Osler
Osler is a leader in Canadian business law with a singular focus. With an integrated network of offices in Toronto, Montréal, Calgary, Ottawa, Vancouver and New York, we have an undisputed reputation for solving problems, removing obstacles, and providing the answers when you need them. Osler is recognized for the breadth and depth of its practice in business law and is consistently ranked as one of Canada’s top firms. Proactive, pragmatic, experienced, innovative and collaborative, our team of over 400 lawyers is driven by the specific needs of our clients. At Osler, we do everything it takes to maintain our position as one of Canada’s leading business law firms, meeting and exceeding the expectations of our clients, lawyers, students, staff and communities.
Industry
— Professional services
— Legal
Branding to
— Articulate value
— Grow marketshare
— Conquer new markets
— Build internal cohesion
Services
— Brand assessment
— Brand & value proposition strategy
— Advertising & promotion
— Digital marketing & content
The Situation
The firm’s partners wanted a re-articulation of the brand strategy and refresh of their outbound marketing but they could not arrive at a consensus on what the brand should stand for and how their story should be articulated in the marketplace.
Yield recommended an extensive brand audit including broad stakeholder interviews with over 45 in-house counsel clients across Canada to assess how they viewed the firm’s offering.
The conclusions were highly consistent. Most clients knew Osler well (and in fact some had worked there) and therefore highly valued the quality of their advice and the professionalism of their work. However, there was a strong feeling that Osler, like many big firms, ‘over-lawyered’ getting associates and juniors to do excessive research and due diligence, which added to costs and slowed down the process. They wanted expeditious, actionable opinions from senior counsel in hours, not days or weeks.
Our Solution
Yield Branding presented a new brand strategy based on the core attribute and promise: Business critical legal advice on your terms.
The omni-channel branding campaign was launched based on a creative platform using the Osler burgundy as the primary colour and an illustrative technique composed of words taken from the value proposition to demonstrate the “Direct Path” to advice. We knew from our interviews with partners, that the choice of words is very important to lawyers and used this to brand the communications.
The creative platform was quite flexible and adapted well to sector specific or geographic advertising such as mining or marketing in the US while maintaining a consistent brand message and look and feel. Digital advertising proved very effective and we were able to extend the campaign into behavioural and contextual channels.
The Yield
Osler was voted #1 legal services brand in 2011 while the branding campaign received highest internal approval rating from firm partners and was used until 2016.