Gary Yordon:
Rethink where you want to go, and if you do that, there’s a path there. Quiet can be incredibly loud if everything else is loud. In fact, quiet becomes louder than loud. When you redesign your market, when you redesign the conversation you want to have, you’re going to change that paradigm, but it takes all the other tools.
Chris Dreyer:
Welcome to Personal Injury Mastermind. I’m your host,Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io, the legal marketing company that the best firms hire when they want the rankings, traffic, and cases other law firm marketing agencies can’t deliver.
On this show, I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from some of the best minds in the personal injury space, and now we are bringing them together in one place at the first-ever PIM Conference. PIMCon is coming to Scottsdale this September. We’re laser-focused on one thing: getting more leads. And I’m not just talking about just any leads, but quality leads that actually turn into cases. That’s it. That’s our entire focus.
It’s not just theory. We’re talking about actionable strategies that have been tried and tested by the best in the business. If you’re looking to conquer personal injury marketing and go from good to go, PIMCon is where you need to be. We’ve gathered the top PI marketing experts to share their secrets. And believe me, this is cutting edge stuff you won’t find anywhere else. Don’t miss out on another potential client. Grab your ticket to PIMCon now and get ready to supercharge your practice. Your future self will thank you.
Go to pimcon.org. All right. Let’s dive in.
In the world of personal injury advertising there’s a common belief: To succeed, you need to spend the most in your market. But what if that’s not the whole story? What if the key isn’t just about how often your ad plays, but how memorable it is/ Enter Gary Yordon, a 10-time Emmy Award-winning media strategist who’s shaking up the world of personal injury advertising. Gary’s approach turns conventional wisdom on its head, proving that in a world of loud, aggressive ads, sometimes the quietest voice can make the biggest impact. From rethinking target audiences to leveraging the science of memory, Gary’s strategies help firms dramatically increase their caseload without breaking the bank.
Here’s Gary Yordon, partner at SP Media Group.
Gary Yordon:
I wanted to be a baseball player and I was pretty sure I could talk, and positive I couldn’t hit, so I ended up just streaming into media. Came to Florida State University in Tallahassee, the state capital inFlorida, to play baseball. Ended up getting a job on public television. Did that for a few years, and then I got elected into a local government seat for three terms. So all of a sudden that’s 12 years, and that was when I was 30. So all of a sudden you’re 42 and you got some kids and ran home to mama and went back on TV.
Started hosting the television show I host now, The UsualSuspects, on CBS. A political talk show with idiots around the table. And then was blessed to bump into Terry and Ken a few years ago and developed the product we’re working with today.
Chris Dreyer:
That’s amazing, and we’re going to dig into that. I got to lead with you’re a 10 time Emmy Award winner. 10 time. That’s pretty incredible.
Gary Yordon:
Well, it proves that even a melon could win an Emmy. It was never a goal. In fact, I think the thing I’m most proud of is that the first one was ’09 and the last one was last year. You can win one by a bolt of lightning. Some good idea that happens. But consistency is the key. One of my partners, Terrie Pickerill, was one of the architects of Obama’s ’08 campaign and then she’s designed the media we have today. That’s a long stretch to be consistent over time.
Ken Snyder, my other partner, was doing US Senate campaigns 20 years ago and here we’re still designing cool stuff. I think consistency is something I’m more proud of than each individual statue. But 10was a journey and it was a lot of cool projects.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, and absolute wealth of experience and wisdom in this space. What made you make the leap over to the legal space? Was it a light bulb moment? How did you jump over to the legal space?
Gary Yordon:
I was hoping this would be my favorite question because what I really get off on is market disruption. It’s easy to pivot where everybody else is to be part of market noise but when you can disrupt a market in whatever industry by making the market change course, that’s fun. And I was watching; it was about 2015, 2016, in that period; and every personal injury ad was basically the same template. “We’ll fight for you. If you’re injured, call us.” All the things. “This is how much we got for this person.” And that noise that someone was talking about 30 seconds earlier and you’re talking about now, and then 30 seconds later somebody’s going to be saying essentially the same thing, I just started looking at it and going,”How is the person sitting at home separating you from the other firms?”
So I realized it was an industry that was primed for disruption and so we started doing some deep-dive focus groups and some other things. We actually went to Mayo and talked to a neurologist about brain research. I’ll get to that in a second. That was really fun too. But learned a lot about how PI ads work in the brain.
And I hope lawyers like our coo with this next statement, but what we learned was folks thought most any lawyer could win a case. They just didn’t like them very much. The hard sell to the camera, the ambulance chaser reputation. Even that’s not who these folks are but that was a public perception that they spent years adding to with the hard sell to the camera.”If you’re injured, trust us. We’ll fight for you.”
So we started thinking if results weren’t the issue, then likability was the issue. Then let’s design something where people like the attorneys. So instead of going to the camera, we put attorneys in a position to talk to each other about things that were important to them, things they believe, things that matter to them, cases they remember, clients they got close to, people that they still have relationships with today. And it just instantly disrupted. What’s funny, the law firm that first did them, averaged about 29 cases a month. Today they’re averaging about 121. It’s like it was a complete paradigm shift. So just changing the conversation with the marketplace disrupted the market.
Then the brain research. So we found out that memory is stored in the hippocampus. And if I gave you this phone number, like, (851)247-8143, and said, “Remember that,” and then saw you on the street six months from now and said, “What’s that number?” You’d go,”How the hell do I know that number?” But if it was the number of the people who are watching your kids, you’d spit it right back to me. That’s how the hippocampus works. It requires data points. It’s like you run into an old friend and he remembers a party from high school. You don’t remember that party. Well, he probably made out with a girl for the first time at that party, and nothing big happened to you at that party so it created a data point for him that it didn’t do for you.
That’s why we put our attorneys in coffee shops. Because everybody’s had a conversation in a coffee shop. Or we put them into families’ living rooms. So we put them at dinner tables. Our design is meant to create datapoints. So the disruptive design is really just about approachability and likability. That makes a difference.
Chris Dreyer:
I’ve heard actually on this podcast some of the big TV advertisers saying, “Oh, you got to be the number one or two spender in the market,” and I’ve always thought that’s because your ads aren’t good.They’re not memorable, right? If you’re doing the same ad, you got to beat them over the head a 1,000 times before you remember it. Hippocampus. Is that where you get the jingles, because it’s tying it to a data point for memorability?
Gary Yordon:
That’s frequency. And it may not register in the hippocampus because it might not mean something to you. The hippocampus is a file system and so when there’s a file that you want to file, like that’s the phone number of the person to watch my kids, you file it. It’s why you have selective memory when you go back and you remember things from your past. Sono, the jingle might not work.
Now, you can get somebody by hammering away at a jingle, but think about this for a minute. If you’re saying, if your entire message is,”If you’re injured, call us,” you’re talking to less than one percent of the marketplace. When I tell that to attorneys they’re like, “Holy crap. I’ve never thought of it that way.” 99% of the market is not injured so they hear that message differently than an injured person hears it. So why are you spending your money not talking to 99% of the market?
And so when you do that through likability, six months from now when God forbid they get injured, they’ll remember the firm they like.They won’t remember the nine firms who told them the same thing before. That’s how the hippocampus works. The market is actually in thirds. Most PI firms think of the market as one. People who are injured. So now if you expand it to everybody who’s not injured, well, you’ve really changed the game.
But there’s a third market. I’ve had the same housekeeper for 30 years. I have my family attorney. I’m probably not going to hire a PI lawyer if something happens. I’m probably going to go to my family attorney.I’ve been blessed to have an income level that allows me to have that comfort level in my life. But if something happens to the person who cleans my home or someone in their family, they’re asking me who to call. They’re not dialing the phone. They’re coming to me. And that’s the same for my barista, that’s the same for my lawn guy, that’s the same for all people in my life who haven’t had some of the blessings that I’ve had.
And so PI firms don’t talk to me, but they should, because when they talk to me I’m going to remember the firm that was relatable to me and I’m probably going to steer that person who got hurt in my mate’s family to them. So really, it’s not just re-designing the design, it’s re-designing what the marketplace looks like and what kind of conversation we have to have with it.
Chris Dreyer:
Gary’s approach to being quiet in a noisy market makes me lean in and the results speak for themselves. Earlier, he talked about a firm that saw a dramatic increase in their caseload, jumping from 30 cases a month to over a 120. That’s a significant leap by any measure. This kind of growth raises questions about what’s driving. Is it just the power of this new conversational creative approach or are there other factors at play, such as changes in media distribution or advertising spend?
Gary breaks down how this remarkable growth was achieved.
Gary Yordon:
Yeah, no. I couldn’t say it was purely the creative. The creative changes the course and that didn’t happen in a week. Great PI marketing is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. That’s why creating likability has to be given time. But you guys, it’s SEO stuff. It’s how to maneuver in the digital marketplace. No, there’s a lot of layers to it but you’ve got to start with a fundamental design that changes the paradigm, because if you don’t change the paradigm, you’re using those tools and you’ll grow. You’ll grow by1%. You talked about the top one or two firms in the market and everybody strives to be those top one or two firms.
One of the things we’ve gold our firms was … I’ll use a name here. In one market I said, “What do you care about Morgan & Morgan? I don’t care if they have 40% of the market. You’re at 4% of the market. You’ve got an amazing home, you’re driving a Porsche, you got a beach house. What if you were at 9% of the market? What if you were at 11% of the market? We just blew the roof of your firm.”
I think it’s redesigning goals. I think it’s redesigning objectives and what we say to our firms, rethink where you want to go. And if you do that, there’s a path there. Quiet can be incredibly loud if everything else is loud. In fact, quiet becomes louder than loud. When you redesign your market, when you redesign the conversation you want to have, you’re going to change that paradigm, but it takes all the other tools. If you don’t have good SEO, if you don’t have good digital, if you’re not using every tool available to you, you’re not going to move as fast as you could move. It’s steps, not leaps.
But if you have great material, if you change the conversation you’re having with the market, and you do those other things well, something great is going to happen, and it’s going to happen for a long time. We’ve never had a firm leave us. Our oldest firm is almost eight years now. It’s just we create these relationships where, over time, it just gets better. The 29 to 120 did not happen in a month, but actually … And the firm grows and you can… The month before it happened, they had 34 signed cases. The month we started this, they signed 77. So it can be lightning.
Then we had good months, we had bad months just like every other PI firm, but we never looked back. And I think the folks at that law firm will tell you that. I think we have to look at this from a couple different angles. That’s why your question is really most relevant.
Chris Dreyer:
I love the answer to that. There’s a lot to it. I’ve watched some of your videos. Personally, they feel at ease. Like whenever I’m getting yelled at I’m like, “Swipe right, next channel.” Or I tune it out. I’m on my phone. But when people are talking quiet in almost a serious tone I’m like, “Whoa, what the hell are they talking about? What’s going on here?” And I lean in a little bit.
But could you maybe paint the picture, like the setting maybe of this style just so our audience, because it’s mostly audio, can get a sense of what it is?
Gary Yordon:
One of the things we did in terms of establishing the disruption, was we established a campaign with 60-second commercials instead of the traditional 30-second commercials and that was a big leap because 60s are simply more expensive than 30s. And then our firms began to realize that they’re not. I’m just making numbers up. If you do a 30 that attracts 10 people, and you do a 60 that attracts a 100 people, which one’s cheaper? It’s performance that matters and our 60s were really driving the numbers because for the first time they could tell a story.
So imagine three or four attorneys sitting in a coffeeshop and one of them is saying, “Yeah, the first offer that insurance company made was $5,000. My client was blind and they offered $5,000. And they came and they waved the contract and they said this would put an end to it, and$5,000 seemed like a lot of money. And then we went, we fought, we battled…” But they’re telling that to each other. “And at the end of the day we got $5 million.” So they’re having that story but they’re telling it to each other and you’re just eavesdropping on them. These are full five-camera shoots.
The other key part. Of all the things you’re going to hear today, this is a big deal. The other thing we learned in our focus groups that we did was that people think lawyers don’t listen. That was huge. That when you go there you’re going to get lectured or you’re going to be told things but you’re not going to be heard. About 5% of every commercial we do has listening shots. That’s why the five cameras really work. So you’ll hear one lawyer talking and we’ll cut to another side of another lawyer listening to that lawyer talking.
We’ll also put case managers on the set. We’ll put people who are on the front line of meeting people and they talk about the families they’ve met, and so you begin to get a culture of a firm. Then the other wall we broke down was we brought clients on the set. Not third person client things where they’re looking off to the side so you can hear what they say, you see them on a bunch of sides and they’re talking about how much money they got. No, these are clients on the set, breaking bread, having coffee with the attorneys and the clients are talking about, “You gave me your cell phone number the first hour we met and we became friends. You came over for Christmas last…”
And they talk about their case and they talk about what happened and how they felt lost. How they couldn’t pick up heir kids, how they couldn’t … And they re-live that experience together on camera. Man, that’s just some powerful stuff. When you see that, it changes how you feel about that attorney and you really establish likability.
Five-camera shoots sound like it’s going to be really expensive, but it’s not. I mean, we put together a template that makes the shots cheaper because with one of our shoots, you’ll get eight, nine, 10, 11, 12commercials in 60s and then we do 30s and 15s. So you’ll have a toolbox full of stuff to use for a long time.
Chris Dreyer:
In the world of personal injury advertising we’re all familiar with a certain type of ad: The ones featuring attorneys and big trucks. You know the ones I’m talking about. Lawyers standing on trucks, yelling at trucks, even smashing trucks with their sledgehammers. These ads are everywhere and become almost a cliché in the PI marketing space.
But Gary’s approach seems different. It’s more subtle, more conversational. I was curious had he ever experimented with truck-centered campaigns that seemed to dominate the market or was his strategy always focused on this quieter, more authentic approach? Gary shares his thoughts on why he chose a different path.
Gary Yordon:
What you don’t know is who you never got. Now think about that for a second. You know who you’re getting by standing on a truck and yelling, but what you don’t know is who you’re never getting. You’re not growing your firm by concentric circles because you’re not having conversation with your next circle of growth. And that’s how you disrupt a market, is while the other firms are just parceling out all the available cases, and growing, if you want to grow by a leap, you need to start a new conversation with another part of the market. Who’s nurturing young people who have either had an accident or an injury or whatever?
Until you have that larger conversation, you know who you’re getting but you’ll never know who you’re not getting and that’s what our firms are experiencing. They’re finding calls from people that never would be traditionally calling a personal injury law firm. But to slide that over here for a second. What kind of cases you want. Our firm in Philadelphia, there is nothing in any of the commercials we did for them that talks about truck accidents, car accidents. That firm wants sexual assault and malpractice.That’s what they want. That’s what they specialize in. That is their center. And so then the conversation they are having, it’s about those cases and so that’s what they’re driving.
We give firms a canvas. What they paint on it is up to them. Some firms love those truck cases. Some firms want those cases and some firms don’t. That’s how we drive the conversation. There’s a ton of prep that goes into it. About a month before we even shoot, we send the firms about a50-point item sheet. Things we want them to consider. Why did you become a lawyer in the first place? How would you describe contingency fees? Remember three cases that meant something to you. Talk about two people you’ve met.They’re 50 things we want them to get in their head.
And then we communicate with them after they’ve had that for about a week or two and we just talk to each attorney who’s going to be on camera. And then the day before the shoot we meet with each attorney on camera individually and we go over wardrobe and how to use their hands and just talk them through what to expect in the process. But by that time, they’re already got all these things in their head that we know we want them to talk about we look at their mannerisms, we see what they’re going to do. So there’s a pretty big process that goes into them. We just don’t throw them at a coffee table and say, “Start talking.”
One of the fears of our firms is that other people will see them in the marketplace and then start copying them. Good luck. The prep work that goes into those and editing five cameras into exactly 54 seconds of relative conversation, it’s harder than it looks.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And I believe you on that one. I’m sure some of the individuals listening, I want to grab their attention. You got the digital guys. Never done TV. And then you got the old school TV that have had the same producer and it’s worked back in the glory days when the distribution was further. Is this still primarily a TV play? Are you utilizing it for streaming,TikTok or YouTube. Just from what drives cases. Is TV still driving most of the cases from this strategy.
Gary Yordon:
Yeah, although it’s beginning to even out. But I can tell you that broadcast TV is still the big elephant in the room. It just is. You have to remember the market we’re dealing with and for most PI firms, you’re dealing with about a 150,000 combined family income and down. Let’s be honest about that marketplace. So when you do, you have to go where they are and they are cutting their cable and they’re on commercial supported Hulu, they’re on Sling, they’re on YouTube TV because it’s much less expensive and they’re willing to put up with the commercials and they have to watch them. So those are eyeballs.That means, yeah, that’s a good place for you to be. But unquestionably still, broadcast is the big elephant and unless you’re there as a big part of your mix, you’re going to be missing a chunk of the market.
Having said that, everything else is creeping up and you need to be geofencing. We want someone sitting in an emergency room seeing our commercial. We geofence hospitals and we geofence chiropractors’ offices. We geofence particular zip codes. So yes, smart digital is altering the marketplace but I just don’t think right now it’s at a point where it’s dominating. I think it’s a new tradition and I think if a firm isn’t using it they’re making a gigantic mistake. They are missing out on a significant part of the market because if you don’t go where they are, then you never found them. But I don’t think it’s gotten to where broadcast is moving into second position.
Chris Dreyer:
Got it. Got it. People are going to ask, “What’s pricing look like?” I know every project is unique, but what does a minimum investment look like?
Gary Yordon:
Well, we don’t charge a fee. There’s no retainers, there’s none of that. We do the one shoot. We’ll end up over the years doing more than one shoot because they’ll want to come back and do it again. But one shoot is usually somewhere around 50 grand and for that 50 grand you’ll get at least a year’s worth of content. Actually, if you circle back, probably more than that because we’re going to hand you about a dozen commercials of different lengths and you only air one or two at a time. So it’s at least a year’s worth.
That’s a one-time cost and then you’re done. And then we do the buying. Where you buy this product matters and we know how to buy our product. And we don’t charge them anything for that except their normal 15%they’d be paying in the agency. This is not an expensive venture. We think we’re one of the most cost-effective things out there because we’re not charging a bunch of other fees. We do the shoot. Whatever it costs. It depends on where we got to travel, whether we need to rent the space, whether we rent somebody’s living room. If we got to do a Vrbo for a weekend. But whatever it is, it is. There’s virtually very little profit margin on the shoot itself.
But the buy is where we make our money and it’s what they’re paying anyway, so not a terribly expensive venture at all.
Chris Dreyer:
Love that. Thank you for those details. Gary, this is incredible. I’ve hounded and talked about creative but I have yet to find someone that was doing a different approach and I’m so glad to have you on the show to share this different style and I think it’s tremendous value. For our audience listening, one final question. Where can they go to connect with you to ask questions? Where can they go to learn more about the product?
Gary Yordon:
Spmedialaw.com. S as in Sam, P as in Paul. Sp media law.com. That’s our website. You can go take a look. You’ll see a bunch of spots. It’s got a contact us. Our phone numbers are on there, along with my partners,Terrie Pickerill and Ken Snyder. We’re all there and the philosophy is there. Spmedialaw.com.
Chris Dreyer:
Thanks so much to Gary for an amazing conversation. Let’s hit the takeaways. You don’t need to outspend the competition to have a lasting impact. By creating authentic, engaging content that draws potential clients in smaller firms can level the playing field. This strategy demonstrates that thoughtful creative can cut through the noise, even without a massive ad budget.
Gary Yordon:
… quiet becomes louder than loud. When you redesign your market, when you redesign the conversation you want to have, you’re going to change that paradigm, but it takes all the other tools.
Chris Dreyer:
Expand your horizons by thinking of the markets in third.The injured, the potentially injured and the influential connectors. Firms can capture new segments. This approach recognizes that while high earners might not need PI services directly, they can influence many who do. It’s about reaching beyond the currently injured to build a broader network of potential clients and refers.
Gary Yordon:
PI firms don’t talk to me, but they should and I’m probably going to steer that person who got hurt in my mate’s family to them. So really, it’s not just re-designing the design, it’s re-designing what the market place looks like and what kind of conversation we have to have with it.
Chris Dreyer:
Effective creative will put you miles ahead. Prepare and be intentional. By diving into attorneys’ motivations and real client impacts, these ads create genuine connections with the viewers that go a step further by actively countering negative lawyer stereotypes. In a market full of loud, aggressive ads, this thoughtful approach proves that authentic strategic storytelling can make a massive impact.
Gary Yordon:
We established a campaign with 60-second commercials instead of the traditional 30-second commercials. It’s performance that matters and our 60s were really driving the numbers. For the first time they could tell a story.
Chris Dreyer:
Huge thank you to Gary for coming on the show. For more information about Gary, check out the show notes. Before you go, do me a solid and smash that follow button to subscribe. I’d sincerely appreciate it and you won’t want to miss out on the next episode of Personal Injury Mastermind with me, Chris Dreyer, founder and CEO of Rankings.io.
All right, everybody. Thanks for hanging out. See you next time. I’m out.
