Advertising costs a ton, and I’m guessing that’s especially true for the lawyer ads that run on TV. Better to take advantage of free press and social media. Which is what NYC attorney Aaron Schlossberg did the other day. What better way to reach your target audience, attract new prospects, than have all kinds of buzz buzzing around you?
Here’s the scoop on Mr. Schlossberg.
Apparently hoping to expand his client base, he did a bit of inspired performance art in a Manhattan restaurant when he stopped in for lunch. Overhearing a couple of employees speaking Spanish – a language that, according to his web site, Mr. Schlossberg is fluent in – the man went on a full-bore/full-boar rant. Fortunately for him, someone was able to capture his performance on her smartphone. And as luck would have it – or maybe just clever planning on this part – the video went viral. You can check it out here.
Some of the highlights:
In the video, the man tells an employee, “Your staff is speaking Spanish to customers when they should be speaking English... This is America.” (Source: Huffington Post)
Which reminded me of a weird old experience I had when I was in college. My roommate’s widowed mother and two maiden aunts came into town and took us out to The Café Budapest – back in the day, one of the swankier Boston restaurants. There was a couple sitting nearby, speaking French. For some reason – likely associated with tee many martoonis – the two maiden aunts went into a bit of the rant about people coming to this country and not speaking English. Part of their rave included repeatedly emphasizing the fact that their parents were immigrants, but they had always spoken English. They omitted the fact that their parents, who were themselves the offspring of Irish immigrants, spoke English to begin with. My roommate and I, along with her mother, were completely mortified. Eventually the maiden aunts calmed down.
That was nearly 50 years ago. The world one might have hoped had changed for the better, not the worst.
The employee attempted to explain that his co-workers were simply interacting with other customers.
That hardly satisfied the man, who can be seen pointing wildly around the room at everyone he said he overheard speaking Spanish.
After other customers laugh at his antics and taunt him, with one telling him he’s “fucked up,” the angry man becomes even angrier.
“My guess is, they’re not documented, so my next call is to ICE to have each one of [them] kicked out of my country,” he said. “They have the balls to come here and live off of my money I pay for their welfare, I pay for their ability to be here. The least they could do, the least they could do is speak English.”
Schlossberg seems a bit confused here. First off, he forgot to call these people “animals”, which seems to be the on-trend word for Hispanic immigrants of late. Second, these were Spanish-speaking folks with jobs, so what was that about paying for their welfare? But Schlossberg’s the clever marketer, and he’s the one that would know best about what search terms would most help him reach his ideal clientele.
On his firm’s website, they tout their creativity:
We are proud of our ability to develop out-of-the-box solutions while still offering exceptional litigation strength that can win for our clients when more conventional approaches are most appropriate.
Personally, I’d prefer my lawyers to take that more conventional approach if it is, in fact, most appropriate. But that’s just me and, anyway, I’m not their target client. I will say it’s good to see that his firm is committed to out-of-the-box, whether they’re litigating or marketing.
Prior to his brilliant out-of-the-box video – he even got a complete stranger to shoot and post it for free – Schlossberg had already proven himself adept at social media. As I saw in his LinkedIn profile (which for some reason seems to have been taken down), one of his two references was from a woman with the last name of Schlossberg, of all things. I’m sure it was just a coincidence. After all, while Schlossberg is not as common a surname as Rogers, there are plenty of them around. Isn’t Caroline Kennedy a Schlossberg?
Anyway, the review on LinkedIn wasn’t written by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. But by using a reference that gets us thinking – is this his mother/aunt/sister/cousin/wife? – Aaron Schlossberg is demonstrating his prowess with out-of-the-box thinking. I mean, anyone can have a LinkedIn reference written by someone who’s not related. But, hey, the most conventional approaches may just seem the most appropriate.
I wish Attorney Schlossberg all the luck in the world.
He may need it if he wants to do any more take out lunching in midtown.
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