Horse, Zebra or Unicorn?
I don’t remember the first time I heard the adage:
“When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.”
The saying is ascribed to Dr. Theodore Woodward, who is said to have coined the phrase in the 1940s as a handy way to describe how physicians should look for common causes for patients' symptoms, rather than rarer diagnoses.
In other words, expect the ordinary not the extraordinary.
At the other end of the equine spectrum are unicorns—mythical (or perhaps legendary) creatures that have come to denote the very rarest or most elusive in any category. To be a unicorn is to be unique—or at least only one of a handful. (Also, fun fact: unicorns are the national animal of Scotland.)
I’ve often described myself and my team as a content marketing zebras. There aren’t a lot of folks who do what we do, working with lawyers and marketing departments to develop exceptional content at the intersection of law and legal marketing.
There are writers and editors who create good content; they generally focus on the deliverable not the firm’s culture, content process, or marketing and business development strategies. And there are marketing and PR firms that offer content creation as part of a suite of services, but it’s challenging to consistently craft insightful content on complex, in-depth legal subjects that isn’t a repeat of what every other firm is publishing.
We do all of that, and more.
So, why am I telling you all of this?
Well, because I want law firms to hire us to help solve their content marketing challenges.
But also, while the analogy isn’t perfect—there are more zebras than horses in some countries in Africa, I haven’t figured out where to put asses (the other category of equine animals), and also unicorns are (probably) not real— it's a good way to think about marketing for lawyers and firms.
Being a zebra or a unicorn isn’t necessarily better than being a horse. It’s about the kind of work you do and the number of others do similar work, not about the quality of work or client service. In today’s competitive legal market there are a lot of horses and zebras—herds of them —as well as a fair number of lawyers and firms that claim to be unicorns.
The objective is not to go from being a horse to a zebra or a unicorn, but to stand out in the herd you’re in, by authentically owning and showcasing where you fit (ahem, looking at you, “unicorns”!) in your branding and messaging.
Here’s simple example. During a bio project, I worked with a litigation partner to purposefully showcase that he was a generalist. Instead of focusing on specific kinds of litigation, he highlighted that he was the go-to litigator for other partners in his firm, no matter the legal issue. A brilliant strategist with a fantastic client “bedside manner,” he owned his skills and experience in a way that distinguished him from others.
So, what kind of animal are you—and how can you make the most of that?
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