Your clients don't need you. And that's OK.

Great article at Fast Company by the founder of Jones Soda, Peter van Stolk. It's an entertaining and very different article to read if you're mostly reading HBR and Fortune and Money Magazine these days. The part you should definitely check out is where Stolk talks about how consumers don't really need what we marketers keep trying to convince them they do.  Stolk says:

...a lot of time, business people, marketers convince themselves that people need their stuff. They're passionate about how you need my new widget. You need it! The fact is, you don't need it! And as soon as you get off the fact that you don't need it you become, in my opinion, you become a better marketer, you get a better understanding of your customer. You're not listening to your customer when you tell them, "You need me." You listen to you customers when you say, "You really don't need me." Coca-Cola sold 500 million cans of soda yesterday. I think a consumer can find a cold beverage somewhere if they really need to. Let's just get this stuff clear. Clearly, let's call an ace an ace. Nobody's going to lose any sleep, no one's going to get dehydrated.

We like to believe that what we're selling -- whether we're marketers or lawyers -- is somehow unique. And usually it ain't.  In the legal world, especially, all lawyers should be providing a service that helps clients adheres to and understand the law, which is entirely and completely identical for everyone in a particular jurisdiction.  So, as far as the law goes, a lawyer is a lawyer is a lawyer, Right? How, then, do you differentiate? Well, Stolk and I agree on how to do that too....

This is a slightly subtle and often confused point about branding. Lots of junior-birdman marketing types will tell you that branding is about "finding your unique value proposition and communicating it clearly to your audience." That's fine, if you actually have a unique value proposition. In the case of flavored bubbly water and legal service, I'd argue that the value proposition from one competitor to another isn't particularly unique. In these cases, the task of brand management is to CREATE unique emotional value as part of the value proposition.

See the difference? Not "find" but "create." Brand is the equivalent of personality. You don't "find" a personality, you work on it. You create it, over the course of your life. If you really want someone to like you who doesn't at first, you have to really work on it. Maybe take a dance class or spend some time in front of a mirror practicing that one-eyebrow thing.

Stolk puts it this way:

Great brands are built because people are passionate about them... The very first case of Jones Soda went to the founder of Nike, Phil Knight.... One of the things about Jones Soda, I always viewed Jones as an accessory. So when we looked at companies to emulate, we never looked at beverage companies. It doesn't make any sense. If I'm trying to be a leader in a category...I don't care what anybody does in the beverage industry. I really don't. ...You have to know what they're doing, but you don't have to follow what they're doing.

If you don't like Jones Soda, if you're not into it, I don't give a rat's ass. I'm not going to change my formula to please you. That's a very profound statement because if you talk to companies today, they say the customer's always right. Well, no. Forget that. The customer's not always right. If you are always trying to cater to all of the customers you have, you have no soul. You have to define yourself.

You're always going to piss people off. We had people pissed off that we had a salt and pepper shaker on our label, because they said it was promoting "racial commingling." You are an idiot. It's a salt and pepper shaker...Now do I have a kid being beaten? No. I had a salt and pepper shaker.

A great brand is going to evoke passion. You're going to love it or hate it. And I'm good with that. I'm good with people loving us. And I'm good with people hating us.

That kind of branding will evoke passion and will develop brand loyalty that provides real value to the company. How many times have I heard of law firms asking "What are other firms doing in this area?" or "What's the average spending by firms for marketing?" It's a giant pack mentality that assures you nothing except that you won't stand out at all from the mob.

How far out should you go? That depends on how risky you want to be. As recently as ten or twenty years ago (and maybe even still today...) there were firms who thought that having printed business cards for their attorneys was "too risky." It made their lawyers seem like brazen business hussies, out clamoring for work. Real lawyers didn't scrabble on the streets for cases. Anyone who needed a lawyer knew where to go for quality representation, and the devil take the hindmost.

And today? What's "too risky" today for a firm looking to build a world-class brand?  I'd make the case that not building your brand is the biggest risk you can take. And if a few people think that the salt and pepper shakers in your ad are promoting "racial comingling," well those are probably clients you could do better without anyways.