When the latest edition of Corporate Counsel magazine landed in my mailbox last week, I had the perverse impulse to tear out and focus on the major law firm ads to see if there were any common threads.

Unfortunately, there were.

One was the pervasiveness of two metaphors:

• sports:  an Olympic sprinter, the Baseball Hall of Fame, more Olympic medals, a yacht race, a race-car steering wheel, and a dog show; and
• wilderness and the great outdoors: the open ocean, a lone mountaineer on a deserted peak, an ancient explorer's map of the world, a white owl in snowdrifts.

Now, understand:  Ads need strong visuals as much as they need strong copy, but the competitive challenges these firms implicitly promise to help their clients solve will be resolved in conference rooms, not behind the wheel of an ocean-going yacht.  Visuals, as copy, must speak to the reality of what firms offer.

Yes, then there's the copy:  Tag-lines and promises such as:

• "Legal insight.  Business instinct."
• "The Advantage of Focus"
• "The Mark of a Legend"
• "Business Needs Champions"
• "[We] Know the Territory"
• etc.

I do not cite these happily or with a knowing smirk in mind—to the contrary.  I cite them for the same reason this Booz-Allen partner critiques the Bush and Kerry presidential-campaign ads:  They are "propaganda," and not authentic.  His advice to the two candidates:  "Just tell us what you're going to do.  Then we'll vote."

Law firm marketing cannot exactly be based on "tell[ing] us what you're going to do," but it can be based on telling us what you have done—with case studies, client "success stories," or simple statistics and awards.  And, it can be based on what you know, which is, after all, what you have to sell.

So should slogans and sports or wilderness visuals never be employed?  I won't say never, but I will say never if they're the beginning, middle, and end of the pitch.