just might find that there are lessons there that would, in fact, apply to your CPA, consulting or other type of professional service firm.

Think about this: What kind of new business opportunities would be created if you got 1.4 million (and growing) views on a piece of content published by your firm?

5 Marketing Lessons From the Law Hawk

I get it.

You don’t like the Hawk’s content and can’t possibly see something like that ever being done or even considered by your firm. Not a single one of our clients would go this route and even though we encourage them to think out of the box, the Hawk’s approach is way, way, way outside the box—even ours!

But I still think that there’s some value here and a few insights that could very well be appropriate and relevant for your firm:

1. Focus your communications and use the right combination of executions and channel distribution strategies on the type of persona and market segment that represent the greatest opportunity to make sales.
2. Don’t discount the value of social media for increasing your firm’s visibility and awareness.
3. You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money on production in order to create communications that get noticed.
4. Differentiate. Differentiate. Differentiate.
5. Fortune favors the bold.

The upshot is that you can do great, clever, compelling marketing that moves prospects to action without being in your face, but given the risk adverse personality of most professional service firms, that’s not a particularly easy task to do. If you have the right marketing team and agencies/advisors that want to move you out of your comfort zone, they’re probably doing their job.

It’s alright to feel a little uncomfortable.

The Most Repugnant Ad Ever?

Given all of the horrific, mind numbing, overly exposed ads from personal injury attorneys over the last 30 years or so, I don’t know if the Law Hawk’s excursion onto YouTube makes the all-time Repugnant Hall of Fame list or not. I’m not even sure where I could submit a nomination other than the court of public opinion.

It makes me wonder, however, if repugnancy works at the other end of the spectrum—professional service marketing that is so boring, so self-centered, so hubristic, and so poorly executed in terms of copy and imagery that it too deserves a nomination to the Hall. It’s one thing to protect the brand, but to do so at the expense of compelling and actionable communications is a wholly different and quite possibly a repugnant story, too.

The true test—do people living in Fort Worth that need a lawyer for a DUI defense pick up the phone and call Bryan Wilson?

Look to the skies.

If you see a young lawyer in a $3,000 suit being triumphantly ferried to Court by a flock of screeching red tailed hawks, the answer is probably yes.