What A Contestant From The Game Show “Press Your Luck” Can Teach Us About Marketing Law Firms

Published on 11 September 2009 by Jeff Berman in Blog

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whammy 300x225 What A Contestant From The Game Show Press Your Luck Can Teach Us About Marketing Law Firms

No whammies....no whammies....no whammies....STOP!

Two of the biggest obstacles lawyers face marketing law firms include:

1. Lack of a marketing plan

2. No systems in place to handle the marketing they are doing

Without a marketing plan and systems in place to follow through on your marketing….you are never going to achieve the results you otherwise could.

I want to tell the story of Michael Larson, a contestant on the game show Press Your Luck.

You can read the full story here, but as it goes:

On May 19, 1984, Michael Larson, an unemployed ice cream truck driver from Lebanon, Ohio, won $104,950 in cash, a sailboat, and two all-expense-paid vacation trips from two appearances on the CBS television game show “Press Your Luck.” At the time, $40,000 was considered to be a huge winning. Larson’s winnings set a record for the largest prize money award on any game show.

CBS initially refused to pay Larson his winnings, suspecting he had cheated. However, although Larson had won under unusual circumstances, he had not cheated. Instead, he had memorized the show’s computerized game board sequences, allowing him to continuously keep selecting winning board squares. He became the game’s biggest winner in less than an hour. CBS eventually conceded that Larson had done nothing illegal. He had simply outsmarted the game.

Since Larson was out of work, he watched Press Your Luck religiously. Over the course of 6 weeks, Larson recognized there was a pattern to the light sequences that either resulted in prizes and money or a whammy….which caused you to lose everything. He video taped the shows and eventually memorized the pattern. He flew out to LA and made it on the show as a contestant. After 40 spins and over $100,000 later, Larson stopped playing. His win streak had to be broadcast over 2 episodes it went on for so long.

CBS later revised the light sequences and put a cap on the winnings of $75,000 so that no one else could duplicate Larson’s “success”.

So what does this have to do with marketing law firms?

Larson had two things in place in order to pull off the feat he did.

1. He had a plan in place ahead of time

2. He had a system for working that plan

Sound familiar? All the other contestants on the show walked in haphazardly hitting their “stop buttons” when they felt they might land on the “Big Bucks” square. They had no plan ahead of time and they had no system for landing on the correct square. The result was that some got lucky and most lost everything. You can’t afford to just get lucky when it comes to marketing a law firm.

Take the time to get a marketing plan in place. How do you want to position your practice against your competitors? What demographic do you want to appeal to? How long are you going to run your campaign for? How much do you want to invest (time and money)?

Additionally, think about the systems in place at your firm now. How do you handle incoming leads? How are you measuring and analyzing the results of your marketing? Is someone responsible for maintaining marketing activities such as blogging, social media, etc? If your marketing is wildly successful, have you accounted for an influx of leads?