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How does motor fraud compare to other sectors? INSURANCE ➔


44


Formany people, as with insurance, legal services tend to sit there, ready and waiting for when they are needed.So when the day dawns, how do we ensure that we are first inmind when they need a personal injury lawyer?"


That our model has allowed us to use former tennis player


and now TV presenter Andrew Castle to front our advertising has undoubtedly helped (one of our adverts has nearly 8m YouTube views). It is, if you like, one brand endorsing another and reassures potential clients that they are dealing with a respectable organisation, something that is reinforced immediately upon their contact with us. You can have the best advertising in the world that gets the


client to lift the phone and punch your number in, but if you then deal with the call poorly, you might as well save the money. It may be instructive to look at the recent experience of payday loan companies, the latest industry to be tarred with the same kind of broad brush that PI has suffered from. Regardless of what you think about them the branding they have chosen does work to keep them recognisable, so they’re thought of when someone needs the service they provide. At the moment, however, the media reports and political interest in their interest rates is working against that branding. While they may be recognisable, they aren’t recognised as


offering a genuinely helpful and beneficial service to their customers. Their product does not match what their brand promises and until a balance is achieved, the general ill feeling towards them will continue. That is why we have focused so much on delivery and have achieved the cut-through that has got us to where we are today.


Eye catching At the other end of the scale is the most eye-catching new entrant


to the legal market of recent years – Stobart Barristers. The Eddie Stobart brand has become a staple of motorway


journeys across Britain, with ‘Eddie spotting’ even becoming a game many children have played when faced with the boring prospect of a long car journey.


This is a brand that has spawned a television documentary (now


in its fifth series on Channel 5), a cartoon, a fan club with more than 20,000 members, celebrity truck spotters, ‘Stobart Fest’ (an event allowing fans to meet the trucks and drivers from the television series, attracting 15,000 visitors last year), and even a Christmas charity song. Stobart Group has carried this trust and emotion into the legal


sector, and shown that it doesn’t matter what service you are providing, so long as you do it well, people will trust the brand. The businesses that Stobart Group targets know that the haulage side of their business delivers exactly what it promises. If it has gained the legal expertise needed to obtain a licence to offer legal support then, in their minds, why should the service be any less than what they are already used to? Even if a business owner has never used an Eddie Stobart lorry to


transport anything before, when faced with the choice of who they receive certain legal support from, Stobart Barristers may well be at the top of their list.


Branding will become ever more important as the long-term


effects of the Jackson reforms become apparent. All PI law firms must start to develop branding that will promote their services to the clients who were beforehand simply handed over to them. Law firms need to identify what makes their firm different from their competitors and then deliver that message internally and to future and current clients consistently. This isn’t easy in such a crowded market, but as First4Lawyers has shown, it can be done. Your brand must influence the way you promote your firm and


dictate your ongoing client care and employee behaviour. Your firm will in turn become your brand, saturating everything you do. Feed your brand, by maintaining the excellent service your clients are used to, and your brand will return the favour delivering clients to you with a ready-made relationship. ●


Claims Magazine/Issue 11/ 43


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