What is effective advertising? Letters Archive

Advertising workers comp services

By Rob Knowsley, Sydney

SIR: Nick Meagher wrote in his "President's Message" in your May 2001 issue about the fight against changes to worker' compensation.

I note he proudly advises that, "The Law Society of NSW, Injuries Australia and the Australian Association of Surgeons have rolled-out a state-wide TV and print advertising campaign, one which features injured dummies, (symbolic of how the Government is treating injured workers) who won't get any compensation".

I notice the President also gets emotional enough to say that, "The State Government is planning to shaft (my emphasis) injured workers".

Advertising to get attention for some information of benefit to workers? Emotive terms and images like, "shaft" and "dummies" to get attention and make a point?

Is this our same President quoted a little while back as being in favour of the new restrictions on advertising workers compensation services which have recently been slipped through with very little fanfare?

How ironic that the President is so comfortable with the advertising process when used by the Law Society and some others, and apparently so uncomfortable when it is used by individual member firms seeking to promote their perfectly legal services, proven in case after case to be extremely valuable to their otherwise poorly informed target audience of injured workers.

The bottom line of the new restrictions is that it's apparently perfectly acceptable to advertise workers compensation services provided you do it in a way that is highly unlikely to be effective!

The really pernicious aspect is the restriction on advertising of otherwise legal services justified by drivel about disadvantaged workers misled by advertising.

No evidence has ever been produced on this score, and there have always been perfectly satisfactory means of addressing false and misleading advertising, those under which most other businesses in New South Wales operate, just for a start.

So-called 'bad advertising' by its very nature doesn't last. Because it's ineffective it is withdrawn when the few firms who try it realise it doesn't generate enough worthwhile enquiry, and that it harms the firm's image while perhaps even enhancing the image of its competitors.

If the image of the profession was really the issue here it would be best to let the firms which advertise badly come and go - in my experience they can only hurt themselves.

One oft-parroted complaint about advertising by lawyers is that it is 'sensational'. I think that boils down to 'It gets attention'.

Good advertising has to start from the fundamental aim of getting attention or it will prove useless.

It's one thing to get attention. To generate good levels of quality enquiry, advertisements must go on to generate interest, create a desire for further information, and lead to some action by the person impacted by the ad.

In my experience throughout Australia, over the last thirteen years, good ads by lawyers generate exceptional levels of enquiry and very economic levels of work - work on genuine claims. This is the acid test of whether the target market needs to be informed. Clearly it does, and thousands of happy respondees have 'voted with their feet'.

By restricting advertising (or by not vigorously fighting the restrictions) the Government, and the Law Society know they will be reducing the number of injured workers who get the information they need to decide to make a proper claim.

For our Society not to have vigorously opposed these new restrictions is a sad indictment on its willingness to work hard to represent all its constituents.

The firms which have advertised effectively (whether other lawyers like the ads or not is utterly immaterial) have done both injured workers and the profession a great service.

Thousands of workers and their families who would otherwise had little contact with lawyers, and perhaps a skewed media-driven perception of lawyers value in society, now have a highly satisfying first-hand experience of how lawyers can help. They've seen the profession in action, fighting for them, getting them the results they are entitled to.

There are plenty of bodies which exist to regulate the profession. What the whole profession needs from its Society is a body which will fight hard on every occasion to ensure that lawyers get (and especially get to keep) some measure of an equal playing field, to help to create an environment in which quality gets a chance to rise to the top through the operation of normal market forces.

On this occasion the Society appears very successfully to have ensured that thousands of injured workers, hundreds of its member lawyers particularly, and the NSW profession generally, are all big losers. We are entitled to ask just exactly who the winners are?