January 24, 2006
Making a Law Firm Memorable with Logos and Names
Logos have been the hot topic for the last couple of weeks. In Search of the Perfect Client Services weighed in on Sunday continuing the dialogue among Dan Hull on his What About Clients?, Tom Kane in his Legal Market Blog, and numerous other bloggers as cited in one or more of the above three blog posts.
Logos and name recognition are closely related. I think the best logo is a stylized presentation of an organization’s name. That is tough to do if a law firm name consists of a never-ending string of partner names. Do you ever stop to think why these names work: Jones Day, Skadden Arps, etc? What about Morrison & Foerster, who have somehow turned themselves into “MoFo”. The above names or ”handles” are short and memorable. The idea behind a logo is to create a mental and verbal image to help consumers recognize a company's products.
When it comes to a law firm, name recognition has to be targeted. Pursuing a niche market is a strategy for gaining dominance—something that experts like Peter Drucker would say is required for long term survival. A visual or verbal image is a useful tactic for making your law firm memorable to your “target” market—be it a graphical logo, a short name or a nickname.
As Ed Wesemann’s would say “A dominate firm that no one has heard of is an oxymoron.” If you want to be the dominate leader in a niche market, make sure that within that niche your firm’s “handle” comes easily to your targeted prospect’s mind when they have a need for the services you offer. Make yourself memorable.
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Filed under Marketing by Tom Collins