Category: Portland advertising

Another Nail in the Yellow Pages Coffin

Recently a television Account Executive in Iowa brought me a copy of the local YellowBook – one of the two “major” phone directories in that part of the state. She showed me an ad that appears just inside the front cover.

The headline was “Directory Options”, and the first line read:

“To opt out of receiving a directory in the future, visit www.yellowpagesoptout.com”

The site is run by the Local Search Association (formerly the Yellow Pages Association, interestingly enough) in cooperation with the Association of Directory Publishers. Anyone in the community can go to the site, register, and tell the publishers not to send them any more phone directories.

Why do they do this? Because Yellow Page publishers are increasingly aware that a large and rapidly growing segment of the population doesn’t use the Yellow or White Pages, and doesn’t want them. Publishers are under attack from environmental groups, state legislatures and local governments all over the country. Laws have been proposed – and in some cases passed — that ban delivery of a phone directory to anyone who has not opted in. Under the circumstances, the publishers have decided that they would prefer to offer a mechanism for people to opt out, instead.

Until last week, I had never seen an ad for this service in the Yellow Pages itself. I wondered if a similar ad was in my own Yellow Pages at home, but I don’t have one anymore – these days, the books go right from my front porch to the recycling bin. I checked with the neighbors on either side of my house, and they didn’t keep theirs, either.*
So I went to the national website, plugged in my zip code, and found this.

I registered on the site, changed of the quantities to “0”and hit Submit. Soon after, I received an email telling me that my preferences would be sent to each publisher. It was fast, it was easy, and another small nail was driven into the Yellow Pages coffin.

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*PS: Eventually I found a copy of the Dex Yellow Pages at my local library (which also had a full set of World Book Encyclopedias). It took the clerk a few minutes to find the book. “Nobody asks for it anymore,” she said, pointing to a row of computers across the room. “They just go online.” On a page headlined Committed to Consumer Choice, the book featured both the national Yellow Pages Opt-Out site and their own “Select Your Dex” website.

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Why Subtlety Doesn’t Work Anymore

A couple of years ago, author/public speaker/comedian Andy Nulman wrote a blog post discussing his challenges as he gets up in front of an audience:

“The Internet has changed everything. It has contracted attention spans to an almost ridiculously-microscopic measure, and has sung the swan song for the concept of subtlety. For example, the old ‘speaker’s adage’ used to be:

  • Tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em
  • Tell ’em
  • Tell ’em what you told ’em

These days, the audience fidgets through the preamble, tweets during the middle and are out the door before the recap.”

Nulman wrote this in 2010. A recent article on emarketer.com details how, two years later, the rise of the smart phone has affected what your customers do while you’re commercial plays:

A May 2012 report authored by the IAB and Ipsos MediaCT, which drew on data from three surveys of US consumers, found that internet-enabled devices were not displacing other media-related activities, but adding to them. According to the Ipsos MediaCT LMX survey, the average amount of time that respondents spent engaging with media each day climbed to 9.6 hours in 2011, from 9 hours in 2009.

Time spent online or on a computer jumped to 3.1 hours from 2.5 hours over the same period. But the amount of time respondents spent watching TV held steady, at 3.4 hours. eMarketer estimates that US adults spent an average of about 11.5 hours per day consuming media content in 2011…

Here’s what this means to you: no matter what medium you are using to deliver your sales message to potential customers —  this applies to radio and newspaper in addition to TV — your customers now have a smartphone, and a choice. They can pay attention to your message, or:

  • They can check their e-mail, or send a text,
    –
  • They can update their status on Facebook, or send a tweet.
    –
  • They can watch a cat video on YouTube.

In fact, it is likely that they are doing one of these things as they are watching, listening to, or reading your ad. This means you have got to get to the point in a hurry. You need to deliver a benefit statement and capture attention immediately. Nulman put it this way: “No salad, just the main course”.

If, instead, you decide to “ease into it” you may find that the only thing your prospects remember later is Baby Monkey Riding on a Pig.

Phil Bernstein on Susan Rich’s “Your Marketing Plan”

Last week I was interviewed by marketing expert and copywriting pro Susan Rich on her internet radio show, Your Marketing Plan.

We discussed the seven deadly advertising mistakes that businesses make, and how they can fix them. Topics ranged from copywriting to media buying to how long it takes for a campaign to work.

Click here to listen to the full interview.

And if you want a free copy of my e-book The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them, all you need to do is subscribe to my e-newsletter. Here’s the link to subscribe.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

Like what you’re reading? There’s more! Sign up for Phil Bernstein’s free advertising and marketing e-newsletter here.

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Making a Funny Commercial Work

“Oh… and make it funny.”

For nearly a decade, my biggest Portland radio advertising client was a car dealer who appeared in his own commercials. I wrote the copy — more than 500 separate scripts over that time. And whenever he gave me the copy points, “Make it funny” was one of them.

He wanted the commercials to sell cars. But more important to him, I learned over time, he wanted his employees, customers, and friends to tell him what a funny guy he was.

In the interest of getting the copy approved, and preserving my commission, my first objective became to make him laugh when he read the script. My second objective for the script was to make it sell cars.

I’m not necessarily proud that my objectives were in that order, but there you go.

I’m reminded of that struggle every time I see the Volkswagen “The Force” commercial. This ad debuted on the Super Bowl, and two things happened:

1. Everybody loved it. Loved it. LOVED it.

2. When it was over, nobody could remember what car was featured in the ad.

It entertained, but it forgot to sell.

Pretty much everyone who owns a TV has seen it, but if you haven’t, here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0]

It was Radio Copywriting Guru Dan O’Day, at a seminar in Los Angeles, who taught me how to do both. His rule: the sales message must be part of the comedy.

On Dan’s blog, he’s begun an extended discussion of why humor, used properly, works in advertising. Here’s a short excerpt:

When an advertisement comes on the radio, the listener’s guard is up. Even though my saying this will offend a few radio sales chauvinists, people do not turn on the radio for the commercials….

If the commercial makes you laugh, however, then while you’re laughing your guard is down. Your filter is in the “pause” mode.

The full discussion is well worth reading, and there’s more to come. You’ll find the full post here.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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Email Marketing That Misses the Mark

I received an email this morning from a woman named Ophelia, who works for an SEO company that offers “professional link building” services.*Excerpts follow:

Hello, my name is Ophelia  and I am an Internet Rankings Engineer. I performed a Google search for the keyword pedicure portland oregon and upon perusing past the first page, i ran across your website philbernstein.com. I see that your website is currently not listed on the first page for this keyword search.

The fact is that your ranking and search engine positioning is easily correctable. There is no reason that your website cannot be ranked in the top three positions for the keyword pedicure portland oregon based on your website’s very quality content and solid structure. You have a very good website that is built to convert when it can be found.

I was baffled as to why an advertising and marketing blog would want to be ranked well in the pedicure category… until I remembered that in 2008, I’d written a facetious  post about the short-lived phenomenon of fish pedicures.

My new friend Ophelia — or more likely, her automated system — had searched for the word “pedicure”, found my post, scraped my email address, and offered me a service I neither wanted nor needed.

Had she bothered to look at my website, she would have realized that I write about advertising and marketing — quite well, I might add.

I don’t mind a well-directed piece of direct mail, whether it’s via the postal service or a digital channel such as email. But online or offline, you need to at least attempt to match the message to the market.

If you don’t, you’re not a savvy online marketer — you’re a spammer.

*I’ve redacted her last name and will not name her firm here, since it would either embarrass her, give her firm a link it doesn’t deserve, or both.

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Email Phil Bernstein here.

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