Saturday, February 6, 2010

Can we OPT out of Traditional Advertising?


So many of the houses I visit have the new Yellow Pages wrapped in plastic, sitting on the front porch. What will you do? Will you bring them inside?

Advertising rates and new media for distribution ie Google has everyone quaking in their boots. Should you spend thousand's of dollars per month to advertise, but, It was SO effective before; Yes, 20 or 30 years ago.

YellowPages was the Big Dog.

Now, when I am in a condominium lobby, I see two skids of yellow pages waiting patiently by the mail room. In one corner the shrink wrap has been peeled away and someone has taken two or three books. The other skid stands untouched. At another front porch, four copies are stacked atop of each other in their plastic wrapper. No One uses the front door since they enter and exit via the garage.

What should one do?

Can we OPT out? Emilee from Dire Mirth would like to create an OPT out Page for the Green Pages. Comanche Marketing would have you negotiate a tougher position with the yellow pages since there are more players in the market place, competition for your attention. Let's tell those Yellow Page people that you want to Make a Deal! Make a Deal?




No matter your inclination, I have always found the yellow pages a thought provoking, cutting edge, marketing, advertising, idea seeking, source of information, But like the best buggy whip made by the last buggy whip company, It may indeed be on its final run. Huge profits have spawned competition. Technology has heralded change.

Even the Yellow Pages has their own website to advertise their print content.

Has the choice to OPT OUT become the ECO friendly final straw for these publications? Why do we keep advertising in magazines and newspapers when half the advertising promotes the "why you should advertise with us?" Maybe its time to rethink the whole model.

Internet advertising has presented some interesting observations on my part. The audience for my video's on youtube [I expected to be the 30 somethings] is surprisingly the 45 to 64 year old age group garnering in excess fo 50% of the viewership.

What are your thoughts? Your comments are always appreciated.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi David,
Not only are the phone books bulky but the print is so small it's difficult to read. I think most people today opt to look for numbers via the internet. Having said that, I was asked by the Yellow Pages if they could use one of my photographs for this years edition.