Lawdingo: A Funny Ad For a Serious Business | Hacker News Reader

Lawdingo: A Funny Ad For a Serious Business

abovethelaw.com

61 pointsnirmel30 comments

Hilariously creative, well done! Definitely better than most commercials out there today (i.e. Geico).

If you guys make more and they catch some attention/traction, it can perhaps be an excellent marketing campaign :)

It worked on me. Now I know that there's a Web site called Lawdingo that lets me search for lawyers based on the description of a legal problem. I will remember this because they are funny. (I especially liked the awkward handshake/fist bump nonsense.)

I also liked this ad, although I'm not sure I'll be able to remember the name of the site. If, on the day of hypothetical legal troubles, I still do, that will pay off for them.

I especially liked that the "description of a legal problem" featured in the ad was "I hate my wife".

I had a very hard time taking the company seriously after seeing this ad.

I don't know if it was the amateur production quality or the actors that seemed to be some college kids eager to get back to their frat house, but the whole thing had a local car dealer quality to me.

There's a reason professional ad agencies get paid for what they do.

I thought the video was of high quality relative to most online videos. Also, I don't know how many of these you've done, but it is extremely hard to do scripted video content convincingly.

Relative to most online videos, yes. Relative to videos by commercial agencies, even the videos that are meant to look like UGC, no.

You're absolutely right, it is extremely hard to do this kind of thing. Which is why we pay agencies instead of trying to do it ourselves, unless we want to be in the same league as Crazy Al's House of Chryslers.

I don't think it's fair to ding young startups for not paying ad agencies to produce online video ads for them. That would be a tremendous waste of money, whereas this ad seems to have had the intended effect.

What does "fair" mean when you're a business courting customers? I share the commenter's reaction. It's valuable feedback for lawdingo.

You appear to have stopped reading at the word "fair".

It may not even matter whether it's good or bad, just that it's memorable.

And it's not quite "I am on a horse" memorable, but I think they'll get their money's worth from this.

Spilled my iced tea at the local car dealer.

Maybe you're not the audience. There are worse, completely serious legal ads on television. dollarshaveclub had a fairly incredible video but they're not doling out legal advice. You can't help judge the company based on youngish males in a video attempting at humor, but maybe the cognitive dissonance is that they are trying to pitch legal services. Missed opportunity to out-do Saul Goodman.

We recognized people not taking it seriously as a risk, but we think the bigger risk is people not remembering the service when they need it. With no budget (we're but a young YC company), and an founder who's bad at annunciating (me), this is what we came up with!

I remembered it. Thought it was hilarious.

For any tech startup with a limited budget I found it extremely impressive.

As someone with a slight (I think/hope) lisp, couldn't they have gotten someone else to narrate? Might just be a personal opinion, but I know I'd rather have my friend/co-founder/professional voice actor talk rather than me in a commercial for my company rather than have everyone wondering throughout the ad: Does he have a lisp? Yeah he's got a lisp. Let me listen for the next 's' to confirm. Yep that's a lisp. Oh the commercial is done. What-dingo?

Exactly my thought. I mean of course its not his fault, and I appreciate his confidence but the ad should be very easy to understand for the audience. I am not a native english speaker, and have an accent. If I were to make a video for my startup (and didn't have the budget for an actor), I would ask a friend to act.

I can understand why they're trying to do with a funny commercial, but I think it's misplaced when their product is dealing with serious law issues.

To me, it just made them come across like they're not very serious, even a little juvenile. And I'd expect anyone in genuine need of a lawyer to find it conflicting to their emotional state. I guess if it was genuinely funny I probably wouldn't feel this way. Falling slightly flat just makes the negatives much more obvious.

The service sounds like a very good idea and I'm sure it will get off to a good start. But this sort of thing works better for less important things, like razors. I wouldn't expect a mainstream crowd to respond to it particularly well.

Approaching/meeting lawyers is something that is considered extremely formal in society today. They're obviously trying to show that it CAN be a laid back and simple process through Lawdingo...and I think they did quite a good job with it.

I completely understand that and I appreciate any effort to make the world of lawyers more accessible.

Maybe I just no that by the video cus it's just tried a bit too hard to be funny. Plus, the memorable points for the video were some guys drinking tea not why I should care about the product. I took me a visit to the site to figure out what they meant by claiming to have Lawdingo.

Edit: To sound a bit more positive (sorry) I should mention I did like this line

"One reputable source declared it “the way of the future,” and we’re not about to argue with ourselves."

It's formal because the law is not simple and people are not laid back about their legal issues. I'm not sure what good convincing clients otherwise would serve.

Just because something can be identified as having certain qualities doesn't mean that it can be improved by forsaking those qualities. "Defendant? How about DeFUNdant?"

The law may not be simple and people may not be laid back about their legal issues, but most people are extremely haphazard about selecting counsel. Really, most people just don't get counsel at all. And those that do tend to get them from the phone book.

Sure, but those issues are orthogonal to ones I'm responding to, and at any rate this prank does nothing to alleviate the problems you identify, either.

Prank? It's a funny ad. It's not a prank.

Funny? It's an ad...

Not railing on these guys and in fact saluting them for taking a risk and for aiming to disrupt a well-entrenched "industry".

But, I do believe their money (however little it was) could've been better spent addressing the legitimate concerns you raise more directly and communicating why one with serious legal issues should consider their service.

I think that people do have a hard time trying to figure out how to locate and retain an attorney, etc. Anyone who has ever needed one can relate. So, connecting with that could have immediate appeal to someone who's been there or may well be there now (i.e. their audience). The rest of it was a bit distracting from that very important message.

Anyway, good luck to the Lawdingo founder(s) and team.

In the first scene with the friend confessing to an affair, my first thought was "the friend is about to get shot and then the husband is going to call lawdingo". Whether or not this is a good ad for a lawyer, I loved it all the same. Well done guys!

Here's some friendly advice from someone that's done ads for one of my start-ups before.

1) If you can't get top-notch talent, just do the ad yourself.

Why? You can tell when amateur actors are just "reading lines." They don't seem excited about the product, all they want to do is get through the script. The had has some brilliant ideas (the best friend cheating on your wife bit is quite funny) but the execution kills it.

If you don't think you can pull off "acting" by yourself, even describing your business (like you do when trying to get into YC, for example) will go a lot farther than amateur actors reading off of a script. Something like "Hi, I'm Jim and this is what Lawdingo does. I'm excited to introduce you to this new blah blah" simply shows excitement (bonus points for being the co-/founder -- viewers get a warmer feeling).

2) If you really want to go the funny route (I don't think I would), do something ridiculous.

An 80s eras commercial, a song-and-dance; something that has the possibility of going viral. Law advice is a relatively ubiquitous subject. Consider how GEIKO sells insurance. In your case, I'd say you went half-GEIKO. Go full-GEIKO. Be ridiculous if you want to be funny. The ad makes you seem sorta-kinda serious, so I can't help but get mixed feelings.

If you want to see what a great example of the above is, consider: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI

3) Diction. Diction. Diction. Have some. Or your actors should have some.

I remember we paid this one chick god knows how much to shoot an ad for us (sex appeal, etc. -- another dumb idea). I wrote the damn script and I could barely understand what the fuck she was saying. The indian dude has no diction. If that's you, I'm sorry, but that's the truth. Take a speech class or get someone else to do it. As your grandma always used to say: E N U N C I A T E (or at least mine did).

4) The fist-bump at the end is lame. Seriously.

The ending of an add should be the equivalent of the ending of a symphony: loud, fanciful, memorable.

> 4) The fist-bump at the end is lame. Seriously.

I thought it was in tune with the whole "awkward hug/handshake" thing in how they botched the fist bump as well.

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I'm the guy with poor diction. I agree we could have gone a bit more over the top, and since this video I've learned to speak a bit more clearly. If you like, you can see my YC Demo Day pitch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH-1lhiIcBQ

I know this is meant to be funny, but I'm not sure what message you're trying to give by having the people happy and cheerful when they hear the person they've wronged has Lawdingo. The message I'd get, if I took it more seriously, is that the person who wrongs me has nothing to worry about if I go with Lawdingo.

I think a comic panic reaction would have worked better, begging him to "get a real lawyer, don't use them guys" or something silly. Giving the impression that you guys are better than just going the traditional route, and more scary for the other guy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com