Friday, April 22, 2016

Do Client Reviews Affect my Avvo Rating?

By Gina F. Rubel

When we wrote recently about the lawyer rating website Avvo, and what it means for a law firm’s practice, one of the follow-up questions we heard repeatedly was, “Do client reviews affect my Avvo rating?”

It’s a logical question. An Avvo profile includes space for client reviews and ratings, and even has a feature whereby attorneys can email clients to request that they submit a review. If the website goes to such lengths to encourage client input, it would seem to follow that that input would affect an attorney’s numerical rating.

According to Avvo, however, client reviews do not affect an attorney’s rating.

As we previously discussed, Avvo uses a proprietary algorithm to calculate a numerical rating for an attorney on a scale of 1 to 10. The formula takes into account the professional information that an attorney has entered into his or her Avvo profile, including career history, scholarly writings, speaking engagements and industry-specific memberships and awards. Each of these types of information in the profile contributes to an attorney’s overall rating.

Reviews from other attorneys do boost a lawyer’s rating. Those from clients do not. Avvo says: “Peer endorsements do affect your Avvo Rating, though client reviews do not. This is because peer endorsements – one lawyer endorsing another’s skills and experience – are a way to assess industry recognition, which is a factor in how we calculate an attorney’s Avvo Rating. Client reviews do play a very important role for people looking to hire an attorney, but we have chosen to not include that information when calculating the Avvo Rating.”

That doesn’t mean that attorneys should ignore client reviews. Particularly for lawyers in some consumer-facing practices, such as family law, reviews from past clients can influence a potential client’s choice of attorney. Avvo’s client rating is a way for an average consumer to rate how they feel their attorney handled their case. And consumers seeking an attorney often consider input from previous clients to help them decide which attorneys to approach regarding a similar legal issue.

As with any rating a consumer gives to a service or product online – think Amazon, eBay, or TripAdvisor – a client review can be superb or not so superb. Avvo’s client ratings are displayed as stars on the attorney’s profile page, with five stars being the highest and one star being the lowest.

So what is Furia Rubel’s advice regarding Avvo client ratings? We do advise lawyers to claim their Avvo profiles and fill them out as completely as possible in order to boost their rating. (Avvo invests heavily in marketing and Avvo profiles tend to appear high in search engine results.) For attorneys who work primarily in-house or who deal with corporations, municipalities or other entities, soliciting client reviews may not be worth an investment of effort. For lawyers who work directly with the public, however, positive client reviews can help influence a consumer’s buying decision, and seeking them out may be worth the time and effort, regardless of their lack of influence on Avvo’s overall lawyer rating.

Monday, April 04, 2016

April Fools’ Day Marketing Pranks Gone Wrong (and Right)

By Megan Quinn

On April Fools’ Day, brands as large as Google put their marketing prank skills to the test. Some jokes were up to par, but for others, it was a swing and a miss. Below I’ve compiled the only guide you need to the 2016 April Fools’ Day marketing missteps and victories.

Google’s Mic Drop Minion

Let’s start with one of the worst. Google’s "Drop The Mic" animated gif of one of the beloved minion characters from the Despicable Me movie franchise was added to Gmail in place of the ‘send’ and ‘archive’ buttons, attaching the gif to sent mail. In concept, I’m sure the idea seemed cute. However, this proved to be in poor taste for people who sent more serious emails such as prayer requests and resumes for job interviews.

After much backlash, Google felt terrible about the whole ordeal and issued an apology reversing the feature. To be fair, an initial warning did pop up, but it proved to be futile.

“Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. Due to a bug, the MicDrop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We’re truly sorry. The feature has been turned off. If you are still seeing it, please reload your Gmail page,” Google explained.

Time hop to the future

This was one of the best. Instead of showing users their past social media posts, Timehop’s app produced several fake future posts — and they’re amazing.

One predicted Facebook post from 2039 reads, “Impressed by President Kanye’s socioeconomic knowledge and policies…” And another showcased a 2025 Instagram post of a “Fast & Furious 17” poster (which is not out of the question at this point).

The prank posts, which looked exactly like typical Timehop posts, made plenty of lofty predictions too. One Facebook post from 2025 says, “Filed my taxes via Snapchat for the first time, WHAT A RUSH!”

This year’s prank predictions seemed not to be too far out of reach (minus President Kanye West), but for Timehop regulars, don’t worry — your usual past social media posts can be found below the app’s April Fools’ jokes.

#AerieMan Campaign

Aerie’s April Fools’ Day attempt was a major head-scratcher. After the company had recently started to make strides with unretouched female models, Aerie announced that this should also apply to male models. The Internet freaked out accordingly, but with thunderous applause.

So it came as a major disappointment to find out that their #AerieMan campaign was nothing but a parody launched to raise awareness about body diversity. The brand had become a major positive body image advocate, and now they were making fun of it. Their message was certainly mixed and it felt like a poorly executed PR move.

American Eagle Outfitters, Aerie’s parent company issued a press release on Friday for the big reveal. "American Eagle Outfitters proves once again they're not afraid to take a risk and have a laugh in support of a good cause.”

"This announcement marks the brand's pledge to forego retouching its male models in its underwear and swim images beginning holiday 2016." Furthermore, "American Eagle Outfitters has donated $25,000 to NEDA, a non-profit that supports those affected by eating disorders and an ongoing partner with Aerie," they proclaimed.

While their donation and pledge are commendable, it left many wondering why this was parody at all. Why did the campaign have to be a parody in order to raise awareness?

Quilted Northern ‘Made to be remembered’

Quilted Northern said on Friday that it would release the first small batch toilet paper, Quilted Northern Rustic Weave. The joke included a transformation of QuiltedNorthern.com, social media and the addition of deadpanned video commercials for the big reveal.

"The demand for simple, handcrafted, heritage products is stronger than ever, but no toilet paper satisfies this growing sector," a company press release states. "The teams quickly realized that in order to create the next breakthrough innovation, they needed to go back to the drawing board to create something more bespoke."

Luckily, this well-executed April Fools’ prank will never become a reality. The company used the prank as a platform to launch its real Mega Roll products. On Twitter, along with a short video, the company announced, “Artisanal bath tissue seemed like a great idea. Then we tried it. Now we're happy to introduce new Mega Roll instead.”

Which April Fools’ pranks were your favorite? Which pranks left you guessing? Share your thoughts in the comments below.