There is the great divide: The over-50 and all the younger generations.
It will increasingly impact the effectiveness of marketing, even in the highly traditional legal sector.
That's to be kept in mind with a recession seemingly on the way. During it, more than 10,250 slots can be lost.
Here is a case study of sorts from another branch of professional services: public relations.
For many holidays, The Dilenschneider Group (DGI) creates a commentary.
It is relentlessly upbeat.
Usually it contains a laundry list of what the readers should be grateful for.
That message is published on the bible of public of public relations Odwyerpr.com.
The founder and head of DGI is Bob Dilenschneider. His background in public relations reaches back to a time when the discipline was separate from marketing. There had been a clear line between the Dilenschneider types and the Don Drapers from "Mad Men."
Now, of course, there isn't. How public relations agencies market themselves reflects on how they might be positioning and packaging their clients' marketing - and even hands-on sales.
Those of us over-50 have to become aware of blind spots in our marketing. Otherwise, those can throw shade on our branding. Obviously how we put ourselves out there is how we are perceived.
There are several negatives associated with the holiday tactic.
One goes all the way back to Harvard marketing professor Ted Levitt. In his signature book "The Marketing Imagination," he admitted that America is ambivalent about marketing. He phrases that as "Marketing and Its Discontents." Yes, the blockbuster American economy had been built on marketing. Simultaneously, there is a deep resentment of commercial messaging. Johnny Carson captured that in his staging of bored pitches for sponsors' products.
It's not only Christmas but also all the holidays that we push back on commercialization. When Dilenschneider zeros in on holiday greetings, that can become counterproductive to the marketing mix.
Another beef is the predictability. DGI doesn't miss a holiday. And the posting is always on Odwyerpr.com. In this era of fast time, tradition can be off-putting.
That opens the template of the holiday greeting to ridicule.
Easter is coming. The smart-aleck in me wonders: Will DGI instruct us on Holy Thursday via Odwyerpr.com to be grateful for the invention of all those marshmallow chicks?
How could I have managed to live my life without that source of extreme pleasure?
Should I reach beyond the narrow confines of my self-absorbed self and distribute the chicks, along with peanut butter stuffed bunnies, to the less fortunate?
The third issue is larger: Have holidays become so commercially exploited that we have ditched the whole concept? The exception might be Halloween. Even my four-legged son enjoys dressing up for all the parties we are invited to. More and more of us ignore President's Day Mattress sales and specials on SUVs at the car dealership.
A takeaway about marketing for us over-50 is the need to continually assess if it's hurting our branding and revenues or a liability? A sign of our current times, LinkedIn encourages us to continue to modify our all-important profiles.
Part of my new marketing strategy is to reposition our enterprises as West Coast firms. At the end of the summer I will relocate them to the border of California. Then, one day at a time, I will measure what marketing tactics are panning out and which to ditch. A useful read on that is Henry Cloud's "Necessary Endings."
Reflection: Are legal marketers running their strategies and tactics by associates? That perspective is a terrible thing to waste.
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