PART 1:

I was driving into the city last night to pick Fleur up from work (yeah, she had to work on a public holiday) and saw this sticker on the redute ahead of me..

Now it may be hard to see, but the big yellow sticker reads

Find Us In The Yellow Pages

It may just be me, but WHY THE HECK would you pro-actively encourage your competition to look in a medium filled with adverts from your competition?

You wouldn’t send out a direct mail piece to your prospects and stuff the envelope full off flyer’s from theopposition, would you?

You wouldn’t put links to your direct competitors on the websites landing page, would you?

I can only conceive one I (some-what) logical reason for sending your prospects to the yellow pages where your competition also advertises…

And this is… if your competition sucks…your advert stands out like dogs balls and your advert is full of benefit driven elements.

Unfortunately, by the look of this ute and its lack of calls to action and USP’s (YES, you should put these on all your advertising mediums, and you car is definitely one) this wasn’t the case…

In part 2 of this series on Yellow Pages advertising I will share with you my thoughts on advertising in the Yellow Pages in general… stay tuned.