Branding As A Strategic Asset

Originally Published in: Strategies

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It happened innocently enough. In meeting with the California litigation firm of Haight Brown & Bonesteel, we were asked by partners what they could do to tell their buying public exactly what they did. Along the way, they wanted to be certain to distinguish their firm from its competitors. We discussed the value of positioning or message development exercise to help hone their strategy.

But we also discussed how a formalized branding process could help them identify their unique essence in a much broader, more strategic way. We explained that branding, while more time-consuming and expensive, was the most strategic way to move their firm ahead. At the same time, we explained that message development and positioning efforts, while less comprehensive, could still be helpful. The firm, they said, wanted to do things right. They decided to launch a full-scale branding process.

Months later, we can report that the initiative is a success. Haight Brown & Bonesteel is the midst of implementing its brand essence internally. So far, the partners and associates have been integrally involved in internalizing the brand. This process has increased motivation, camaraderie, and willingness to look at different marketing concepts. In 1999, the firm will likely begin the externalization of its brand.

Can the branding process work for your law firm? It may. Or it may not. Although a branding strategy exists, it may not be the right strategy for many firms.

What Makes a Great Brand?

Certainly, every firm that decides to move ahead with a branding process will find the process that works best for it. Different marketing folks will have different methods. Yet in our study, we learned that great brands have several characteristics in common.

Scott Bedbury, best known for creating Nikes' "Just Do It" campaign and now a senior vice president at Starbucks, has identified eight characteristics of a great brand. If your firm is considering creating its brand, these characteristics can serve as a guide. Because whether your brand is sneakers or coffee or lawyers, your unique essence makes it happen.

1. A Great Brand Is In It For the Long Haul - In an age of enormous choice for both retail and commercial consumers of goods and services and growing clutter in the business marketplace, a great brand is a necessity, not a luxury. If you take the long-term approach, a great brand can travel worldwide, transcend cultural barriers, speak to multiple client segments simultaneously, and let you operate at the higher end of the positioning spectrum-- where you can earn solid margins over the long term.

In the law firm world, this is also one reason why some firms may fail at branding. While a firm may be in it for the long haul, management changes a great deal. And with change come new and different ideas for what the unique essence of a firm may be.

2. A Great Brand Can Be Anything - Some categories lend themselves to branding better than others, but anything is brandable. Nike, for example, leveraged the deep emotional connection that people have with sports and fitness. In contrast, the legal community has for years resisted the concept of branding. Somehow it seems inconsistent to be able to brand soup and lawyers. But when you look at branding as a simple exercise in finding a unique essence, it can be accomplished.

3. A Great Brand Knows Itself - Anyone who wants to build a great brand has to first understand who they are. The starting point is identifying the unique essence of the product, the company, or the law firm. Then that essence should be tested against how the consuming public for that product or service perceives it, what they like or dislike about the brand, and what they associate as the very core of the brand concept.

Here is another reason why branding is difficult for law firms. One practice area might indeed know itself and its unique essence. Another area of the same firm might have a completely different essence. The inability to understand the common threads that link the entire firm have hampered lawyers for years. It will make branding impossible for many.

4. A Great Brand Invents or Reinvents an Entire Category - The common goal you find among brands like Disney, Apple, Nike, Arthur Andersen, and Starbucks, is that these companies made it an explicit goal to be the protagonists for each of their entire categories. Disney is the protagonist for fun family entertainment and family values. Apple was the protagonist for the individual: anyone could be more productive, informed, and contemporary. In these cases, the brand transcends movies or computers. A great brand raises the bar-- it adds a greater sense of purpose to the product or service experience.

5. A Great Brand Taps Into Emotion - Everyone wants their product or service to be the best in its class. But the common ground among companies that have built great brands is not just performance. They recognize that consumers-- including buyers of legal services-- live in an emotional world. Emotions drive most, if not all, of our decisions. Not many people sit around talking about the flow of language in a contract, but they will sit around and talk about Michael Jordan's winning shot in a playoff game. Thats what a great brand does. It reaches out with a powerful connecting experience.

Now in the legal world, most lawyers are taught that logic is good and emotion is bad. If you want to go to branding, lawyers have to rethink or otherwise ignore many of the assumptions learned in law school about emotion.

6. A Great Brand Is a Story That is Not Completely Told - A brand is a story that's evolving all the time. In law firms that story is not about how it was founded. Instead, law firms need to turn their intellectual telescopes inward to understand how that story can be the foundation for an evolving story.

7. A Great Brand Has Design Consistency - This, of course, is obvious. That great design can bring a brand to life goes without saying. And for many law firms this lesson has been learned-- to have a consistent look and feel and a high level of design integrity.

8. A Great Brand is Relevant - A brand is not trendy. Trendy things fail over time. The larger idea for a brand is to be relevant. It meets what people want; it performs the way people want it to. For law firms, that means being in touch with clients and constantly understanding their changing needs.

Done right, branding becomes the centerpiece of a strategic marketing plan. This allows the firm to weave the brand essence into all facets of a marketing program including internal communication, external communication, training, technology, advertising, public relations, responses to proposals and competitions, and all collateral materials. Let's face it-- branding... it's not just for cows anymore!

To Contact Merry Neitlich: merry@extrememarketing.org To contact Anne Gallagher: anne@extrememarketing.org