Zen and The Art of the Tag Line

The "tag line" is that little sentence or phrase that follows your firm's name. It's usually used to convey either a) what you do, or b) some sense of who you are. It is not an advertising slogan. It's not your "elevator speech." But it probably has elements of both. (In the interest of a fair discussion, my own firm's tag line is: Marketing for Attorneys and Financial Professionals.) If you'd like to see a wide range of law firm tag lines, you can find one here.

But today, I may have found the grand-daddy, on Andrew Ewalt's Law Blog. No offense to Andy, who seems a very nice guy, but......here's the 63-word tag line for his blog: Helping individuals, families, and business control their affairs, protect their families and preserve their assets, through effective, prompt and reasonable legal services, including wills, trust, powers of attorney, living wills, probate and estate administration, buy sell agreements, asset protection, elder law, nursing home, Medicaid planning, business law, contracts, establishing LLC's and corporations, not-for-profits, residential real estate, commercial real estate, reverse mortgages.

It put me in mind of the — much shorter — tag line of a young attorney whom I met at a NAELA event at Hilton Head Island, S. C. in May, 2004. His business card read (with a change of names to protect the guilty): Joe Jones, attorney at law, N.A.A.

I asked what the N.A.A. designation stood for. He said, "Not An A**hole."

Comments

[Danny Bronski]

As a self-styled marketing guru as well as a trademark attorney, I strongly suggest that clients use "suggestive" marks for their name and most important brands, but if the name is "suggestive", any accompanying tagline should be descriptive to balance it out. I won't bore you with further detail (in your case both the name and tagline is descriptive) but I do think my firm has the best tagline of any law firm in America..."VeriTrademark. Legal Services. Redefined." This may have been "inspired" by the Sopranos (but I wouldn't admit it), which is ironic, because the first thought that crossed my mind when I stumbled across your blog is that you look like Tony Soprano, especially in that first pic!

[Andrew Ewalt]

I guess you can never win. One marketing "guru" suggested I needed to increase my list of tag words in order to encourage seach engines. Now I am being told there are to many. Oh, well the life of a blogger...as they say.

[Mark Merenda]

Andrew, thanks for your comment and for being a good sport. You’re right, marketing gurus are just like lawyers.....”on the one hand...but, on the other hand....”