The Litigation Boutique: Brand Positioning for Entrepreneurs
I walked past a sign at a Halifax legal firm that read "The Litigation Boutique."
Boutique?
When I think “lawsuits”, I think “premium lingerie.”
This made me reflect on self-perception. Many modest entrepreneurs I know are humble about themselves but often have a grandiose view of their businesses.
Dr. James Richardson, an anthropologist and CPG marketer, explains in his book that if you want to define a skater kid, don't ask the kid—ask a suburban mother. She'll have a less emotionally attached and clearer perception of the kid, and vice versa.
This ties back to product positioning. The position of your product or service is about how it's perceived in the prospect's mind, not yours.
It’s not about whether you see yourself as a boutique—a term commonly used for premium retail outlets. It's a strange word to tie to a legal business, even an expensive one.
Advertising often builds and refreshes memory structures, also known as salience. A memory structure consists of thoughts and feelings triggered by sensory experiences. If I say "house," what do you picture? What memories and words come to mind? Those are memory structures.
When I say "McDonald's," you might think of Ronald McDonald, French fries, drive-thrus, or hear Justin Timberlake singing "I'm lovin' it." These are memory structures—some logical, like French fries, and others distinctive but meaningless, like golden arches, Justin Timberlake, and clowns. Over time, McDonald's builds and refreshes these structures, so you associate an advertisement featuring Ronald McDonald with the smell of French fries, or see the golden arches on a highway billboard and crave a Big Mac. That’s salience.
There’s also persuasion marketing, where you challenge those memory structures. No one would have associated McDonald's with premium coffee, but they saw a market gap and leaned into McCafé, taking on Dunkin' Donuts and Tim Hortons.
Back to legal firms. Unlike McDonald’s, most small businesses don’t have the resources or creativity for persuasive marketing. Trying to reposition a legal firm—which might be associated with lawsuits, protection, and money—as a premium boutique is very challenging.
Categories exist for a reason; they help people store patterns of information. Creating a new category in consumer packaged goods or services is difficult. Yet, small business owners and entrepreneurs try it all the time. I have a friend who tried to position their financial services business as a design agency. That's confusing. Design agencies are creative, not financial.
I'm guilty too. In the first three years of Good Robot Brewing Company, we tried creating new beer categories. We’d come up with quirky styles that didn’t fit existing categories, like “Extraterrestrial Ale.” We had to explain what it was to every customer. It worked okay at our bar with well-trained bartenders who could educate customers on what the hell an “Extraterrestrial Ale” is, but it wasn’t scalable for stores. At the store shelf, you have a few seconds to explain information.
It doesn’t translate to Google My Business either. Google requires you to choose from pre-approved categories because it’s a search engine. People aren’t searching for “Boutique” or “Design” when looking for a law firm or financial services. That’s poor SEO.
I get it. Even the most modest small business owners want a name with pizzazz. So, be creative with your brand name and assets. The name “McDonald” had nothing to do with cheeseburgers before 1950, nor did clowns, yellow arches, or Justin Timberlake.
Your brand name, slogan, jingle, and website can be as creative and unique as you want.
Just don’t categorize your law firm as “A Legal Experience.”
