Here’s what you’re looking for: Bruce W. Marcus

Determine the reason you want it in the first place.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.

In the early days of publicity, when it was low-down press agentry and not high-blown public relations, the idea was to get your client’s name in the paper. Often. In any context. Just spell it right.

MORE: How to Write Media Releases That Capture an Editor’s Attention | Nine Ways to Choose Your PR Person | When There’s a Leak in Your Firm | Eighteen Things Advertising Can Do for Your Firm | How and Why Client Service Teams Work | Manage Knowledge as a Marketing Tool | Secret Marketing Formula: Get One Client at a Time | Marketing a Fixed Position in a Moving World | How to Build a Marketing Culture
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In the early days of marketing professional services, it became clear that merely to get your firm’s name in the paper, in any context, didn’t help much. Ego, maybe, but nothing more. A new approach to publicity had to be developed.
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The rules of the game have changed.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.

There was a time when all you needed was a roll of nickels and a phone booth, and you were in the PR game. Of course, all clients expected then was that you get their names in the paper. For most of the publicity clients in those days, that was sufficient.

MORE: When Bad News Happens to Good Firms | Why Accountants Should Be Nice to Journalists | Ten Keys to Crafting Ads | Four Things to Know About Social Media | Internal Communications Are Underrated | Four Things Better Than a Company Song | Let’s Lose the Word ‘Image’ | The Risk In Not Understanding Risk | What Your Marketing Program Can and Can’t Do
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“Those days” were the late 1920s and 1930s, before PR became public relations, and before we were beset with such glorious concepts as “image,” and “positioning,” and “niche marketing.” Today, public relations is infinitely more sophisticated than that, as is the public relations client. The public relations program for any modern corporation is to its publicity ancestor as desktop publishing is to hieroglyphics. And of course, the public relations program for the professional firm is different, too.

But to have a sophisticated public relations program requires not just a sophisticated practitioner, but a sophisticated client. A firm, if it knows how, will always find a good public relations practitioner or consultant, but a consultant is only as capable as the firm he or she serves.
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Don’t go spinning out of control.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.

Every election campaign produces, among other things, media myths and bad language. During the elections of the last two decades, the language was infected by a new myth called spin control. The phrase, which broke a speed record in becoming a cliché after the 1988 election, implies that a good media relations practitioner can control the nature and texture of a story in the press – can put the right spin on it to get the journalist to tell it the spinner’s way.

MORE: Why Accountants Should Be Nice to Journalists | When There’s a Leak in Your Firm | Eighteen Things Advertising Can Do for Your Firm | How and Why Client Service Teams Work | Manage Knowledge as a Marketing Tool | Secret Marketing Formula: Get One Client at a Time | Marketing a Fixed Position in a Moving World | How to Build a Marketing Culture | Have You Planned How to Service Your New Revenue? | Why Is Change So Hard for Firms? | Why Value Pricing Works
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It’s just not so. For all that the myth implies, when it comes to the media, we propose – but others dispose. Thus it was, and thus it always shall be, so long as we have a free press.

But is the telling always accurate? No. Is it always fair? No. Sometimes, despite all of the public relations professionalism, and despite all the cooperation we may offer the media, the story comes out badly. Disaster, dispensed in the aura of a supposedly objective media, doesn’t merely strike, it reverberates.
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Never mind who – why?

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.

OK, somebody talked to the press, and leaked information that shouldn’t have been leaked. That’s three problems, not one.

Primary, of course, is how do we control the damage caused by the leak?

MORE: Creating the Perfect Ad | Ten Keys to Crafting Ads | Four Things to Know About Social Media | Internal Communications Are Underrated | Four Things Better Than a Company Song | Let’s Lose the Word ‘Image’ | The Risk In Not Understanding Risk | What Your Marketing Program Can and Can’t Do | Nine Reasons That Prospects Say Yes | How Marketing Evolved to 3.0
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Then we worry about who did it.
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Here’s how to get it right.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.

At last, the perfect law firm ad campaign. Well, pretty much perfect. The 39-office, Atlanta-based law firm has been running an ad campaign that embodies every principle of good advertising.

MORE: Ten Keys to Crafting Ads | Eighteen Things Advertising Can Do for Your Firm | How and Why Client Service Teams Work | Manage Knowledge as a Marketing Tool | Secret Marketing Formula: Get One Client at a Time | Marketing a Fixed Position in a Moving World | How to Build a Marketing Culture | Have You Planned How to Service Your New Revenue? | Why Is Change So Hard for Firms? | Why Value Pricing Works | Why Competition Matters Most
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Its ad in the Wall Street Journal has a picture of a man in front of a crossroad sign as if he were choosing which fork to take. The headline, which is really a callout in the middle of the copy, is in larger type than the rest of the text, which says “where you go now” (lower case as is).
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And why some ads don’t work.

By Bruce Marcus
Professional Services Marketing 3.0

EDITOR’S NOTE: CPA Trendlines was privileged to have a long relationship with Bruce W. Marcus, who was ahead of his time in his thinking and practice in marketing for accounting. We are publishing some of the late expert’s evergreen work, which retains wisdom for the present.

Certainly, the current crop of ads tends to be better than the earlier ones, although we had such weirdies as “Accounting Is Our Passion.” (“Passion” is the current fad word). I thought passion to serve clients is more to be desired. How many words will be wasted to explain the link between their passion and their ability to meet your need?

MORE: Eighteen Things Advertising Can Do for Your Firm | How Hard Do You Work to Keep Your Clients? | When Clients Think They Know Marketing | How to Put Target Marketing into Context | Everyone in Your Firm Is Marketing | Accountants vs. Lawyers: Who Wins the Marketing Battle? | Professional Services Marketing Requires Flexibility
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Then there was “Financial Restructuring Without the Bitter Aftertaste,” for a law firm. The copy’s OK, but the illustration of three executive with faces screwed up (presumably from the bitter aftertaste) looks as if they’ve been drinking doctored Kool-Aid. Pretty inviting, isn’t it? A good rule is don’t try to be funny in public until at least six strangers, none of whom is related to you, laugh at what you’ve written. Nothing sours an ad more than unfunny attempts at humor.
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