Take It Face To Face

The “business world” is often defined using a Darwinian approach: “survival of the fittest”.  And “survive” is exactly what Yellow Pages has learned to do.  An unmistakable trend towards Google and other internet based search engines have led many to believe that the Yellow Pages would go out of business.  However, this is not the case.

Yellow Pages has responded to its competitor’s pressure by adding a whole lot of value to their service.  The “Yellow Pages Guarantee“, or “Super Guarantee“, essentially removes all risk involved for consumers searching for a service.  According to Yellow Pages’ site, all you have to do is “Register your service appointment with a participating business in advance for free and in the unlikely event you have a problem with the provider, we will help you resolve the issue or reimburse you up to $500 of any amounts paid to the provider for the labor portion of the services provided.”  Not a bad way to stick around.

The service is available through their websites, as well as their print phonebooks, but I believe the key to the guarantee’s success will be its online availability.  Consumers have grown accustomed to searching for information online, through Google or Yahoo, and reaching them through this channel is crucial.  In doing so, Yellow Pages is now providing a similar search experience, with a $500 satisfaction guarantee.  It is also highly unlikely its competitors will try and imitate this service.

The lesson that can be learned from Yellow Pages is you must be willing to adapt to the environment around you.  Yellow Pages could have stuck with the phonebook service it was founded as, but they were willing to change, and sacrifice (up to $500 a pop), to improve the service they were offering.

On top of the guarantee, Yellow Pages also expanded and has a Blackberry application, one that I unknowingly downloaded but actually find very useful.  Wonder if they’ll run the guarantee through their application in the future?

The examples are mind-boggling: celebrities that take advantage of their fame to launch a product line. Restaurants. Perfume. Clothing. Handbags. Salad dressing. No industry has gone untouched.

The late Paul Newman (the sole food-unaffiliated celebrity I can recall to ever venture into the condiment market) turned it into an art with Newman’s Own. The company’s motto “shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good” speaks for itself.  His company didn’t take itself too seriously. If only more celebrities took a page out of Newman’s book…

Shameless exploitation is what these stars bank on. Whether simply to turn more profit, or to fulfill an alleged lifelong dream (Dear Monica Lewinsky, I’m skeptical), fans can be relied upon to pounce on whatever product their idol might choose to send their way.

It seems like a foolproof formula, but on the whole these brands don’t seem to stick around that long. They fizzle out rather quickly into relative oblivion. Remember Mariah Carey’s signature perfume? Yeah, neither do I.

The kink in the plan comes in when the products are just, well, bad. When their success hinges solely upon the popularity of the spokesperson, consumers will quickly figure out it’s not worth their money.

The onslaught of celebrities pimping out their image to sell stuff has become so intense lately that an endorsement now has the exact opposite effect of what’s intended. Oh, a celebrity developed it? It must be garbage.

A recent New York Daily News article about Justin Timberlake’s new tequila shines light on the fact. Three aficionados who pre-tasted the product were stunned, read STUNNED, that it was not only drinkable, but rather good. Said one, “it’s actually a nice product,” and another, “I gotta admit, I’m a little surprised.”

The small number of other celebrity ventures who have gotten their hooks squarely into the consumer market did so simply by proving their product was quality. Sean John, for example, doesn’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon.  Perhaps it’s becuase the company distanced itself enough from its creator image-wise that I often forget where it came from. Good work Puffy/Diddy/whatever your name is.

Moral of the story: quality product first, PR and marketing later. We can only do so much.

What’s your favorite celebrity product? Which do you think is the worst? Tell us your thoughts.

Having just returned from a trip through Peru, I was amazed at the proliferation of Internet Cafes. We drove through small towns that consisted of only 5 or 6 houses, and one of the houses would have a big @ sign, indicating an Internet Café. I decided to seek some statistics on Internet users and found the following:

• 23% of the world’s population is now connected to the Internet in some fashion, which equates to 1,596,270,108 people.
• Asia has the largest number of Internet users at 657,170,816, but this number only represents 17.4% of their population
• North America has the highest penetration with 74.4% of the population connected and Oceania/Australia is a close second with 60.4%.
• Growth in the number of users from 2000 to 2008 is 342.2%
• The middle east has the highest percentage growth rate at 1,296.2%

I now realize how truly connected we as a world are becoming. It is a little scary to me to begin to think on such a global basis. I often have thought I am a global kind of gal. I’ve traveled quite a bit, I read a lot, and try and stay on top of the newest trends. But, I must admit, when I am creating a web banner or marketing message or blog, such as this, I don’t often think “how would someone in Peru or India think about it”.

While we do seem to be sectioned off for our Internet usage, there is still the ability to “cross over”, if you will. I can do a search on Google, and receive pages from France or Japan in the response. As we have seen more than we would like, our world financial markets are certainly tied to each other. Markets around the world are bemoaning the economic crises Americans are now encountering, and paying the price.

This is also an opportunity to use the world as a collaborative source to solve problems and issues. I read today about Schin Water’s project to collect plastic water bottles and transform the plastic into polyester fibers that are being made into T-shirts. What other ideas or processes have been developed in a very small town or community out of a great need that could be implemented on a global basis to solve some of the pressing issues we are all faced with today?

I don’t have the answer, but am anxious to start the communications to find out. Thoughts?

My CEO and Boss, a cool guy all around, just wrote a great op/ed piece on production management for Multichannel News. You can find the post here.

If you don’t know production management is an interesting business when it comes to filming television and movies.

Since it’s a holiday and all I figured I would just make a quick mention of this incase anyone was interested in reading it.

Ah the Metro in DC on a Tuesday morning. Cold, wet, and some guys forcefully shoving the local rag into my hand as I walk down to the subway. Now I am an MP3 player person, this means I listen to podcast and music while I ride the train. There are also book and knitting people, they do those things as well.

The most prominent person on the metro is the condensed news reader. These are the people who grab condensed versions of the newspapers and read them on the train in the morning. Here in DC we have a few but the biggest one by far is the Express, The Washington Post’s paper.

Most newspapers are bleeding money, but the express is making money for the Post hand over fist. Why? Well, its short, has very little news in it and has more ads than a Nascar. The paper also has one of the widest readerships in the DC area and no subscribers.

How is this accomplished you ask. Well I will tell you, men and women stand at the metro entrance and bus stops and hand them out to commuters. That’s right, people literally hand this thing to you when you get on the train. The thing that sparked my interest was that one of the was actually reading the headline off of the paper today.

For some reason I was thrown back to the 20’s (maybe it’s the economy) but I could see some scrappy kid crowing out the headlines while downtrodden workers went about their day. I had to laugh because screaming out headlines (ala town crier style) has to be a few hundred years old way of moving the news… and it still works today.

While newspapers are bleeding money and looking for new ways to create revenue many are turning to the internet. I understand the internet has made some people some money but its now a golden goose anymore. I use the papers as an analogy for how reinventing the wheel isn’t always par for the course when it comes to marketing.

Look at things that have worked in the past, will they work in the future, can you change something small to make it work in the 21st century. Have you noticed any age old marketing tools resurrected to work in today’s market? Let me know.