Lawyer Advertising: Please Tell Me We’re Almost At The Nadir
Here is Atlanta lawyer Danny Naggiar’s webpage:
None of those people is Danny Naggiar. In fact, here’s the real Naggiar:
He’s no adonis, maybe, and he could use a decent haberdasher, but that’s no reason for him to be using a stock picture of an old bald dude in his advertising. (A stock picture, by the way, also used here, here, here, here, and, well, lots of other places. That last link is TinEye, which allows a reverse image search, which is excellent.)
The picture isn’t just about the imaginary old bald dude who will be trying your case, though. It is also about the black guy, the hispanic guy, the disabled woman, and the lesbian, which not only shows the imaginary resources that Naggiar will bring to bear on your case, but also proves the commitment that his imaginary “law offices’” (note the all-important plural) have to imaginary diversity.
Naggiar also has this fellow answering his imaginary phones…
…and this team of folks planning imaginary strategy:
That’s a staff of ten people, including Naggiar, that he shows to people who he hopes will hire him. In any non-imaginary world that would be deceptive and unethical.
Naggiar probably has someone he’d like to blame: he didn’t likely write “Brands: Atlanta Military Law Attorney provides some of the top brands in Military Law Attorney” (in case you didn’t notice it: BRANDING!). The same template is used for:
The Urban Garden Hydroponics, Charleston Tai Chi, Florida Navel Oranges, Adams Mobile Detailing, Portage Party Bus, Temecula Painter, Las Vegas Cell Phone Repair, Riverside Home Theater Installation, Little Rock Wine Tasting, Scottsdale Recording Studio, and on and on and on.
Nor did Naggiar write his privacy policy, which is cribbed from here.
Naggiar might want to put the blame for his deceptive website on whoever wrote this abomination, but he doesn’t get to do that. Being a lawyer is not like installing home theater systems or navel oranges. We have ethical rules that painters and mobile detailers don’t have to follow. And when we outsource our marketing we outsource those ethics, and if the people to whom we outsource screw things up it’s not their reputations that suffer (whoever designed Naggiar’s site didn’t even put his name on it), but ours.
So there’s the reputation you’ve bought, Danny Naggiar. Godspeed.
(P.S. if you need a military lawyer, here’s the real deal.)
About The Author
The lesbian? Damn, your gaydar is better than mine.
It’s a shame. His duty of zealous marketry should have lead him to this far superior stock photography: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/60-completely-unusable-stock-photos
Mark, I hate to break it to you, but we are nowhere NEAR the nadir, unfortunately.
Must be careful what you outsource and be sure you know what you’re getting into. Can’t make shortcuts for everything because then you get wedged in a difficult position.
The devil is in the detail, right? No excuse for the privacy policy.