In this presentation, Erika Jones, CFO of CCTA, explains how businesses can break out of generic, undifferentiated branding by inventing unique, professional‑sounding titles for their services or staff. She illustrates the concept with a law‑firm case study that renamed itself from "lawyers" to "integrated counsel," a term that prompted clients to pay a premium because it signaled deeper integration with the client’s culture and business language. Jones then extends the idea to other professions—using a pharmacy as an example—showing how a novel label (e.g., "medicinologist") can capture attention, create perceived expertise, and differentiate a store in a crowded market. She warns against cheesy or overly whimsical names, stresses the need for a term that sounds credible and professional, and reminds listeners to stay within legal boundaries when coining new titles. The core message is that a carefully crafted, distinctive name can shift customer perception, justify higher pricing, and give a business a competitive edge.
Chapters
I was working with this law firm and I already know what popped in your mind. You heard law firm, I'm sure in your mind pops a guy with a briefcase suing somebody and a big, big bill after the fact. A lawyer is a lawyer is a lawyer after all, right? And if you need legal services, yeah, you want a good lawyer, but they better be price competitive. So this law firm approached us and said, how do we break out of this paradigm or belief that people have lawyers are all the same? And we changed their name. No longer did we call them lawyers. We called them integrated counsel. And I suspect you heard the term integrated counsel and you're like, what does that mean? Exactly? Exactly. We used a term that no one heard before. And what happens is when something different presents itself, the customer gives it immediate attention to evaluate. Is that an opportunity or a threat? They will listen to you. And what that law firm did, they said, well, integrated counsel means we do legal work just like any other lawyer can. That's the easy part. We also come on site, we integrate our team into your culture. We get a sense of how your business runs. And when we prepare your legal documents, which is easy, we can now speak the language of how your business runs. We can speak to the culture of your business. And customers started to pay a premium. You see how simple it was? They said, we, yeah, of course, lawyers are lawyers are lawyers. That's the easy part. But we're integrated counsel. We're different. If you call yourself a pharmacist, you run a pharmacy, you are falling victim to a generic label. Come up with a new professional term. Now, I'm not familiar with terms in the pharmacy arena, but maybe a master pharmacist, maybe a methodologist or something. But that's horrible. Do not use that one. But could you. We'll just play with that one. Say medicinologist. That's even worse. So we'll say you're a medicinologist. You can go up to your customers and say, yes, we have an on staff medicinologist who is going to sit down with you and give you some details. And they'll say, what is that? They'll say, you never heard of that before? Oh, we are in fact the only one in the state that has a medicinologist. Let me make an introduction. Now, be careful of the law. Of course, you don't want to break the law, but come up with a label that distinguishes you, because in the customer's mind, the second they hear familiar terms, I don't care. You can speak until you're blue in the face. They will ignore you just like if I went on and on how great my circus is. You already know what a circus is. Come up with a unique term that's better than mesonologist, but come up with a unique distinguishing term to distinguish your store or the people in your staff and you will stand out and you'll get the attention of your customer. Now, here's the key. Don't do some cheesy marketing term. It has to be a professional sounding term.
