Spectrum PR Column
May 1997
Looking at the Laws of Marketing
Marianne E. Maher, Plunkett & Cooney P.C. (Detroit, Michigan).
AALL Spectrum, Volume 1 No. 8 May 1997, p. 28.
Our firm's CEO is in the habit of distributing current business-oriented publications to the leadership and managers of the firm. He keeps an eye on the bigger picture so that our firm can be responsive to the trends and ideas at work in the business community, where our clients reside. Our most recent distribution is a book by Al Ries and Jack Trout, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (HarperCollins, 1994). Ries and Trout use a very direct, concise format in outlining each of the 22 laws. They draw their examples from a variety of products and industries, ranging from automobiles to laundry detergents and computers. They also look to the more nebulous and difficult-to-define service markets, such as colleges and stock brokerages. I decided that the best way for me to approach The 22 Laws would be to devise an analytical framework and try to apply the laws to my own environment. The two questions I used to form this framework were: How do these marketing "laws" apply to the legal profession in general? How can I utilize these "laws" in the library setting?
Two of the 22 laws stand out as being thought-provoking and quite applicable to library service: The Law of Leadership and The Law of Focus. The Law of Leadership is characterized by the phrase "It is better to be first that it is to be better." In developing this law, Ries and Trout use the example of Charles Lindbergh--a name automatically associated with being the first person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo. The question the authors then ask is "what is the name of the second person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo?" (If any of you know the answer, I'll be really impressed!) The point of the example is that because Lindbergh was first, he stands out prominently as a trail blazer willing to try something new and take the risks associated with doing so. Bert Hinkler, the second person to make the trip, made the same trip more economically, using less fuel, and flying in less time. While Hinkler's flight was actually a better one, he never gained the advantage of being first in the mind of others, which is a real door-opener for future opportunities. How does this relate to the information business? It serves as a reminder to me to continue looking at our firm's business for opportunities to lead the way in providing information, or accessing information. It means taking some risk, perhaps not having the best way of doing something right out of the chute, but being first in line to offer assistance, ideas, and alternatives. If our library's customers (attorneys, legal assistants, administrative and support staff, even firm clients) think of the library first when they have an information need, then we have made the same impact as Charles Lindbergh--we are viewed as being the leader in information.
The second of The 22 Immutable Laws for consideration in our business is The Law of Focus. The subtitle of this law is an easy one to embrace: "The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect's mind." According to the authors, the most effective words a product or an organization can own are ones that are simple and benefit-oriented. They use these examples to clarify the "word owning" concept: Volvo--safety, Federal Express--overnight, Nordstrom-service. The authors warn against trying to use a word that has already been claimed by another entity. Certainly in the larger business world, taking another company's word, slogan, or concept becomes an intellectual property problem. But within the context of our own organizations, it is worthwhile to look at the other groups, departments, and offices to see what words they own, and how a unique word, one not owned by the other departments, might help to solidify the library/information operation within the context of the larger organization.
While we probably have the market cornered on the word "information," I'm not sure that our library service has kept the word "information" uppermost when responding at all times to all customers. Have there been times when "no, we don't have that publication" has been a library response to an inquiry and therefore the end of that request? The idea of keeping focused on one word offers an opportunity to do an instant evaluation of the product we provide to our organization. It transfers easily into a question that each member of our library staff can ask when working with a customer--"am I providing information?" We will be working on putting the word "information" to work in our focus in the upcoming weeks. It will be interesting to survey our users in the future to see if their "word" is the same as our word in defining our operation.
While The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing did not answer all of my questions about quality and excellence (we'd need another column to address those concepts!), the book did serve to prompt me to review our library operation in the larger context of our firm, to think about just what it is we are offering to our organization, and some methods to use to evaluate and improve our approach. It is a good ideas to step back and look at our business and the legal profession through the perspective of companies, products, and services in the larger business community. After all, they are our clients, and they have been strategizing the concepts of marketing far longer than we have!
Column Editor: Carol Bredemeyer, Salmon P. Chase College of Law Library, Northern Kentucky University (Highland Heights, KY).
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