Outsource Your Marketing, 3000 Words Edition
Houston’s own Lindeman, Alvarado, and Frye has made ATL with four of its website pictures tastelessly illustrating “Child Sexual Assault & Internet Solicitiation [sic] of a Minor” (shown below), “Rape & Sexual Assault,” and “Family Violence.” (H/T Gideon, whose post is entitled “Why people think criminal-defense lawyers are scum.”)
I know Jim Lindeman, Gil Alvarado, and Brad Frye—all good lawyers—and I’m pretty comfortable saying that none of them designed their website like this, nor would they have. At the bottom of each page of their website it’s branded a “FirmSite by FindLaw.”
What is it that Turkewitz says? Oh, yes: “outsourcing marketing = outsourcing ethics.” And what’s my addition to that? “Outsourcing marketing = outsourcing reputation.” FindLaw has moved on from its cookie-cutter websites, and in the process has made Jim, Gil, and Brad minor stars of the blawgosphere.
About The Author
Sick. Someone had to “approve” the site before it was posted though. No assigning of responsibility.
True.
It’s not even very good advertising, if “good” is defined as “likely to get the advertising lawyer hired.” A viewer of the website could be forgiven, on seeing the pictures, for thinking that a sexual assault case was about the complainant.
And that is exactly why I design websites for firms and attorneys, because I understand what we are allowed to do and what we are not allowed to do — I refuse to code / design things that might tend to discredit the profession and if it costs me, so be it, they can contract with someone in Mumbai.
On another note, I agree entirely with Ms. Henley — *SOMEONE* had to approve / write the check. I know that whenever anything leaves my office *I* (and I alone) am responsible for it. The same goes for any type of advertising media: just because the web is etherial, doesn’t mean that we can pay it any less attention.
It looks like it’s still a cookie cutter operation. I’m guessing the customer rep got approval from the client for the text, and then passed it on to someone else to choose the pictures…possibly someone at another company, probably someone who spends all day, every day, adding pictures to web sites.
Select the page title, copy the page title, paste it into the search box at the stock photography site, pick one of the results, downlod the image, size it to fit, upload it to the web site, move on to the next web page and repeat until done, then move on to the next web site until it’s time to go home…
This (our/my) mistake is totally unacceptable. Jim, Gilbert and I are responsible for not being more careful. We have undertaken a complete (re) review of the site and have asked for immediate changes.
I’ve learned a valuable lesson in this situation.
Thanks for your comments.
And, Mark, thanks for your kind words. We will try harder to live up to them.
Brad Frye
For those who haven’t been paying attention: this is how this sort of thing — apology | correction | whatever — is done correctly.
Brad’s a class act.
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