Marketing

A lawyer is sitting in his office when suddenly out of nowhere Satan appears. “Lets make a deal” Satan says to the lawyer. “I will make you the best lawyer in the country. You will never lose a case again, within 5 years you will have your own firm, be earning more than a million bucks a year. You will have a mansion in LA, a summer house in the Hamptons and a chalet in the Swiss Alps. you’re friends will be the most rich and powerful people in the nation and no one will ever be able to screw you over or talk down to you again. All I ask in return is your soul and the souls of your wife, your children, your children’s children and your dog.” The lawyer thinks about it for a second, looks over at Satan and says, “So what’s the catch?”

We’ve all heard our fair share of lawyer jokes like the one above. Jokes that depict lawyers as dishonest, disliked or just downright scumbags. Jokes that are based around society’s general consensus that lawyers are only concerned with screwing people over in the quest for ever growing fees.A nationwide survey conducted by Columbia Law School found that Americans think Lawyers are dishonest and overpaid. It also found that almost half of us believe that lawyers do more harm than good.

But once upon a time this was not the case. Years ago lawyers were seen as a integral part of the community; champions of justice who sought to protect individual liberties and fight corporate greed. Nowadays though lawyers have become part of this very same greed. Today when you say the word ‘lawyer’ or ‘attorney’ to someone the image that likely comes to mind is of the typical roadside billboard featuring the local attorney-at-law. This idea of lawyers marketing their skills is not a new idea, but its adoption into the industry has led to an explosion of advertising in the law industry.

So what led to the advertising boom in the legal profession? The causes are varied and arguable, but incread competition due to a rapid rise in law graduates called for law firms to raise their public profiles. towns which used to have only one lawyer may now feature several small firms, each with their own specialty. The legal profession responded to the changing environment in quite a typical fashion. Firms specialised, streamlining the services they offer. They focused on improving efficiency, creating supply chains which utilised lower paid employees such as graduates and paralegals to minimise costs. Heavy advertising campaigns across a variety of mass media are used today by large firms who operate more and more like corporations and less like the partnership structure that typifies the legal profession.

Marketing has become increasingly important in the highly competitive legal services industry. The 90’s saw the explosion of the class action lawsuit. Attorneys, which their new business awareness, began to create their own work by seeking out bad products which have had adverse affects on a large number of people, mass advertising to get as many plaintiff’s on board, then suing the producer of the product, often taking as much as 30 percent of the compensation award.

So what does the future hold for lawyers? Like many industries, lawyers are seeing the benefits of the concept of ‘social marketing’. They are looking more at creating strong, positive images that stand out from the sea of distrust that is the legal profession, marketing on a more personal level. More and more law firms are becoming socially aware, sponsoring community events, offering pro bono services and getting involved in long term social issues. Indeed it may be possible that in ten years the image of the typical lawyer may no longer be that of the souless profiteer but more of the traditional image of a pillar in society. But no matter what their image, one thing is certain; as long as people are suing, lawyers will be there. As the old saying goes, not one wins in court, except the lawyers.

Anyone that has been to Whistler on a regular basis over the last few years may have noticed a certain trend developing. The guy telling you where to park your car, the liftie and your waitress at the Spagetti Factory have one thing in common. Chances are; they’re Australian. It has reached the point in the last few years where Aussies (and too some extent, Kiwis, but most people can’t tell them apart, so for the purpose of this article, I’m grouping them both into the category of Aussies) are taking over Whistler. Why exactly is this?

Its certainly not the closest ski resort to Australia. Many people may be suprised to learn that Australia does in fact have snow – enough to support a burgeoning ski resort industry. However the snow fall is meagre in North American Standards. Australia’s largest resort Thredbo has only 14 lifts and an annual average snowfall of 2 metres. New Zealand on the other hand has double the annual snowfall and world class ski facilities. In the last couple years direct flights have opened up between Queenstown and Sydney, with prices starting as low as $100 a flight. Queenstown also offers a raft of other high octane activities and is known as the ‘adventure sport capital of the world.

If this isn’t enough Japan, which arguably has the best powder in the world is only a 9 hour flight away and costs less than half the price. So why is it that Aussie’s feel the need to fork out $2000+ to fly halfway around the world to Canada so they can fall into what is becoming known as the Jafa hole (Just Another F’ing Australian); Whistler.

A strong reason for this could be due to the new working visa that Canada made available to young Australians, which allows them a two year working holiday, which can be renewed upon expiration. But the visa itself is not responsible for the 600 odd Australian’s that now call Whistler their temporary home. The reason for this lies with the raft of travel companies that saw the opportunity and set up unique working holiday packages that take the hassle out of setting up a job, accommodation and sorting out visas, making it easier than ever for young Aussies looking for a break to simply hop on a plane and spend a season or two on the slopes.

One such company who has seen great success in their working holiday program is Overseas Working Holidays, a subsidiary of Flight Centre. This company bases its success on being able to guarantee it’s clients a pre-arranged job. The reason they have been able to do this is due to their strong relationships they have built with all of the major ski resorts in Canada over the last 10 years. Their strategy involved developing an initial screening process, so that ski resorts can have some level of assurance of the employees that OWH supplies them with. This unique idea of combining a travel agency with an employment agency is, although not unique, one of the key components of the success of OWH.

The success of the overseas working holiday program is not due to any single factor. Australia, with its uniquely high minimum wages and strong unskilled job market, has seen the creation of a market segment of cashed-up youth looking to take advantage of their good fortune while the folks are still available as a base when they return from overseas broke and exhausted. This in turn was based on cultural right of passage of young Australian’s to get out and see the world; a legacy of the baby boomer generation who were known around the world for their friendly disposition and fearless attitudes to life. The success of OWH was based on their positioning: They recognised the segment as a potential market, targeted it and positioned themselves to connect this market with a product which they sought. Indeed the good fortune of OWH was simply good marketing.

To read more about the explosion of Aussies in Whistler, check out this article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/7242206/Whistler-Australias-best-ski-resort.html

In the 1980’s the Government of New South Wales in Australia launched an ad campaign to combat smoking. It was not their first ad campaign to target smoking, but it was unique. Previous campaigns that had been based on traditional methods of advertising had failed to have an impact on the number of people smoking cigarettes.  The title of the campaign was ‘Kiss a Non Smoker, Enjoy the Difference!’. So why was it so successful? Where had it achieved where previous campaigns had failed?

This campaign employed a new style of marketing which aimed to achieve specific behavioural goals for a social good. This is known as the Social Marketing Concept. In the 1970’s social marketing was introduced to the western world in a publication called “Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change” in the Journal of Marketing by  Philip Kotler and Gerald Zaltman. It was quickly adopted by Governments around the world to help implement social change.

After the success of the Kiss a Non Smoker campaign the Victorian Government adopted a similar technique to combat the rising costs of road accidents by launching an anti drink driving campaign. They employed a social idiom in the slogan “”If you drink, then drive, your a bloody idiot” in attempt to create a stigma surrounding drink driving.

The success of the campaign was attributed in part to the market research that was undertaken. Social marketing relies on understanding the target audience, through the use of formative research into product and message design. In Australia the word ‘bloody’ has strong connotations, and is often used to emphasise the extent of something – “It’s bloody hot out”, “He’s a bloody good player”, these are acceptable and widely employed phrases in Australian culture. Hence social marke

ting is intrinsically linked to the breadth of understanding of the audience’s culture.

It is vitally important that marketing companies carefully analyse their target market for these subtle cultural differences when employing this marketing strategy. As discussed in a fellow UBC student’s blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/midgley/2010/09/30/countless-cross-cultural-quirks/ different expressions,  words and even colours can mean vastly different things in different societies, and thus must be understood in order to launch a successful campaign. A great example of a failure to do this was the 2006 ad campaign to boost Australian tourism. The ad, which was launched around the world, featured a blonde ‘occa’ Australian girl in a bikini shouting “so where the bloody hell are you?”. The ad caused controversy in many countries, as the marketers failed to understand the difference in meaning of the word ‘bloody’.

This technique of marketing is not limited to a broad cultural target market. A recent campaign to combat speeding and ‘hooning‘ in young people in Australia had great success, much of which was attributed to the analysis and research that was undertaken by the marketing team. The 2007 campaign, entitled ‘Speeding: No One Thinks Big of You’ was constructed in a way that reflected a car ad, featuring the popular Holden Commodore.

This idea of disguising a social message in what looks like an ad has been done before. Only a few years before, the NSW government used close ups on a new car and of the driver (a young man) smiling as he enjoyed his drive around long windy roads, before suddenly colliding with a truck. This ‘shock’ tactic has also proved to be successful in Australia, which has developed a level of ‘immunity’ to social marketing.

Social marketing continues to take on many different forms as Governments and community bodies face  new issues with growing complexity. A prominent Australian economist, Steve Keen, recently proposed that a campaign be undertaken to combat the ‘debt epidemic’ which he argues has encompassed our society. In his blog he compares the use of ad campaigns by banks to give debt a ‘sexy’ image, just as the tobacco companies did to cigarettes, and urges that governments must take steps to counter this image through the use of social marketing.

Indeed as governments adopt more pluralist business models in their functions social marketing should become more prolific and advanced. But this raises the question, will it reach a point where we will simply be immune to its messages? This is a troubling question that will only be answered in time.

In this weeks episode of COMM296, we learnt about social reference groups and the consumer decision process. According to marketers, we are all pre programmed to absorb information, process it based on the perceived benefits and costs, external influences and psychological needs, then decide after we’ve bought the product whether or not it was a smart move. Indeed it seems that in order to have a successful product all you need is a good marketing team. In the same way that Don Draper and his team sell their ad ideas to the very people that are paying for it, so that they can in turn push their products onto the masses.

But we all know this is not the case. Not usually anyway. I mean we’ve all at some point or another been enticed to make an impulse buy based on a flashy ad or charming sales person, only to instantly regret it once we’d bought it. And this is the point. In the world of marketing today, we are not simply looking to get as many people to buy our product as possible. Sure, boosting sales is still a great way to please the man, but the real world of modern marketing is about building a brand name, instilling a sense of attachment in the purchaser, focusing on the post purchase evaluation rather than just the selling point. Indeed in today’s world we are all defined by the purchases we make. We dress, smell, eat, drink, watch, read and listen to different brands, we interact in ways influenced by these brands and in turn influence others, becoming cogs in the giant marketing machine that drives our society. It used to be said that we are what we eat. But this no longer rings true. Instead, we have now become an amalgamation of our favourite products. We eat what we are.

Some might say that this is not a good thing. Some might even say that this is evil, the product of corporate giants interested only in maximising their share price at the cost of debasing society. But I think the people that say this are failing to see the big picture. Society is driven by people’s attitudes and perceptions of others. It is how we define what is right and what is wrong, what is favourable for society and what is not. If a brand builds its reputation on sucking people in to buying its product, then that brand has acted myopically, and its strategy, like that of the ad men of the 1960’s, will fail to instil in its buyers a sense of value, fail to build a psychological connection with the consumer, and will eventually fail. But what of all the products, I hear people scream, that are bad for us, yet which we are compelled to keep on buying, despite the adverse affects these products have on us? How come McDonalds, which has absolutely no nutritional value, is one of the recognisable brands in the world? How come cigarette companys, despite all the health warnings, have continued to rake in revenue? The answer is simple. These brands, like society, are created by people. People who make up their own mind about the costs and benefits. These people can only be influenced, the final decision to continue to buy a product is completely up to them. Remember, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

Whats the first thing that comes to mind when you think of marketing? Is it  the competitive world of marketing in the big apple in the 1950’s, as seen in Mad Men? Or is it the generic door to door salesmen that harrasses you on a Saturday morning, pushing the latest Duster Buster 2000 or ergonomic slide-away chair? Or have you already sat through COMM296 and now have a greater understanding of the great force of advertising and brand awareness built on long term customer relationships? Whatever it is, nothing can change the fact that the world of Mad Men, although extinct today, still makes for exciting viewing.