Levi Strauss has a great slogan: quality never goes out of style. It’s a fitting tagline for a brand that has been doing much the same thing since 1853, yet feels as relevant as ever today. It’s a reminder of the permanence of excellence, and the futility of chasing trends. It’s a lesson we learn over and over across the years of our own lives. We remake our living rooms with the latest wood flooring, while the item that could really dress it up—a handcrafted mid-century sofa—sits in our attic. We watch the Oscar spotlight stolen not by the flashiest new thing, but a great black dress.

All of us know these things: that excellence wins out, that doing something well will always be on trend, and that quality never goes out of style. These truths, I believe, offer a powerful directional force for the legal marketing industry. An industry, its worth noting, that is still in its early days. By Levi Strauss’s timeline we are mere babes, and it only makes sense that in its brief lifetime, our nascent industry has to some extent taken its cue from others.

Today, consumer brands are recognizing the power of engagement with their customers; and that engagement is best executed through relationship-building and content.

Over the 30 years (or so) in which legal marketing has developed into its own discipline, much of our journey has been spent in the footsteps of the corporate branding model. We have developed logos, taglines, and advertising campaigns. Many smart and supremely talented people have devoted themselves to this work, and I’m proud to have joined them in a number of projects. Others, I only wish I had: the development of the Orrick “O,” McGuire Woods’s 1984 print brochure (which was covered in The New York Times), and Howrey’s 1991 national advertising campaign (“The Human Side of Genius”)—they are all terrific pieces of branding.

But we should recognize two realities about these marketing efforts. First, that they are standout pieces in a long game of catch-up. Using corporate and consumer forms of branding for inspiration, the legal marketing industry has inevitably lagged behind.

Second, that traditional corporate branding is not the ideal model for law firm marketing (a concept we discussed back when Howrey imploded). A consumer product can enhance its appeal through a logo or tagline. As we all know, however, the nature of professional services is quite different from that of laundry detergent (as we’ve said before, for branding purposes, professional services firms are much more analogous to the laundry detergent maker, e.g., Proctor & Gamble). Law firms are built on personal relationships and intellectual capital. They resist encapsulation in a single image or phrase, but they do not resist marketing efforts. And that is why, more quietly, business developers, marketers, and public relations personnel at firms have also developed expertise at building those relationships, and creating content that displays their intellectual capital.

And in that way, we now stand like that mid-century sofa in the attic. Today, consumer brands are recognizing the power of engagement with their customers; and that engagement is best executed through relationship-building and content. Facebook pages, LinkedIn groups, email newsletters, loyalty programs—these are the methods brands are using to attract consumers today, and they are all built on developing deeper relationships with consumers. As Travel & Leisure reported, hotels like the St. Regis Bora Bora Resort perform a Google search on guests two weeks prior to their arrival, all to better customize their experience.

The path of consumer marketers that we have been following has gone in a circle—our core strengths are today’s trends—but unfortunately we now find ourselves being lapped. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. After 30 years, the legal marketing community now has an opportunity to blaze the trail of content creation and content marketing for every marketing and business development strategist. Client alerts, client surveys, seminars, and niche blogs are only the start. What are the next innovative ways for law firms to use their extensive knowledge about clients (and client prospects) to offer personalized experiences? How can we anticipate client needs, and fulfill them before they’re ever mentioned? What content can we produce that’s most useful to our audience – and engages them to create deeper, more meaningful relationships? What’s the most effective personal touch a partner can provide a client, deepening their bonds with each other?

These are marketing and business development initiatives that build on our core strengths—creating content, and building relationships—and capitalize on what law firms already do best. They are initiatives that, today, can make us leaders in the marketing industry. And they are initiatives that, when done well, will never go out of style!