Are PR agency founders on a mission to outdo each other when it comes to naming their firms? In striving to be memorable and achieve standout, I think we’ve now crossed the line between clever, creative branding and plain silliness. Here’s the evidence and all of them, except one, are genuine business names. A few are good, many bad and others just downright bizarre. What do you think? Can you spot the made up one?

First up are the agencies named after animals. Here we have Buffalo, Porcupine, Moose and Cow. Note that ruminants dominate, perhaps in recognition of the bullshit you get from these firms? Then again, I’ve heard a Porcupine is capable of delivering a nasty prick. If one animal isn’t enough, then go plural as 3 Monkeys and PR Dogs did. How about plural fictitious animals? You think I’m joking but there’s an agency called 10 Yetis. Throw in some emotion: Happy Giraffe or Laughing Cow perhaps? What about sea creatures? Octopus and Seal are already taken.

Flying creatures are represented too: we have Owl, Ptarmigan and Firefly. Colours are a good way of achieving brand stand-out but don’t choose Purple or Red. Need something better? Go for a colour that’s also a food. But not Tangerine or Mustard, as these too are already chosen. Or just food on its own? Fine, so long as it’s not Marmalade. That’s also taken, but disappointingly not by design agency Toast, which would surely have been a corporate marriage made in heaven. One agency has adopted an entire country as its name: Brazil. That must make calling up strangers interesting:

“Hello, this is Samantha calling from Brazil.”
“Oh really, isn’t it the middle of the night there?”

Others have gone for the slightly esoteric, such as Blue Rubicon (but at least there’s a story behind that one). But our final two examples stand out for different reasons. First we have Yellow Lorry Red Lorry. Choosing a tongue-twister as a business name must rank very highly in terms of silliness. Then we have Ireland’s Hopscotch Europe in One, which manages to be both silly and parochial for a firm that promises to take your message to the far corners of the EMEA region. Finally, this agency is either distinctly unimaginative or brilliantly simple and no nonsense: it’s called PRCo.

Photo courtesy of ~C4Chaos at Flickr

Some would say lawyers deserve all they get reputation-wise: they communicate in a strange, obscure language, deliberately designed to complicate the simple; they inhabit a rarefied, archaic world largely untouched by modern business norms such as offering high customer service levels and value for money. I suspect Luke Johnson’s recent damning column in The Financial Times speaks for many. The British government clearly thinks things need shaking up too because its ‘Legal Services Act’ comes into force next year, and aims to open up and deregulate the market. It has been described by The Times newspaper as the legal sector’s own version of The City’s ‘Big Bang’.

This polar bear ‘brief’ in Vancouver is probably the world’s only cool lawyer. Credit: photo courtesy Claire Dancer, Flickr

If, as expected, it creates greater competition, in-flows of capital and outside management, will these factors drive a big improvement in the way British Law firms market themselves? I think it will, and it’s long overdue according to James Baxter*:

“The legal sector remains on the whole undifferentiated: the same lawyers, offering the same services to the same clients who have little idea what distinguishes the amorphous mass of firms before them.”

Baxter ought to know. He is a former editor of Legal Business magazine. For those firms who’ve not yet taken the plunge into marketing, here’s one simple, important and overriding rule:  never entrust the task to any of the partners, unless they can demonstrate genuine, business and brand-building experience. This is what happens when you break that rule. Last month I received an alert saying my Twitter stream @andymturner was being followed by no less than ‘London’s coolest law firm’. How do I know this apparently oxymoronic claim is for real? Because that’s how the firm’s founder and senior partner trumpets his firm’s Twitter account biography. Somewhat surprised, I clicked through to the firm’s website expecting to see the epitome of cool, but of course, found just another dull-looking law firm with an equally ordinary client list. So I couldn’t resist writing to tell said senior partner that it’s unlikely anyone wants ‘cool’ from their law firm and to find a better USP fast before anyone important sees it, or at least just drop it. He replied with what seemed a little ‘froideur’ saying that he probably will, that he didn’t take Twitter seriously anyway (which is evident because he’s following 8,000+ people) and that it’s better to be talked about than not at all. I took the trouble to reply but haven’t heard from him again. Some people are so damned ungrateful on receipt of free, sensible advice.