Where's Your Stack of Yellowbooks?
It's Yellowbook season. Have you gotten yours? Yeah. Didn't think so.
Nothing has become more laughable or terrifying in all of marketing than to see those monstrosities of marketing invading office and apartment lobbies. Last year around this time, I drove around in an '84 Camaro with a mulleted-American (yes, this would be the second straight post where I've conjured up the ghost of Jake) collecting unwanted Yellowbooks and delivering them to the doorstep of the local distributor. They were kind enough to take them back. Others, like Ed Kohler of Minneapolis, have been much more militant in their approach. Hats off to him and others.
This morning I learned from my colleague Julie that Seattle is considering legislation to limit the distribution of Yellowbooks. Of course this is a great idea. I'd love to see our mayors consider similar moves.
Yellowbooks may seem the most offensive because they're the most visible. In some office buildings, it would take a forklift to remove the stash of unwanted booty. Yet I wonder how many companies have their own version of "Yellowbook" waste in their plans. No secret here that I've long been a critic of banner advertising, where billions of dollars flow into ad networks with no real accountability or promise of results. The dreaded "impression" is a sort of don't-worry-be-happy metric that lulls advertisers into thinking they might actually be doing something worthwhile. So I find it curious that we loathe the sight of a stack of Yellowbooks when we ourselves might be staring down the barrel of our own deep ocean financial oil leaks. Sure, it's going on down there but just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. (Man, I love mixing metaphors! Yellowbooks! Oil leaks! Google bait!)
Here are some other egregious marketing oversights:
- Blindly taking Google's recommended spend with them on keywords that simply will never return high quality traffic.
- Batch-n-blast email campaigns where a single, non-targeted or segmented message is wantonly sent to an entire database. Waste of time, money, and efforts...over and over again.
- Twitter. Yup, I said it. I worry that agencies and companies alike are spending loads of precious brainpower communicating in a Chinese-water drip torture fashion only to their friends, employees and colleagues. I worry that no one has any idea who's following them or who cares.
So, the next time you pass a mountain of Yellowbooks in your lobby and before you become offended, think carefully and loudly about where your own looming stack of unaccountable dollars are flowing. If you don't know, you probably have a problem right there. Know. Then know a little more.
I mean this quite honestly. If you're reading this and worry even a little bit about your own wasteful ways, get your marketing team together, shut the door, and ask yourselves, "Is there a stack of Yellowbooks in our marketing and advertising plans?" Then do something about it. And if you come across some interesting finds, share them here with others. As business pundits talk of a possible depression in the American economy, I would suggest that there's no better time than now to start investigating.
--
Andrew Eklund :: Founder & CEO
Ciceron :: Digital Marketing
www.ciceron.com
612.230.3901 :: LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreweklund
Professional Twitter: @HeavyThinking
Personal Twitter: @aeklund
Posted 11/01/2010 - 8:47am
Posted 12/01/2010 - 4:13am
Posted 12/01/2010 - 8:48am
Posted 01/11/2011 - 11:34am
Posted 03/22/2011 - 9:46am
Posted 09/30/2010 - 7:33am
Posted 11/08/2010 - 3:23pm
Posted 09/02/2010 - 5:12pm
Comments
Simple solution for a serious problem
I've got to agree with you and Ed on the broken model of Yellowbook distribution. Not only is there an opt-out issue, but most of the people I know don't use print resources to find phone numbers. It's a waste for many, maybe most, but not all advertisers and waste for the people that now have to dispose of them. Don't get me started on the environmental angle.
I also appreciate Yellowbook as a metaphor for wasteful PPC and social media marketing spending. The number of companies I've talked to (as I am sure you have too) that want marketing services without proper measurement tools, conversion analytics and a well flushed out sales tracking process set up first is frightening.
Wasteful spending touches many and marketing is certainly one of the most troublesome categories.
I really do hope MN lawmakers consider what may happen in Seattle and limit Yellowbook distribution here. Like Ed says, what's so hard about opt-in or even opt-out?
What's so hard about opt-in?
Yellowbook models are really broken. They try to redirect accusations of environmental damage to direct mail, which, if you add it up over a year, is generally greater than yellow pages. But, here's one huge difference: direct mail companies are more than willing to remove you from their lists, since the quality of their lists directly correlate with conversion rates (and costs).
Yellow Pages companies, on the other hand, seem to prefer to rely upon the illusion of 100% saturation and use to justify their ad prices. So they end up offloading a bunch of waste on cities, who have to deal with disposing of a huge percentage of unused phone books.
How big a percentage? Let's assume people could use one new set of books a year. That would make 66% of the phone books received in many Minnesota cities a complete waste, since we're hit with three vendors in many cities. And that is among those who actually USE the books.
Criminal?
Ed - totally agree is broken. But do you think it might even be criminal? I'm not trying to be outlandish but it seems to me that if I pulled that sort of accounting/audience stunt with my clients, I might end up in court.
Littering on empty houses should be criminal
For two years in a row Qwest Dex littered phone books on the foreclosed and vacant property next door to me. The "corporate trash" blows into my yard, across the street and throughout the neighborhood. I tried to get the books stopped, and it turns out a home has to have a working phone number to stop delivery. Even bank-owned homes.