Bland brands: What Ryanair can teach law firms about brand differentiation

Here's a little conundrum for you involving two givens. Fact one: the quest to be different from your competitors has always been something of a Holy Grail for your firm. Fact two: there are thousands of law firms that are busily competing against each other.

When put on the spot, very few people can name three law firms that have truly differentiated themselves. Is this an abject failure of their leaders and advisers or a reflection of a more complex underlying reality?

Differentiation seems so very difficult. In today's clamorous, crowded marketplaces, many (excellent) firms look identical. Nurturing a brand that truly stands out seems to require a rare combination of truly original vision, courage, discipline and, above all, great leadership and communication.

This is particularly tricky for long-established, complex law firms precisely because of their independent heritage, the agglomeration of owner-manager-producer roles and firms' often abstract service lines.

To gain a fresh perspective on this conundrum, let's take a little elevation - about 35,000 feet's worth.

Making airwaves

Low-cost airline Ryanair is never far from the headlines or the airwaves in Britain. Just the mention of Ryanair stirs strong emotions. It also conjures up a number of strong and definite associations: cheap, loud and downmarket. But, as a mass-market consumer brand, Ryanair is among the very best.

The airline began in 1985 as a small but conventional operator which aimed to challenge the duopoly that British Airways and Aer Lingus held on the Dublin-London route. By 1991, when Michael O'Leary took over as CEO, Ryanair had assumed its current business model: low cost, no frills, no business class, quick turnaround times and a reliable service. That, he thought, was the way to take on the national carriers which dominated the market.

Ryanair's signal achievement has been to get consistency between its business model and its branding. There's no secret about the brand concept, and we are all in on the joke: passengers are self-loading baggage. Everything that Ryanair says and does - and everything that it presents to the public - is consistent with this fundamental precept.

Here's the checklist: 'come-aboard' pricing; cabin service which is truly basic; extra charges for anything; flight personnel who look like students; and a non-existent complaints department.

But - and this is absolutely key - Ryanair is also (so far) reliable, safe and highly profitable. It is acutely aware of the importance of its reputation for safety, as we have seen from its aggressive response to the pilot who made claims recently about its safety procedures on British television.

Managing partners should note the fact that O'Leary is himself an integral part of the Ryanair brand and relentlessly pushes his company in the media. He has made sure that he is constantly visible and recognisable as the brand leader. He also claims that he has not used an advertising agency for 20 years - itself consistent with low-cost thinking - but he certainly uses controversy to generate increased publicity, leading to further sales.

An infamous example is his claim that he would like to remove lavatories from planes to make space for more seats, which would lower everyone's fares. He has also joked that he would charge for breathing on Ryanair flights if he could, if this would only lower fares. Needless to say, the tabloid newspapers regularly fall for these highly quotable tirades.

While slavish adoption of O'Leary's tactics might be suicidal for law firms, what strikes home is his singularity of business vision, his absolute focus and just how effectively he engages from the front to ensure his company's brand remains out there, in every sense.

By contrast, many law firms try to make an impression by publicly averring that they understand their clients (even though they have often been late arrivals to the concept of client service - and later still to customer-friendly pricing). They make large investments in slick words, design work and promotion.

But Ryanair is instructive even here. Take its press advertising: although sledgehammer in style, it stands out from the airbrushed, vapid wonderlands of its competitors. In looking cheap as a motorway fry-up, it actually reinforces its chief brand value. That holds true even when you find yourself paying as much for a Ryanair ticket as for a BA one.

The airline's negative publicity (such as the recent controversies over exploitative staff pay and conditions) has also been skilfully turned and played to supports its overarching brand. At times, it seems that O'Leary has pushed things too far. But that's the point: the brand is as potent as mustard. Sometimes it gets up the nose, but people still swallow it by the bucketload: Ryanair's planes fly full.

Almost as important as what ?Ryanair projects through its branding is what it does not do. Unlike most of its competitors or, say law firms, there are no tedious riffs on really-truly-deeply understanding customers' needs, quality, teamwork or technical excellence. O'Leary actually boasts that his planes fly slowly to conserve fuel. But, he does incessantly hammer home his points about the timeliness and reliability of his flights.

Nor does Ryanair go in for complex propositions (except in pricing extras) or brand extensions. It just sticks to making multiple versions of the same, simple offer. The important point to note here is that you can almost go as far in differentiating your brand by defining what you are not as by what you actually are.

Ryanair is obviously a very different business to most law firms, but the lessons that we can draw from it are compelling:?

• its brand concept is disciplined and congruent, perfectly aligned with its business model;?

• Ryanair's commercial vision is clear: it is geared towards utility and reliability, not service orientation;

• it has an exemplary brand ?leader, who is out there promoting ?the brand concept relentlessly; and?

• it makes superb use of all channels to promote its brand - including the media and all of its own contact points with customers - and does so in a way that reinforces its low-cost mantra continually and subliminally.

To sum up - what's Ryanair's dirty little secret? Single-mindedness.

Stuck in a rut

Having put forward Ryanair as an unlikely branding paragon, let us go back to the legal services market and how its particular characteristics affect brand strategy.

the legal market is vast and successful and growing at its fastest rate in six years. As a whole, however, the sector has been weak (with a few honourable exceptions) at new business concept origination, which is fundamental to firms' capacity to differentiate themselves.

The legal system in the UK and some other countries grants effective monopolies on particular services to certain professions through statutory ?and regulatory requirements. Relying ?on their heritage as part of the establishment, one might say that law ?firms have secured key positions as ?part of the national power complex.

Over time, the profession has accrued a stock of goodwill and trust, from which it still draws. And, of course, it still benefits from information asymmetry - law firms typically know more about their areas of specialisation than any other organisation outside of the legal sector.

But, their stock of goodwill is diminishing and none of these attributes are particularly helpful when it comes to differentiation. In many ways, they may actually hinder it. Market reforms like alternative business structures (ABSs) are also taking root, unleashing new competitive forces.

There are several other reasons why differentiation is a real challenge for law firms. Business and brand design often starts not around a business proposition but around a set of people and their skills, and they continue to owe their status and allegiance at least partly to their profession. While partners have been taught to be independent of mind and status, they are often only so within a narrow field. Within any given firm, this can lead to a plurality of identities. Reputation and success depend on the actions of sundry owner-manager-producers, each of whom has an individual style or point of emphasis.

On top of this is the challenge of different ownership structures, along with competing views and internal politics among stakeholders. Suddenly, the simple purity of discipline that O'Leary has achieved with Ryanair's branding ?seems a long way off.

 

Figure 1: Self-descriptors among professional services firms

 

Firms do not always help themselves. An analysis of the 'about us' sections of the websites of several dozen top firms in the legal, accountancy and property sectors shows that, unsurprisingly, certain words and phrases crop up time and again (see Figure 1). The result was a vast 'me too' morass, in which everyone is jostling for the same territory using identikit terms. Many firms fall into one of the following four categories.?

1. Middlers. This is the vast majority of general practices. But, in future, with such a crowded market, there ?may be no safety in numbers or in general practice.?

2. Muddlers. This includes merger meddlers, frequent changers of names, and those with muddled strategy, purpose or extensions ?of brand.?

3. Mad hatters. These are firms with a delusional internal focus in defiance of business logic or financial logic.?

4. Moaners. These are the wannabes - firms describing themselves as a 'best kept secret' and so on.?

The mythical El Dorado to which all ?of the middlers, muddlers, mad hatters and moaners throng is year-on-year growth in profits, ever higher PEP (a bizarre legal market metric if ever there was one), and high-premium uncommoditised work.

This is at a time when firms are subject to wholesale changes in technology, sophisticated procurement practices and competitive threats from outside of their accustomed frame of reference (such as ABSs). However, pursuing the status quo is a losing strategy ?for most firms.

Strengthening brands

There are however some ways forward ?for firms looking to strengthen their ?brands. As seen with Ryanair, business models and cultures are what actually ?drive brands.

To stand out, you need to match business insight to client needs and have a way of responding to them differently. Map your true business strengths to markets that are attractive or untapped: leave the rest out. When it comes to branding, focus is essential (and the narrower the better), and simplicity is ?key. Strive to own a word in the mind ?of the client.

If you have not yet found the Holy Grail, look harder and try looking outside of the sector for some answers. But, whatever you do, try not to be a muddler: business models can be changed, but only infrequently and carefully. Otherwise you risk losing any visibility you have in a haze of confusion in the potential client's or recruit's mind. The most important virtue of a brand is single-mindedness.

But, in the quest to make your firm different, take care not to escape gravity altogether. In their paper, Keller, Sternthal ?and Tybout have talked ?about the value of 'parity points'.1 They cite the example ?of a sandwich maker that went for healthiness instead of its customers' ?core requirement: good taste and ?instant gratification. The ploy failed.

There are, of course, many criteria that a firm must meet just to remain in the game (see box: Effectively differentiated firms). If you do not want to end up as a middler or, worse, a muddler, make sure you focus on the effective mid-points between your organisation's capabilities and your future client's needs. Also, remember your frame of operation and be careful not to leave it prematurely - but anticipate the new competition to come from outside of it.

 

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Effectively differentiated firms

• Engage clients (pre-sell to them)

• Rally (pre-hire) recruits

• Filter (pre-select) work

• Leverage intellectual assets more efficiently

• Increase business performance

• Last longer (as long as they continue to adapt)

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Gavin Ingham Brooke advises business leaders on branding, reputation management, communication and business development (www.spada.co.uk)

Endnote

1. See 'Three Questions You Need to Ask About Your Brand', K.L. Keller, B. Sternthal and A. Tybout, Harvard Business Review, September 2002