Relationships. Trust. Delivery of superb value. These are core ingredients of a successful service firm. Talk to 100 service firm marketers and leaders, and they'll all tell you (and most of them believe it, even if they're wrong) that their firm is in the top of their industry in each of these categories.

Why, then, do service firms typically do such a poor job of bringing relationships, trust, and value into their marketing mixes?

I live in Boston and I read the Boston Business Journal. For better or worse, law firms, accounting firms, consulting firms, and professional services firms of all types are flocking to the print media to improve their "name recognition" and get their message out. Of course, since they all believe that they're at the top of the food chain when it comes to relationships, trust, and value, they share this in their advertising copy.

The copy usually reads something like this:

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