Raised eyebrows in many quarters this week as Eversheds is named the UK firm with the strongest brand. A judgement coming to us courtesy of Business Superbrands, which organises annual league tables ‘based on the opinions of marketing experts, business professionals and thousands of British consumers’.
Eversheds – 214th in the league table – comfortably outclassed all the Magic Circle firms and was only beaten in the legal sector by The Law Society. So what’s going on, then?
Frankly, it’s hard to tell. The Superbrands web site is a little less than transparent when it comes to judgement criteria. Judging itself is performed by the majestic-sounding The Centre for Brand Analysis (TCBA) which vaguely reports that rankings are based on three factors: Quality, Reliability and Distinction.
Now, I’m not going to engage with the ‘quality’ or otherwise of Eversheds’ advice. Nor will I raise questions about how ‘reliable’ an organisation can be when it’s recently undergone three tranches of re-organisation. But I will point out a couple of areas in which their brand might be seen as ‘distinctive’ and therefore likely to stand out to lay brand evaluators.
Firstly, it does have the semblance of an emotional appeal. (Emotion being one of the things TCBA cares passionately about.) The long-serving split headlines Eversheds uses in many communications do a good job of pointing out the client benefits, and not just the features, of their services. Secondly, the consistency with which this voice is presented is impressive, and certainly makes them stand out against the verbal constipation that characterises much legal marketing.
That said, the Eversheds logo, which looks like something British Rail might have used in the seventies, can’t have done them many favours.
So – possibly – we can begin to see how Eversheds appealed to TCBA’s ‘Business Council 2010‘, which comprises Tristrams and Tristranas from organisations with names such as ‘Lost Boys International’, ‘Think Direct’ and ‘Earnest’, which sound like the biggest group of Soho-loft-dwelling, Birkenstock-wearing organic-mochaccino-slurpers on the planet.
But does it mean anything within the law world? According to commenters on thelawyer.com, not much. My favourite bit of bile comes from Muffin the Mule, who claims that Eversheds isn’t even the best legal brand in Leeds, let alone the rest of the country.
All things considered, it’s an indication that generic brand development and evaluation techniques don’t count for much in this esoteric market. When it comes to branding, perhaps firms can only really engage with one another using metrics specific to the sector. Maybe it’s time someone developed a branding league table just for law?
A less measured approach to this hot topic exists here – http://www.rollonfriday.com/ThisWeek/News/tabid/58/Id/491/fromTab/36/Default.aspx – I have to say, I did think that Eversheds’ parting shot was pretty well delivered. In their words -
“We apologise if the Superbrand results aren’t to the liking of some of our competitors, but an independent survey of 1700 business executives is pretty hard to fiddle, even for our crack media team. We were the third highest law firm last year and the fact we’re now first shows that it’s no fluke. Perhaps the results reflect the reality of what’s important to those who actually use legal services.”
Good post. I suspect it’s a function of the fact that ’sheds operates in so many different markets and also its geographic spread (both locally and nationally). If the survey had been carried out in the City, then I suspect the results might have been different, but whatever, it’s good for the profession to see a law firm in the list. I suspect post-legal services act we may see more legal brands getting higher recognition.