Chris Dreyer:
You've heard the jingle, you've seen the billboards, but what most people don't know is how much strategy, risk, and relentless testing it took to get there. Before SEO, before TV, even before Yellow Page ads, one man's vision changed everything. Ross Cellino made personal injury, a household conversation, built one of the most recognizable jingles in America and showed every attorney that attention is the new currency. I'm Chris Dreyer, CEO of Rankings.io. Today's episode is a special one, the day one keynote interview recorded live at PIMCon. If you're ready for PIMCon 2026, check out the show notes. Let's get into it.
Jingle:
800-888-8888. Don't wait. Call eight.
Chris Dreyer:
So excited to chat with you today.
Ross Cellino:
I'm just glad I'm able to sit down here with you.
Chris Dreyer:
We got to start from the beginning.
Ross Cellino:
All right. Give it a shot.
Chris Dreyer:
Take me back to that decision to launch and own the firm. Some of the people in the crowd may be thinking about doing the same. Take us back.
Ross Cellino:
When I graduated, I was working as a clerk at a law firm and also working at UPS. At UPS, I believe I made $10,000 part-time working at UPS while I was going to law school. And my first job offer when I got out of law school was a job that I'm going to work full-time and they offered me $12,000. I said, "12,000. Are you kidding me?" And so my dad says to me, "Well, why don't you start your own law firm?" I said, "Well, because I don't know what I'm doing. You go to law school, you learn about theory. You don't know how to run a practice." But the bottom line is I decided I'm going to give it a shot. I always had that thinking in my mind that I can do it.
Even as a little kid, I was sort of always thinking about what I can do to make money. I'm going to tell you a real quick story. When I was six years old, maybe seven years old, I'm in school and at the time throwing beanbags around the room was really a cool thing. And I decided to make a little business out of it. My mom would sew them up for me and I'd sell them for five cents a piece and the teacher stopped me after a few weeks because I'm not supposed to be making money. Anyways, I always thought about making money and I knew in my mind that I wanted to be a millionaire. And my goal was to become a millionaire by the age of 30. And at $12,000 a year at 23 years old, the numbers didn't add up. So I said, "Okay, I'm going to give it a shot." So that's really what got me inspired to start my own firm.
Chris Dreyer:
That's incredible. So we got to talk about the early days marketing. What was the decision? What was kind of that tipping point, that early start, like where you deployed the capital back then?
Ross Cellino:
I didn't really have any capital to speak of, but what I did notice is that lawyers are like any other business. If you want to bring in clients, you got to let them know who you are. And at the time it was really inexpensive to buy a yellow page business card size ad. And I did advertise for DWIs and I got business. And so it got me thinking, why are these lawyers spending all this money on a full page ad? There's got to be a reason. So I got started with that and it worked. And by the time I joined my dad's general practice firm three years later, my first year as a lawyer running Ross Selina Attorney Law, I made $9,000. I made more working part-time at UPS than I did running my firm, but I was still inspired because every year it went bigger. It went from 9,000 to 20,000 to 30,000.
And then I eventually joined my father's firm and I said, "Hey, look it, why don't we put a full page ad in? These other lawyers are doing it." And they go, "Oh, that costs too much money." I said, "Let's interview the guy down the hall who has a full page ad." And the guy said, "No, it just covers the cost of the ad." I go back to the office after a lunch. I go, "He's not being candid. He doesn't spend $60,000 a year just to recover $60,000 a year." So I convinced the old guys to go ahead and do that and it worked out for us. And then that was my start of marketing for law firms.
Chris Dreyer:
So back in the day, it was kind of taboo, right? It was-
Ross Cellino:
Frowned upon.
Chris Dreyer:
Frowned upon, right? You had other attorneys that from a referral perspective, it's going to kill your business, you're not going to be successful, but what gave you the belief, the confidence to do it?
Ross Cellino:
Well, first of all, that little ad that I put in worked. Then when we did put the full page ad, that worked. And then I started looking around of other marketing that was going on because again, I wanted this ability to become a millionaire by the time I was 30. It didn't happen, by the way. But the truth is I saw other marketing avenues, which were TV. Some lawyers were on TV and they had social security, bankruptcy, matrimonial, NPI. And there's a couple other law firms in Buffalo that advertised on TV with this multi practice thing. And that didn't make a lot of sense to me. And ultimately when Steve and I joined together, we said, "Let's niche it down to just personal injury work." And frankly, we became known as the injury guys and it took off from there. So we focused and niched down to just PI work and that worked for us.
Chris Dreyer:
So talk to me, you got this brochure. I think Morris Bart was heavy in Louisiana doing television. You got this brochure. You contacted Morris. Was it an offer that he would teach you how to do TV? Tell me about that moment.
How Cellino & Barnes outspent, outbranded, and outperformed competitors through creative legal marketing campaigns
Ross Cellino:
One of the senior guys in the office, he looked at a journal, a law journal. I think there was a guy by the name of Richard Sackett that was actually the marketer. And he put an ad in there and showed Morris Bart was one of his lawyers, his star lawyer. And so literally that day we called down there and he said, "Hey, can set up something. You can meet Morris tomorrow." I said, "Okay, we're in." Then the very next day, Steve and I flew down in New Orleans, met with Buddy Bart. And I got to tell you what, we were blown away. He wasn't that much older than us. Frankly, he might've been five, seven years older than us, but he had 21 lawyers working for him. He had the top floor of this palatial building and he had insurance adjusters working for him.
And here's what he told us, and it was very, very good advice. "What you need to do is make... You two are the only partners in the firm, yes?" At that point, we already scaled the firm down to just Steve and myself and, "Make no more partners except make them partners in your files. They'll be motivated like you are to maximize the value on every case because they have a financial interest." And at the time he said 25% to the lawyer, 75% to the firm. The second thing he said is, "Figure out a way to double the spend of anybody else that's on TV." We go, "We don't have any money." And he goes, "You got to start somewhere, but eventually you get to the point where you can outspend your competition two to one. You'll become known as the personal injury lawyer in your region."
And actually ,we did that. It took us a few years to get to that point where we could double the spend. But Steve and I were very conservative. The first lawyer we hired, we hired him at 25%. And at the time he was making $45,000 as a mediator or something. And we only took out, I think it was 500 bucks a week, so it was 25 grand. And so we put him on and frankly, with the marketing that we started, it was with an actor. It wasn't that cool, but we had an actor start with our TV marketing, got business. And this lawyer that started with us, we told him he'd probably make about 75 grand after one year. He made 125 and he came back to us and he said, "Hey, Ross, I did so great for you guys..." Remember, I'm making 25. He made 125, "That I think I should get... I know I can't become a partner. You made that very clear to me upfront, but I think I should go up to 30%." We go, "Let me think about that."
Steve and I talked about it privately. Next day we said, "Yeah, you're right. You made 125, a lot more than we promised you. We paid you too much. You should go from 25 down to 20." So we actually reduced him. He didn't quit because the next year he made like 150. So his income went up because we got more cases in the door. Anyways, it was sort of a eye-opening thing for us that we kept pouring more into marketing. Steve and I were very conservative. We really didn't take much money out of the firm. We were really conservative. Any extra money we poured into marketing. So talk
Chris Dreyer:
To me about that. You see, I think Dan Newlin's former practice in Orlando. I think they spend $20 million on TV in just Orlando. And the opposite side, of course, State Farm, progressive, they're spending a billion dollars in advertising. So they're clearly trying to reach for volume. So what did the data show you, that when you doubled your spend, was there a moment where, "Hey, this is diminishing returns. We got to expand the TAM," or what happened when you started doubling and adding more to this?
Ross Cellino:
Well, the truth is there was no crystal moment like that. We just poured everything back into marketing. As our income went up, our revenue went up, we poured it back into market. We'd never really increased our own personal take for a long, long time. So we just constantly said, "We're pouring it in because it's working." And we split it between radio, TV, and billboards. Nowadays, you have to do more than that, but we just kept pouring it on.
And up until the last few years prior to the split up of the firm, honestly, we're very conservative. And I used to tell my wife, "Well, we're almost there. We're almost there." And she had a job. Steve was very conservative, didn't need a lot of money to maintain his lifestyle. I had six children of support. She was okay. My wife was supportive of us pouring it all back into marketing. And it obviously worked for us.
We got up to 54 lawyers at that point. It was a very viable firm. We wanted to be known as the trial lawyers that could actually market themselves too. I really used to watch other trial lawyers try their cases, because that's how you learn in my view. And the other thing, I used to watch the marketers. So I'd watch them both. And I said, "I wanted to be a guy that can try a case and actually market ourselves to get business before we're 70 years old." I wanted to get the business as a younger guy and it worked for us.
Chris Dreyer:
A few firms were using these different celebrities and you decided to use yourself. And so talk to me through that, that process and being recognized.
Ross Cellino:
Yeah. Buddy told us to go ahead and go on TV. Didn't really say to use our image or not, but I ran into Harlan Schillinger. It was another ad we responded to. And he was running network affiliates at the time. And he goes, "Ross, you got to put your puss on the TV screen. You and Steve ought to do that because you got to build your brand with not only your firm name, but with your faces, because if they see your faces, the name comes into the person's mind." And so he was instrumental in steering us in the right direction back then, back in 1995, I think.
Chris Dreyer:
Was Billboards next or was it radio and the jingle after that?
The marketing strategy behind billboards, jingles, and unforgettable phone numbers that turned a law firm into a household name
Ross Cellino:
It was radio and TV. And then what happened was this jingle thing, it was always in my mind, but I couldn't figure out how I would use it for the law firm because I'm old enough to remember," Winston tastes good like a cigarette should." It never escaped me. And they stopped advertising 40 years ago. There's a local supermarket in our area that had this jingle, "Tops Never Stops Saving You More." And so I talked to Steve, I said, "We got to develop a jingle." And he goes, "I think you're right." So we hired this guy, I think he charged us 500 bucks for this jingle with no commissions thereafter. And he came up with the actual jingle. I can't take credit for that.
But we did the jingle and then also the billboard thing came up and here's how the billboard thing came up. There was a vendor that came to the office, and I was the type of guy that they come in without an announcement or no prior appointment. And the receptionist says, "Hey, you want to talk to this guy? He's selling billboards." I go, "Billboards?" He came in. I said, "Sure, let him come in." So I talked to him and he shows this billboard with this man's big head that extends over the billboard and he became the known newscaster out in Texas somewhere.
And he says, "If you put your heads up there, you guys could become known as the lawyers here in West New York." So I walked down to Steve's office. I said, "What do you think?" "Awesome. Let's do it." He's just a real quick thinker and a real quick decision maker. We both had that ability to make quick decisions and we did. And then there's sort of a funny story if you want me to talk about that.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, Of course.
Ross Cellino:
So billboard goes up and there's two parts of the story. One is the billboard goes up and I used to drive my kids to school and every time I had six kids in my suburban, I would practice my opening and closing statements for these trials that were going on. And it's amazing how kids can actually decide liability really good. They have no idea about damages, but most jurors don't know anything about damages either. But the truth is, my kids were going to school and all of a sudden that billboard went up and my one daughter said, she would be questioned by her classmates and she was like maybe seven, eight years old. "Is that your dad on the billboard?" "No, that's my uncle." She would not acknowledge that I was on the billboard.
But yeah, the other thing about the billboards, it's funny, it was probably within the first week or two. It's on a major highway. It's one of those billboards that you have to literally turn, otherwise you're going to run into the billboard. It was the best billboard in the city of Buffalo. There's two main thoroughfares there. And this teacher from high school called me up and goes, "Hey, Ross. Oh my God. How'd you get that before and after who did the hair transplant?" I go, "That's not a hair transplant. That's my partner and me. I have hair, he doesn't." And it sort of tickled my fancy thinking, oh my God, it was that impactful that people at my daughter's school would call me or make fun of me or the teacher from high school.
So we knew it was impactful. And we can talk about billboards later, but I got some ideas that maybe I can help you folks at least glean what I believe is important in the billboarding.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's lean right into it. You have some opinions that are different from the norm. Let's talk about-
Ross Cellino:
I'm not saying mine are right, but I can just tell you what I believe in billboards, because we've been doing them for 30 years or whatever. Number one, you got to find the right location. So they talk about real estate location, location, location. I think it's absolutely critical. So if you can find a billboard, a big 14x48 that turns in the road, so when you're driving on the right hand read, it looks like you're going to drive into it unless you made the turn. Yeah, I got to grab that billboard. We are lucky enough our very first billboard in Buffalo to have that location. And there's another one. There's two main thoroughfares that come into Buffalo. And most recently, the other main thoroughfare, it's a digital board. I don't like digital boards, but this one's another one you drive right into it. So I get one six of the flips.
And I occasionally time it. How many times do I actually see the digital board when I go through? I'd say out of the six times, I will probably only see it one or two times at most. But the truth is they do see it. When you buy a billboard way off to the side that's not, in my view, a good location, I think you're wasting your money because you want them to actually see it. If they can't really see it, they're not focusing on that. So that's the number one thing, is location.
The second thing is billboards become like wallpaper. If you wallpaper your bathroom, you say, "Oh my God, looks really nice or your new kitchen. It looks great." After two or three months, you don't notice it. Billboards are like that too. So I think there's got to be some consistency between the different messages, but if you change it, I think copy should be changed every three months if you can, but make it somewhat consistent.
And then the third thing, the one billboard, my son's in there as a new face of the firm, because I'm getting to be aged out here. So I want him to continue being the face of the firm because I still think, like Goff talked about, that people want to know a person, not just a business name. But any event, we're lucky to have the 88 number. It's the only number in the world that has 10 consecutive digits. And I know I couldn't quite hear what Harlan had to say, but he helped me get the number. I can thank him for that. It's a really big factor or big asset for us.
In any event, the billboard has it real simple, just three messages. I think seven messages is too many. I think it's got to be clean and clear. And so you change it, here's a different copy. Same theme, car crash, with the 88 number, the next one, real big eight. And this one almost causes people to think like, "Who the hell is advertising eight?" And when the person has to think about it almost becomes burned in their brain.
And the reason I got this idea is years ago, Target came in, first time Target came in our area, had a little dot on the billboard and that was the only thing on there. I'm going, "What is that?" You keep asking yourself, "What is that?" And ultimately then they put the other circle around it and then they finally say Target. So this one is a little playoff of that because I remember seeing that like 20, 30 years ago and the call eight really stands out like the number eight. And that's our number, obviously.
And then I have my daughter and then what else do I have? And just the eights. And again, the name isn't that big, but it's big enough where people, if they're driving by at 60 miles an hour, they're definitely going to see the eight and they might see the Cellino law, but then they start Piecing it together. "Oh yeah, that's Cellino. That's Cellino." So that was the theory behind all that.
Chris Dreyer:
You hear the right hand reads, you hear the seven words or less, but in your opinion-
Ross Cellino:
I'm thinking three.
Chris Dreyer:
You think of three just because of the recall?
Ross Cellino:
Recall ability. I think what you really need to do, you can't get a jingle to resonate in your mind by looking at a static billboard. I think it has to be supported by radio. And if I were to start a firm today, frankly, I'm going to tell you, I wouldn't even use my name. I would go with a trade name, something like Top Dog Law, the other guys, thumbs up guys, husband and wife team, because that's easy to remember. My name, people spell it with an S, they spell it with one L. The truth is what I would do if I were starting today, I would get a trademark that would be acceptable to the bar. But something that people use already, and this is going to sound silly, but I was just thinking about it last night. If I were to really start a firm today, if it would be accepted, I don't know if it would be.
I'd call my firm Kickass Lawyers, Badass Lawyers, something like that, because people want a lawyer that's tough and gritty, that wants to fight. I don't know if that's ethically permissible, but you don't have to learn Kickass. You know that or you know that phrase. You don't have to spend millions of dollars. I mean, over the course of our career, we probably spent $100 million on advertising our name. You wouldn't have to spend $100 million advertise Kickass Lawyers. It's like top dog law. You don't need to spend money on that.
So that's what I would do. I would really focus on getting a single digit repeating number. I think that's important too. If you don't have one, by the way, on billboards, if you don't have a single digit repeated number, I wouldn't put a phone number on your board. You don't need to do that.
People driving by, they can't read it, they're not going to record it. But I think if you come up with a trade name that's memorable and it has some other meaning besides that, if it's ethically available according to the court, I would choose that over just your own name. Although it could be Ross or Cellino with Top Dog Law or Cellino with Kickass Lawyers, whatever the trade name would be. That's my thinking.
Chris Dreyer:
I think that's great. I mean, because there's not many people doing it because it just came around the last five years, six years where they allowed it. In New York, they're really conservative. They just allowed it the last five or six years trade names. We spoke about this, and this is a bit different. You said in the 90s, PI was the niche. Now we had David Craig before trucking, right? I think you've mentioned it's not enough today. So give me an example of what you're thinking about today in today's environment. There's less auto accidents, there's collision detection, there's all these different things. How do you think about niching today?
Why niching down became the foundation of a billion-dollar personal injury law brand and lasting market leadership
Ross Cellino:
I'm a firm believer in niching. We did that to take on our two competitors when we first started. I didn't really read a book about niching, but we did it because we wanted to be focused. And what happened was in Buffalo and in Rochester, people said, "Oh, that guy does matrimonial work and social security, but Cellino only does PI." So that was our niche. But then frankly, another competitor came in our town and then niched even further and said, "I don't just do PI. I just do car cases." And since car cases are about 75% of your business, it's not a bad niche to make. And honestly, that's why I actually threw in that little slogan, "Car crash? Call Cellino." Just to add that, because we still handle general practice PI cases, but car crashes are a big part of our business.
Chris Dreyer:
Let me touch on that just for a second. So a lot of times I've heard Frank Azar say this. I've heard Jim Adler say this. They say, "Hey, advertise for truck and you'll get car." Can you go the opposite? Can you advertise for car and get the truck to the same degree? What's your thoughts on that?
Ross Cellino:
I think you can. What happens is, it's top of mind awareness. So that's why I say if I were to start a firm today, I'd take 20% of the budget... Well, here's the first thing I would do. It's like the old Chinese proverb, when's the best time to plant a tree? It's 20 years ago. What's the second best? It's now.
I would start with SEO. Got to develop that because you want that. That takes time to grow. The next thing I would do is do billboards. 20% of my budget would go towards billboard and radio. Radio developed the jingle supporting the billboard. So now you become top of mind awareness pretty quickly. It doesn't take that long. It's not that much money. And then ultimately what you need to do is build your brand. And so then during that time, I would do PPC and get all these lead generators to make money so you can actually afford to increase that budget.
But I would still put 20% towards brand building. Then I would start building up my brand even further, because when you have a strong brand, you get calls like, okay, there was a bus accident between Buffalo and Rochester. Well, there was like 10 people hurt. We got two of the cases. Although we lost one of the cases, I'm upset because another lawyer took it from us after we already had it.
But in any event, we were in the game. When you have a brand, you're in the game. Whether you're a car crash guy or injury guy, if people have top of mind awareness, you're in the game. Now the key though is to go beyond top of mind awareness. You got to show credibility, that you're trustworthy, that you're good at what you do. And of course, we brag about getting the largest verdict ever in Western New York. We got this $47 million verdict, and you play it up because that gives you credibility.
So that's important to develop that afterwards. We got to build top of mind awareness first. And I think radio and billboard does give you that pretty quickly. If you have a trade name, that's not that hard to build that up either. Then you need a phone number. And so if you can get a repeating number, I think that's a good tactic.
Chris Dreyer:
I think Gary Sarner and the crowd, he's ready to hug you.
So it's interesting you didn't say TV though, right?
Ross Cellino:
I would not do TV in the beginning. I think it's just too expensive. You don't get enough bang for your buck in that respect. Gradually, I would go to TV. Now ,let me just tell you this. We have offices in New York City, Long Island, Buffalo, Rochester. And we did a little experiment in cutting TV out completely last year for like three months. Our intakes went down 30% just by cutting out TV. So I said, "Hmm, maybe we shouldn't do that." But I think our budget is still too high for TV. I know a lot of young lawyers are doing well without TV and spending a million dollars a month like we do, not on just TV, but our marketing budget being over a million a month. It's probably better to portion more of that towards other marketing efforts.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. I had to touch on that because you're the big TV advertiser. So let's expound on the high impact versus the high frequency marketing. So I think radio has more frequency, it seems. So you said you'd rather go where credibility lives. Why bet big on the NFL, these cultural moments? Talk to me about that strategy and how you're playing it.
Ross Cellino:
Okay. I think because there's streaming and those things that are happening now, TV's less impactful. People that are under 35 years old really have unplugged. They're not with the cable vision and stuff. But when you have an ad on TV or on streaming for a football game, everybody watches it live. They're not just taping it and just skipping through the commercials. I think if you support those things that everybody likes, and our clients are people that watch football games and that type of thing. So I think we're moving more and more towards that type of market and I think it's working for us.
Chris Dreyer:
Let's dial in on this because you've got the iconic jingle, right? It's stuck in your brain. I mean, to the point where it's so stuck in everyone's brain that Saturday Night Live picks it up. And now you get the earned media and the humor and the entertainment, and you get that from a distribution perspective. And you mentioned the repeater numbers. Is that still the way to go, the repeater numbers to be effective on radio? Let's talk about what your opinions.
Ross Cellino:
Yeah, I think the jingle and the repeater numbers on radio work. If you just have an average number, I'm sorry, I wouldn't waste your time. Just focus on your brand at that point on radio. They're not going to remember the number. In fact, a radio commercial, 30, 60 seconds long, the only thing they actually remember, you can even ask me, "What did we have in copy in that radio commercial?" I don't know, but we had our jingle. And I can remember the jingle. I can't remember the copy. Clients can't remember the copy either. So it's good to build out your brand name or your number if you have one of those repeaters. And I'm a firm believer in repeaters because it's been one of our success stories throughout the career of the firm.
Chris Dreyer:
So what about the jingle itself? You spent $500 on getting the jingle made and you talked about mixing the creative up on the billboards. What about the creative and your jingle?
Ross Cellino:
We stayed focused with the jingle, leaving it alone for all those years because that becomes an earworm and you want them to actually always have that in your head. Now, admittedly, I'm probably going to modify my jingle because the one we have right now isn't anywhere close to the way it wasn't Cellino & Barnes. Cellino & Barnes was just something that happened. I'd go through the airport and they'd sing the jingle to me, they see me there.
Or I have a sort of a cute story. I'm on an airplane and the stewardess comes up to me and she goes, "Cellino and Barnes, the injury attorneys, 4444." I go, "No, no, no." At that time it was 854-2020. And I go, "Oh my God." She goes, "Oh, I'm sorry." And so then I get back to the office. I go, "Steve, you know what? Maybe we're not right about that jingle with the 854-2020." It had a nice sing song to it, but it wasn't repeater. So we immediately went out and gathered a repeater number and obviously it's been lights out for us.
Now when we split, in all honesty, I had with Harlan's help, the 88 number in my back pocket. And I knew that if we split, we already made an agreement. Our 800-888 number would be mothballed. And it's currently mouthballed. Neither one of us can sell it. I own 50%. Steve's estate owns the other 50%. But I had that in my back pocket. But what happened was unbeknownst to me, Steve was able to get a trademark on the 80088 number, and so therefore I couldn't unleash it. And under trademark laws, I had to wait three years to be able to use my 88 number.
But in the meantime, I felt so strongly about my repeater number that I got 800-555-555. And I used that for three years. After three years up, I went back to the 888s, because 888s was so similar to the 800 888s that I felt it was a stronger number, but I felt that strongly about repeaters.
Chris Dreyer:
Super interesting. So talk to me, we were chatting it up about the podcast, having conversations about other guests and things like that. And so now you got this emerging place for attention, podcasts. You got the programmatic. I say this a lot. I hate the category name programmatic because it's literally everything, display, geofencing, connected television, and you got the Spotify and Pandora. So what do you think about podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, the audio component as an emerging platform, so to speak?
Ross Cellino:
Well, we do support a local podcast in Buffalo that's for the Buffalo Sabers. They're a horrible team right now, but the truth is they're really cool in the way they introduce us throughout the podcast. And they'll say things that are, "Oh, we just saw that accent of 190. They better call us Cellino Law." And it's sort of cool when they do that as opposed to a regular commercial. But I had a feeling you were going to ask me about different things that we do. And honestly, I think you got to listen to some of the younger guys like James Helm on where they're going as far as marketing the firm, because he's got a pretty good handle. But I did ask my staff to give me a breakdown, and I'm going to give you a breakdown. I'm not saying to follow it about it.
Chris Dreyer:
Love this data. Love it.
Ross Cellino:
So these are percentages of our allocation of our media. So TV is right now 37%. I happen to think it's too high. We're going to move away from that, I think. Cable's 9%, radio's 11.4%, outdoor is 17%, OTT is 10%, YouTube is 0.4%. I want to pick that one up. Audio streaming is 1%, PPC is 4%, SEO is 2%, social paid 5%, LSA is 4%. So digital media is 25% and traditional 75%. But I'm not saying that's the right mix. Frankly, I'm probably the wrong guy to tell you what the right mix is. I think what I would do is listen to some of the younger guys that are knocking them dead with respect to marketing without the traditional market. Because I think in the future, you got to be stronger in that regard.
But I still feel strongly about billboard and radio to support the top of mind awareness. I think that's critical. And the next step is develop credibility that you're the right guy. People want to trust you and they want to think, "Yeah, that's my lawyer. That's the guys I want to go to." That's how you get the cases. And you're in the game. When you have a brand, you're in the game for those accidents that happen. Frankly, the biggest cases that come in our office are really through brand.
Chris Dreyer:
So talk to me about that. So a lot of times you hear people say, "I'm only getting the big cases through referrals." Talk to me about that component of building brand. And sometimes it's hard to quantify. It's like you're doing all these different mediums. What actually is brand? And talk to me about picking up the big cases from brand. Maybe you have a story that you could share.
Ross Cellino:
Yeah. Okay. I'll tell you the story that resonates in my mind about brand. So this kid was tragically injured and he went to this lawyer to represent him, but he was a general practice lawyer. And the guy kept looking at his watch, "I got to get out of here." And the father is there. He's really beside himself because this kid's tragically injured. He's in hospital. And all I can tell you is that he got mad at the lawyer because the lawyer sort of threw the pen across the desk, told him to sign. He said, "I'm not signing that."
And he knew that I existed because I had on my mailbox, Ross Cellino, Attorney of Law and they saw us on TV. And he stops over on a Saturday and I wasn't there. He sees my wife and my wife says, "No, he'll be back." He goes, "Okay." And he left, didn't say anything.
The next day, I'm literally in shorts painting my front porch and it was hot, sunny day. And he comes up and he talks to me, he goes, "Mr. Cellino, can I talk to you about something?" I go, "Sure." He goes, "My son got in an accident and I was wondering if I can talk to you." I go, "Yeah, sure." He goes, "Well, I see you're painting." I go, "Don't worry about it. We can talk." I had no idea the significance of the case. And after about 15 minutes of him questioning me to find out whether I'm a guy that's going to listen to him, he then told me about the case and all of a sudden I go, "Holy crap." This is a big one because it was a big commercial defendant. And I immediately after interviewed with him, I called Steve. I said, "We got to meet this guy tomorrow at his home, 10 o'clock.
"No problem." It's a case that we tried together. Steve did opening did closings. We had all these different witnesses. And the bottom line is the jury, we had many, many focus group trials. I'm pretty confident I was going to get the verdict, summed it up. And I had my mom there too, and they were like, "Oh my God, this is my son." But anyway, I got the largest verdict ever in Western New York. And it was really amazing feeling when you get a verdict, no matter how big or small it is, I say it's like the baseball player that hits a home run. When the bass hits, it's a grand slam. I never did that. I always hit singles, but the truth is it's an amazing feeling to get a verdict. And when you got one that was that big, it was just really... And we of course use that to help our credibility in front of the public that we're good at what we do too.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah. And talk to me about the... Also, you're doing some joint ventures with the teams, the Bills. We had your son on it. So talk to me about that component. That's becoming more and more popular. You've got Digger Earls in Louisiana, he's got the Saints, you got different teams and that trust factor. So talk to me about that component.
Ross Cellino:
Yeah. I'm a firm believer that you shouldn't just pitch yourself all the time. You ought to do good things for the community and try to be humorous if you can. I know Mark is great at that and his YouTube videos and other things he does on Instagram. But we've associated ourselves with the Bills. We have Dawson Knox. He's tied end for the Buffalo Bills. He's number 88 and our number's 888. And so most recently we had him come to our office, and our office in Buffalo happens to be a Knox mansion. It was Woolworths and Knox or Knox and Woolworths back in the day.
Back in Buffalo during the Erie Canal days, all these wealthy millionaires built these mansions along Delaware. We were lucky You have to buy one. And so in any event, he comes in and we do this little skit with him where, "Hi, this is Dawson Knox. Welcome to the Knox Mansion." And his name happens to be Knox. And he comes out and he's just... But it was a playful thing and people really... We just finished it just a week or two ago, and we just had that type of association with football players.
I think those type of things, people really like you. And when I was in the middle of this split up with Steve, I couldn't advertise my own firm because we still were part of Cellino & Barnes. But what I did is I partnered up with SBCA and they were really just public service announcements basically. But I got more compliments on that ad than any other ad I've ever received. I can go to the bank and they go, "Ross, that's an amazing ad." I go, "Well, it's not really an ad. It's a public service announcement for the SBCA," but people really appreciate that.
And so we just started this one last week with Dawson Knox, and I already had several texts from people, "Oh my God, Ross, that's cool." So I think you can't always just say, "Hey, we get you millions. We're the best lawyers in the world." You got to be able to do things for the public and it pays in spades.
Chris Dreyer:
It's incredible. So we were talking about the consumer wants to think that they hire the best lawyer. I wanted you to really give your opinion and your take on this. And also maybe you could share the story about some television advertising and that component.
Ross Cellino:
Yeah. So I am a firm believer that when you deal with clients and they need surgery to their back, they will come in and say, "You know, Ross? I got the best surgeon in the state or the best surgeon in the United States." They always want to tell you they got the best surgeon. What they also want to do is tell their family and friends they've got the best lawyer in the world. "I got Cellino, he's the best lawyer." So somehow you got to give that image that you're the best. You can't say it, it's against the rules.
But the truth is we had this one case we worked on and we got a $4.8 million verdict on it. And we had her do a testimonial. And what her statement was basically to the public was, "I wanted to hire the best lawyer I can find. I got seriously injured. I called Cellino & Barnes." She didn't say we're the best, but she said...
And so then at that time I was still answering phones and I still do it occasionally now too, believe it or not, but two in the morning the other day. And I would say, "Why did you happen to call us?" She goes, "Oh, I heard that you were the best." I said, "Oh yeah, who told you that?" "Oh, my neighbor told me." I keep asking this question. They never admitted that the TV commercial told them that we were the best, but we had that ad running for quite some time and it was really effective. Eventually the grievance office said, "You can't say you're the best." I said, "We're not saying we're the best. The lady said that she wanted the best and then she called us."
In any event, we discontinued it and so we stopped there. But the other thing that I... It's really a Harlan Schillinger thing. You get what you ask for. And we used to have some commercials that basically said, "We handled the big cases and we're the lawyer that you want for your big cases." Guess what? The big cases would come in. You get what you ask for, believe it or not. You ask for motorcycle cases, you get motorcycle cases. You ask for truck cases, you get those too.
Now, I'm a firm believer that Harlan taught me that you get what you ask for and the public wants somebody that will give them the type of lawyer that will handle their problem.
Chris Dreyer:
Talk to me about just taking the risk. And then the guerilla marketing you've done, the different allocating advertising to try this or that and being one of the first to do certain types of advertising. Talk to me about those strategies and just how you approach attempting or taking chances at advertising.
Ross Cellino:
I want the firm to go to another generation and I'm saying all in. I don't need to take money out right now, so put it all in. But the strategy was just spend as much as you had extra. And frankly, we were very conservative about putting money in our pocket. Now, the last few years, admittedly, I actually felt guilty the amount of money we're making. We're making more than Wall Street lawyers. We made literally $8 million a month. We took a check home crazily amount of money. It's not happening today, but it was back then. And we did that first three, four years.
Before that, we really were very modest. Now we went up from $500 a week to a little bit more, but the truth is we poured it all back in throughout our career until the last few years and then it paid out. And I want to give one other tip. I mean, as far as building a law firm, right now we have 30 lawyers. When we were up to 54 lawyers, basically I had the lawyers, based on Buddy Bart's advice, had the lawyers a partner in their files.
And so at that time, when we are up to 54 lawyers, most of the lawyers were at a salary and 10%. Some of the older ones were at a straight 20%, but they had their own financial interest to maximize the value for the client. So they don't want to settle a case for 30,000 when it should be 300,000 because they get 20% or 10% of that fee. But to grow the firm, you don't have to micromanage them because they're managing their own law firm within your law firm.
So to manage my law firm right now, I have a managing attorney that will review the cases under $500,000. If it's over 500 grand, he reviews it with me. But the point is, if a young lawyer's on the wheel that day, the intake department assigns the case to the young lawyer and she or he's not qualified to take that case, we immediately assign it with a senior lawyer. So now the firm, instead of paying out 10%, we'll pay out 20%. Comes out of our pocket, but the truth is it's better for the client because now you got a senior lawyer and a young lawyer's learning, and the senior lawyer brings it up to what full value should be. And so that's one of the things.
The other way we do it is if the case is moving along and they can handle it up to a certain point and we just need somebody to try the case, we'll bring in another senior lawyer at 5%. So the firm will pay out 15%. The 20% lawyers that are grandfathered in, frankly, they're all qualified. They're good trial lawyers. They can take the case, start to finish. But to build a law firm, when you get to that point where you're going between 30, 40, 50 lawyers, the spread between advertising dollars and other expenses and revenue widens. That's how we got to the point where we were making ungodly amount of money every month. It was just amazing.
But we're not there yet. I'm trying to work for my family. I got five of my kids that are lawyers. I want to see if we can tackle that in terms of being able to build the firm stronger so they can carry down for another generation.
Chris Dreyer:
So you mentioned they got skin in the game, so they're going to want to maximize the value of the case and not just turn the next case over. Talk to me about the business development perspective. Because you're trying more cases, you're filing more. Did you start to see an influx of referrals maybe from peers or from past clients because you trialed? Did that have an impact?
Ross Cellino:
It did. When you actually get verdicts and people hear about the verdicts, then they say, "Oh, you know what? Maybe this case I'm really not qualified to handle." If I can get it's a big enough case, you'll give them a 50% referral or pay out a third, depending on it. But you need to actually walk the walk. You got to get those verdicts. And if you don't do that, I think it's hard to build your referral business. But what also happens is that as you get bigger and stronger, other firms don't necessarily want to help you out get any stronger. And so they might refer it to somebody else because they're saying, "Ah, they got enough business and I'm not going to give them anymore and they're going to squeeze me out later on."
So the referral business does dry back off a little bit because of your success, but that's a good thing that we can actually build the firm without referrals.
Chris Dreyer:
Yeah, absolutely. So talk to me too about keeping these attorneys, right? That's the constant struggle, especially in New York. Talked about it briefly. A lot of these attorneys could just walk. You have a culture that, how have you retained these top lawyers for so many years?
Ross Cellino:
Yeah. Most of my lawyers have been with me for a long, long time. We did have a little bit of a situation with COVID when a couple of them walked away. And in New York, the judges are pretty lenient to the new lawyer and said, "Oh, Cellino's got all the money, so you got to share the fee based on the apportionment of work." But the truth is, these young lawyers, they can walk away. We had one guy that, very religious guy, went to church every single day and he thought nothing of just taking 90 of my cases and walking with several million dollars because he could. And frankly, when you have a fee dispute, the courts are, "Well, he's a young guy and you guys already have a lot of cases. We'll give him 80% of the fee. You can get 20." And it's really not fair, but that's the way it works in New York.
But what we found now, if you give a bigger base salary, it gives the lawyer, "Okay, I got this security to pay for my mortgage, pay for my car, and I get a bonus of 10% on every case." They're actively working to move those cases. And because they have that security blanket of a $150,000 salary or 125, they're not going to necessarily go and start their own business. You want people that are entrepreneurial for sure, but not to the point where they're going to do what I did because then of course they'll easily say, "You know what, Ross? It's been nice knowing you, but I'm going to start my own practice and now I'm going to start with a hundred files." We don't want to do that. We haven't had much turnover at all, but I've had staff who have been with me for 20 some years and it's been a pretty good run for us, I got to admit. We've had our trials and tribulations of that kind of thing that happens.
But overall, I'd say it's been very stable because we treat people fairly too and they feel like they're running their own business, which I think is a good feeling. It's just when you can control your destiny in many ways they can, because we're not going to cheat them. They're going to go ahead and get their fee and they're not going to lose that chance to working on a big case. They might have to partner with another senior lawyer, but the truth is they still get paid and it's worked for us.
Chris Dreyer:
So curveball question here. You got consolidation, you got the MSOs, you got the ABS. Where do you see... So you talked about TV, the billboards and radio. It's like kind of start. Let's say you come in and you are capitalized, you're a seven figure firm wanting to take it to the eight figures, wanting to... How do you think about the allocation then? Is it maybe what percentage goes in the brand then and what percentage goes into performance? How do you think about that component?
How consistent brand recognition sustains law firm growth even when referrals decline or competition increases
Ross Cellino:
I still think brand should be a big, significant part of it because when you have a strong brand, you're in the game for those cases that come in. When you see everybody's buying our name and it just kills you, we got to pay that Google tax. But the truth is when they are buying your name, you know that you've got a brand that's strong enough, but you're in the game, but you got to buy your own name now to protect yourself. But if you didn't have that strong brand, you're not really in the game. Then you're just a matter of, okay, there's five different lawyers on Google. I can choose that one. I don't recognize the name, but just recognizing the name on a Google LSA, they say, "Oh yeah, I know those people. I'm going to try them." You got a better chance at getting those cases when you have a brand.
So I truly believe you still need to be a brand, whether it's husband and wife team, top dog law, whatever it is, the brand is very important to get the good cases and all the other cases too.
Chris Dreyer:
I got it. This has been amazing, Ross. I got one final question here. This is one year to relive, not to change, just to experience a year again. What year would you go back to and experience?
Ross Cellino:
Okay. What year? All right. I know what happened. Let me think. The year was probably 1983 I started trying cases. Okay, this was maybe fifth or sixth, seventh case in my career. I was on a winning streak. I was feeling really cocky and confident. Well, I tried this case against this defense lawyer and the guy had a congenital defect in his ankles. He couldn't walk properly. He was on his tippy toes and he's in a 7-Eleven store or something like that. And he slips on a mat because it was wet and they had it and it buckled up. And I was so damn confident I could win this case. What happened with this poor guy is that he ended up tearing up his knee and made it even more difficult for him to walk. But when he walked, it was really noticeable he had a defect.
But anyways, this defense lawyer puts this mat up on top of this table, the council table, and he literally jumps up and shows that it wouldn't slide. And the jury was laughing. And frankly, I chuckled a little bit too. I thought he was going to fall on his, like a Buffalo Bills, a fan that breaks tables. And it was just like that.
And I was still confident I was going to win the case. I lost that case and it devastated me. So if I could go back and try that case today, I'll beat that guy because I'm confident with the skills I've learned since. And the other thing I felt guilty about, it's funny that ever since I lost that case in New York at the time, you could buy a lottery subscription and I bought a lottery subscription. Every year I'd renew it. He had a chance to make a million dollars.
And after about four or five years, he goes, "Ross, I appreciate what you did for me. I think you did a great job. You don't feel guilty. You don't have to buy me these lottery tickets anymore." And so I stopped that for about four or five years. But it was like, if I could redo that case, I'm pretty confident I can win that case even though it was a tough liability case. I'm not saying it was a clear liability, but I think I could have won that case and I'd like to redo that one if I could.
Chris Dreyer:
If you want to learn directly from industry icons like Ross and connect with leaders reshaping the next decade of legal marketing, join us at PIMCon 2026. All the details are in the show notes. I'm Chris Dreyer, CEO of Rankings.io, where we help elite personal injury attorneys show up first, sign more cases and dominate their market. Thanks for listening.
