Mama's Thumbs

Last Saturday, I saw a young Mom texting or tweeting as she was walking into the grocery store.

This is becoming more and more commonplace according to this recent report from Mediapost:

Moms Mobile Addiction

According to the "21^st Century Mobile Mom Report," by BabyCenter, mobile phones, and smartphones in particular, have become indispensible to moms, who are 18% more likely than average to have a smartphone. Smartphones among moms has risen 64% over the past two years, and 51% of moms say they are "addicted" to their smartphone.

Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Global President of BabyCenter, says "The smartphone screen is more intimate than any other medium... the majority of moms sleep with their cell phone next to their bed... more than half check their phone first thing in the morning and last thing before they go to sleep... it's her constant companion that makes juggling easier... "

53% of the women surveyed said they purchased a smartphone as a direct result of becoming a mom. The most important features of her phone changed from address book and text messaging to the camera, up 78% to #1, and video camera, which increased by 167% to #2. Apps, which weren't even on her top ten list of important mobile features before she became a mom, increased 67% to #3 on the list. 52% of the moms surveyed have ten or more apps downloaded, with nearly 25% of the apps being for her kids.

68% know how to use most of the features of their smartphone, and 75% troubleshoot their own phone. 33% of moms have used their smartphone for health and wellness in the past month, making a mom 50% more likely to do so than average. Moms are also 40% more likely than average to use their smartphone for social networking. The top three social activities include:

• Reading social newsfeeds (56%)
• Updating her status (54%)
• Reading answers to posted questions (48%)

68% of moms use their smartphone while shopping, 15% more likely to do so than average. 46% claim the most convenient time to receive information about a product is when they are in the store. Also, 62% of moms use shopping apps to research or compare prices.

Mom spends 37% of her daily media time with her smartphone, which is double that spent on TV, and more time than with other media, including radio, magazines, and newspapers. 78% of moms saying they use e-mail on their smartphone to filter incoming communications on a daily basis. Moms are also 284% more likely than the average adult to text their friends rather than call them.

When it comes to mobile ads, coupons, nearby local deals, and bar code scanning round out the top three most appealing features of mobile ads. 46% of moms have taken action after seeing an ad on their smartphone.

Moms Respond to Mobile Ads
Action Seeing Ad	% of Respondents
Any action	· 46%
More research later	· 52
Talked to someone else about it	· 51
Clicked to go to mobile site	· 31
Purchased product later in store	· 31
Purchased product later online	· 14
Clicked to call	· 10
Source: BabyCenter, April 2011

62% of moms say the phone is their lifeline to the world beyond your kids. 96% have Facebook downloaded, and more than two-thirds are tapping onto social networking sites at least once a day to many times a day.

Michael Fogarty, Global Publisher of BabyCenter, concludes that "... mobile is mainstream for moms, and is always on... infinite possibilities for today's marketers... "

Based on which products index highest for each stage of parenthood, 21st Century Moms report they are 423% more likely to buy a digital camcorder in the first six months of motherhood than prior, and 153% more likely to buy life insurance in the latter half of the first year of the child's life.

85% of moms say having a baby changed their purchasing habits, and 73% say becoming a mom changed their purchasing criteria. Before having children, women care most about quality, features, and design and after, they shop for safety, quality, and price. 62% of moms report that having a baby changed the brands they purchase.

The study captured the opinions and behaviors of more than 5,000 moms and members of the general population as well as an ethnography study of 23 moms that included over 1,000 text logs, 200 video entries, and 32 hours of in-home interviews.

More information from BabyCenter may be found here.

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Got your Name & Number

I have too many phone numbers.

My wife and I still have a home number.

I've kept it because it has a nice "ring" to it.

The last 4 numbers are 8282. Sort of rolls off your tongue and is easy to remember.

My cell phone number has remained the same ever since I got my first cell. I will never change it because I have people who call it that I haven't talked with in 6 years and all they have is an old business card of mine, but they can reach me.

The office number complete with extension I never give out.

And I have a Google Voice number that I rarely use, but I might start using it more for specific purposes. The last 4 numbers spell HELP.

When you are advertising your business and a phone number is important, a memorable number is still worth the extra $.

Here's more from Mediapost:

Using A Vanity Phone Number Is Not In Vain by Gregg Hamershlag

As a business owner, you've taken all of the necessary steps to attract customers and do what, as business owners, we all set out to do: Make money. Immediately after that tax ID number arrives, you start checking things off the list -- Web site, Facebook, Twitter, SEO....

Your Web site is mobile-optimized and social media-enabled. Visitors even have a way to contact you directly without leaving the site. You're third on Google and fourth on Bing. Check!

Facebook? Check. Not only are you on Facebook, but everyone from your grandmother to your eighth-grade boyfriend or girlfriend "Likes" you. That's good. Your grandmother should like you.

Twitter handle? Check. You've set up HootSuite and TweetDeck and your following is growing by the day. In addition to a continuous stream of updates letting your followers know that you read an interesting article today in Women's Wear Daily or Car & Driver Magazine, you are dialed in to the online conversation with laser focus. Nowhere in the Twittersphere will there be a conversation about your industry that you won't be aware of or instantly be able to add your two cents.

It's only a matter of time before your Outlook inbox will be flooded with messages from potential customers and the phone starts ringing off the ... that's right -- you forgot about the phone! What's the number again?

No one is denying social media's impact on the way our society communicates, but the jury is still out on its effectiveness as a sales and marketing tool. And while marketers debate the verdict, they continue to remain faithful to an old-school tactic that is proven to attain the Holy Grail that is consumer engagement.

1-800-FLOWERS, 1-800CABLETV, 1-800-PROGRESSIVE, 1-800-GOTJUNK, 1-800-MATTRES (leave off the last S for savings) are all examples of businesses that have successfully leveraged a vanity telephone number to do what every business sets out to do -- make money. Whatever you decide to call it -- consumer engagement or lead generation -- the end result of those efforts should be increased sales.

The direct, brand-to-consumer engagement that a vanity telephone number provides creates more valuable and actionable opportunities for businesses to connect with potential customers than relationships forged through any social media platform. There are numerous competitive advantages to having an easy-to-remember phone number.

• Higher Consumer Recall: Consumers are more likely to recall a vanity phone number as opposed to a numeric phone number or URL. In fact, any type of advertising featuring a 1-800 vanity number generates a higher response rate -- 30% or more by modest estimates -- and higher lead-to-sales conversion rates.

• Don't call me, I'll call you: Consumers today are visually and audibly assaulted by myriad marketing and advertising campaigns spanning every possible media platform. The ability to leverage vanity telephone numbers is a trusted and proven method of driving voluntary engagement with consumers who have opted-in.

• Eliminates Exposure to Competitors: A vanity telephone number will ensure that consumers need to only dial a few digitals or type in an easily remembered Web address, virtually eliminating the exposure to competitors that comes with manual searching.

• Seriously, who doesn't have a smartphone?: Mobile phone technology has made leaps and bounds over the past decade. Nielsen estimates that by December 2011, half of all Americans will own and operate a smartphone. Mobile devices equipped with full keypads convert vanity numbers for consumers, and SMS and email technology allows them to instantly opt-in to a brand's marketing and CRM campaign with a simple phone call. The right number combined with the right marketing support has the ability to significantly build a meaningful consumer database and open a direct line of communication with a consumer who has already expressed interest in your brand's message.

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Death to the TV and Landlines?

I could live without both. Could you?

Landlines And Television Sets Losing Importance

According to a new nationwide survey from the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project, reported by Paul Taylor and Wendy Wang with Lee Rainie and Aaron Smith, only 42% of Americans say they consider the television set to be a necessity. Last year, this figure was 52%, and in 2006, it was 64%.

After occupying center stage in the American household for much of the 20th century, says the report, two of the grand old luminaries of consumer technology, the television set and the landline telephone, are suffering from a sharp decline in public perception that they are necessities of life.

The drop-off has been less severe for the landline telephone. 62% of Americans say it's a necessity of life, down from 68% last year, but 47% of the public now say that the cell phone is a necessity of life.

What Americans Need (% Rating as Necessity)
Item	% Saying Necessity	% Change 2009-2010
Car	86%	-2%
Landline phone	62	-6
Clothes dryer	59	-7
Home air conditioning	55	+1
Home computer	49	-1
Cell phone	47	-2
Microwave	45	-2
TV set	42	-10
High speed Internet	34	+3
Cable or satellite TV	23	0
Dishwasher	21	0
Flat screen TV	10	+2
Source: PewResearchCenter, August 2010

In the case of the landline phone, the verdict does not come just from the survey, but also from the marketplace. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data, just 74% of U.S. households now have a landline phone, down from a peak of 97% in 2001. During this same time period, use of cell phones has skyrocketed. Fully 82% of adults now use cell phones, up from 53% in 2000. There are now more cell phones in the U.S. than landline phones.

From 1996 through 2006 a rising share of Americans saw more items on the list as necessities rather than luxuries. Since 2006, says the report, as the housing bubble burst, and consumer spending throttled down, the trend has moved the opposite way. A rising share now sees more everyday items as luxuries than necessities.

The report concludes that the dichotomy posed by the question "luxury or necessity" may be a relic. A more appropriate question in 2010 may be whether consumers consider these venerable appliances to be "necessary" or "superfluous."

The economy isn't the only factor driving these numbers, says the report. For several items on the list, the television set and the landline phone for instance, innovations in technology also seem to be playing a role.

Even as fewer Americans say they consider the TV set to be a necessity of life, more Americans than ever are stocking up on them. In 2009, the average American home had more television sets than people, 2.86, according to a Nielsen report. In 2000, this figure was 2.43; in 1990, it was 2.0; and in 1975, it was 1.57.

The disconnect between attitudes and behaviors, opines the report, may be that the TV set hasn't had to deal with competition from new technology that can fully replace all of its functions. If a person wants real-time access to the wide spectrum of entertainment, sports and news programming available on television, there's still nothing (at least not yet) that can compete with the television set itself.

Another twist to the TV story, though, comes from the flat-screen television. According to the latest Pew Research survey, 10% of the public now says that a flat-screen television is a necessity of life, up from 5% who felt that way in 2006. And according to industry reports, American consumers have bought more than 100 million flat-screen television sets since 2005.

For some items dependency increases with age, especially with the very-21st-century attitudes of today's young adults. Fewer than half of 18- to 29-year-old survey respondents consider the landline phone a necessity of life, while fewer than three-in-ten say the same about the television set.

Approximate % of Group That Considers Item as a Necessity
Age	Landline	TV Set	Cable Service	Flat Screen TV
18-29	46%	29%	11%	10%
30-49	62	58	21	8
50-54	64	50	27	10
65+	77	53	35	17
Source: PewResearchCenter, August 2010

For other items, dependency decreases with age:

· The cell phone decreases in importance from 59% of the 18-29 group to 29% among the 65+ group

· Importance of the home computer goes from 53% of the younger group to 35% of the over 65s

· High speed internet is important to 33% of the younger group, increases to around 40 from 30-64, and falls off to 15% for the 65+ crowd.

The "balance of necessity" between cell phones and landline phones shifts with the age of the respondent. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, more respondents consider a cell phone a necessity than a landline phone. For those in middle age, more consider a landline phone to be a necessity. And for those ages 65 and older, those who say the landline is a necessity outnumber those who say the same about a cell phone by a ratio of more than two-to-one.

Landline Phone vs. Cell Phone (% in Each Age Group)
Age Group	Landline a Necessity	Cell Phone a Necessity
18-29	46%	59%
30-49	62	51
50-64	64	43
65+	77	29
Source: PewResearchCenter, August 2010

As a June 2010 Pew Research Center report and other recent surveys of consumer behavior have shown, the deep recession that began in December 2007 has led to a new frugality in Americans' spending and saving habits, and it appears to have scrambled Americans' judgments about whether many everyday appliances are necessities or luxuries, says the report.

But one pattern is consistent across items studied. Their necessity rating was at (or very near) its peak four years ago, and has since declined. This suggests that the psyche of the American consumer is in a much different place now than it had been in the heady days before the recession, concludes the report.

For additional information please visit Pew Research here.

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Optimizing for Mobile

Last month I bought my first smart phone. A Droid, since my cellphone provider is Verizon.

A couple years ago, a friend of mine was telling me about optimizing websites for mobile viewing, and now I get it. Even though my phone will not replace my laptop the way my laptop replaced my desktop computer, I see the benefit of "apps" for smart phones.

Check this out: Talking Isn't All That Matters to Cellphone Users Survey Also Finds Price/Value Most Important Factor in Choosing Service Plans

Cellphones are necessary tools by which many Americans get information these days, with an increasing number of people looking for phones which offer access to email, the internet, picture-taking and even calendars. New research, conducted by BIGresearch for the National Retail Federation's Mobile Retail Initiative shows an increasing number of people want to be "tuned in" more than ever before.

According to the most recent survey of 9,578 adults used in this analysis, nearly nine out of 10 adults (87.5%) say they have a cellphone, an increase of 17.9 percent from January 2006 (74.2%).

With e-commerce now expanding to m-commerce, many people want the luxury of being able to shop or browse company's websites from their phone. The survey found 41.5 percent of adults want a cellphone with Internet access, compared to just under one-third (32.6%) who said so in July 2008. More than half (51.4%) of adults 18-34 years old say they want to be able to surf the web on their phone, compared to the 41.0% who said so in July 2008.

"Americans expect more from their phones than the ability to talk to family and friends," said NRF President and CEO Matt Shay. "Aside from sending pictures and sharing stories and experiences over social networking sites, consumers want to be able to connect with their favorite retailers in a way they never have been able to before -- instantaneously. The emergence of m-commerce has created a paradigm shift that has the retail industry very excited."

When it comes to other cellphone features or attributes, adults say email access has also increased in importance over the years. Over half (51.1%) of 18-34 year-olds say they want a cellphone with email access, up from 28.1 percent in January 2006. But young adults aren't the only ones who favor email access: according to the survey, 42.6% of all adults want email on their phone, up significantly from 22.5 percent four years ago.

Survey respondents also said that phones with cameras (59.0%), calendars (42.7%) and text messaging (55.6%) are important attributes. When it comes to why consumers switch cellphone service providers, four out of 10 (41.3%) adults say pricing/value is their top reason, with other important factors including coverage (31.6%) and plan options (22.1%). These factors remained consistent in every age group except cellphone users 55 and older, who listed their priorities as: pricing/value (41.3%), coverage (28.9%) and customer service (17.9%).

"The combination of new technologies coupled with consumers' desire to adopt these new apps are redefining the cellphone into a 'consumer communicator'," said Phil Rist, Executive Vice President of Strategy, BIGresearch. "Marketers and retailers should leverage shoppers' needs to stay connected by providing information and communications to assist them with their purchase decisions."

(Source: National Retail Federation, 06/17/10)

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Will this Save the Yellow Pages?

A new Logo? Come on now....

This is from Brand Channel:

logo no-no

Yellow Pages Logo Redesign Paradox

Posted by Abe Sauer on March 24, 2010 01:37 PM

Pages, remember those? Paper sheets affixed one after the other, covered with various information organized in even more various ways. Those days are over.

Clearly, the modern age of the iPad and Kindle is not one of pages. So Yellow Pages, the well-known telephone and address directory, is changing its logo to reflect substantial changes within its brand.

The logo redesign conveys the brand’s move from a paper phone book platform to a digital rolodex. Editing out the familiar pages from Yellow Pages’ logo symbolizes a broad and ambitious increase in the Montreal-based brand's scope and business strategy.

“Our new branding reflects an important shift in the way we are doing business. The message it sends is that [the brand] is multi-platform: we’re online, we’re mobile and we are still the leading and most widely used print directory in the country," said Yellow Pages president and chief executive, explaining the brand's move.

Yellow Pages’ widely recognized "walking fingers" will remain, however. Additional alterations include the logo shape, which is changing from a square to something more... iPhone app-like. The new logo will represent Yellow Pages' multi-platform new business approach, featuring Yellow Pages-branded web production services and apps for smartphones such as the Android, iPhone, and Blackberry. For a brand that anticipates a to earn a full 20 percent of revenues in 2010 from the digital segment, it's a rational move.

But is Yellow Pages’ effort to modernize the logo actually undermining part of the brand’s valuable and renowned legacy? Indeed, the brand is still named Yellow "Pages," no?

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Why The Web Matters to You

But not just the web, but technology overall.

Yesterday, I was cleaning out some old papers and found a mistake on my auto insurance policy.

I went to the company website and it was down. Seems like this was the problem when I checked them out last month.

So I tried to take care of things the old fashioned way. I called the toll free phone number. It was answered within 30 seconds and I talked to the guy on the other end who told me, I'd have to talk to my agent. However my agent changes every 6 months.

Next I sent a request for suggestions for auto insurance on Twitter & Facebook and within a couple hours got a dozen responses. (This is Word of Moth in the Social Media Age).

Saturday I also opened up my cellphone bill for our family of three. Here's the text message tally:

Me: 109 in one month
Wife: 53 in one month
21 year old daughter: 5077 in one month. That's over 169 per day!

Yep, the world is changing and here's the latest video on this subject:

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The Phone Book

is where I am going for leads these days. Because, well, I'll let Roy Williams explain:

2010: The Changing of the Guard

Change happens more slowly than people believe.

The Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams

When change looms obvious and inevitable, we assume it to be imminent. But obvious, inevitable changes in business usually take from 7 to 12 years.

2010 will be the 7th year of certain inevitable changes introduced by the world wide web.

1. Google has replaced the Yellow Pages
but most advertisers haven’t figured this out yet so the Yellow Pages continue to make money on the momentum of previous years.

Momentum is a magical thing. It keeps an empty freight train hurtling forward even when its engines have run out of fuel.

The Yellow Pages are an empty freight train.

I’m not saying they’ll go away anytime soon. In fact, I’m fairly certain they’ll continue to rattle happily down the track until the last of my generation dies off because old habits die hard and fear is more powerful than facts.

All a Yellow Page ad salesman has to say is, “But if you’re wrong, can your business survive a whole year with no customers?”

That withering sound you heard was the business owner losing his resolve under the glare of the Yellow Pages man. ZAP! He’s on the hook for another year.

Those who have seen our presentation on Society’s 40-Year Pendulum* will recall a section where my partners and I explain,

“The explosion in technology that robbed a generation of its childhood also empowered that generation to be instantly in touch with one another. The ‘We’ generation has arrived and their message to Business is this: ‘Your advertising may fool one of us, but that one will tell the rest of us. We insist that you deliver what you promise.’”

2010 is the year the ‘We’ generation begins to really flex its muscle.

Did you know newspapers make more money per inch in their classified ad sections than in any other section? And the classified section has fewer readers than any other.




[This graphs shows only the past rates of increase enjoyed by Craigslist and the projected rates of their future growth according to a typical bell curve. This graph does not predict a decline in volume, but only a slowing of growth as has already been experienced by earlier online successes such as eBay.]

2. Craigslist is replacing the classified ad sections
of newspapers. Put your next classified ad on Craigslist and prepare to be amazed.

3. Yelp is replacing the Better Business Bureau.
A customer who complains about you to the Better Business Bureau is effectively irrelevant. That complaint may hurt your pride but it will rarely hurt your pocketbook.

But if you own a service business, your score on Yelp.com will directly impact your finances. Brad Casebier, a plumber buddy of mine, tells me that a single bad review on YELP cost him $2,000 per week until it finally migrated off the page. Sadly, the snarling woman-without-a-life who posted that negative review did so without even contacting Brad to give him a chance to correct the problem.

Yes, the technology that empowers the “we” generation has a dark side, as well.

And that dark side may get even darker.

Mark Hathaway, a white-collar criminal defense attorney says, “Yelp.com has to be careful that their business model does not look like they are asking business owners for protection money from bad reviews when Yelp.com** controls whether the bad reviews are posted in the first place. Some business owners may feel that the local neighborhood protection racket has just moved to the Web.”

2010 is the year of the changing of the guard.
Here are 3 things you need to give some thought:

1. Search Engine Optimization is the key to making the 1st page of Google. You can do your own SEO or you can pay someone else to do it for you.

2. Great results from Craigslist require only that you know how to craft an ad. Luckily, I know a school that can teach you how to write effective ads. Or you can just pay someone to do it for you.

3. Your feedback score on Yelp can be maintained by you alone. You can’t pay someone else to make your customers happy.

Roy H. Williams

** Even if Yelp is kicked to the curb by a newcomer like AngiesList, the idea of peer-to-peer business reviews is here to stay.

Editor: Another growing peer-to-peer business review website is WOMF.

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Watching

This morning I was reading this report from Mediapost about TV viewing habits.

Except it's not really just about tv viewing habits, it's about customized, multi-tasking in a time crunched world that we get to control.

Take a look:

More Looks, More Screens

Americans are increasing their overall media consumption, and media multi-tasking is part of the equation, according to new data from The Nielsen Company's most recent Three Screen Report. During 2nd Quarter 2009, the number of people watching mobile video increased 70% from last year and people who watch video online increased their viewing by 46% compared to a year ago.

In addition, the average American TV consumption remains at an all-time high (141 hours per month) compared to the same time frame last year.

As of 2Q09 the 290 million people in the U.S. with TVs spend on average 141 hours: 3 minutes each month tuning into television. June 2009 data (used in this report in place of 2Q09) shows that 134 million people watching video on the Internet spent on average 3 hours:11 minutes during the month doing so. As of 2Q09 the 15 million people subscribing to mobile video in the U.S. spend on average 3 hrs:15 minutes each month watching video on a mobile phone.

Overall Usage Number of Users (in 000's - Monthly Reach)
	2Q09	1Q09	2Q08	% Diff Yr to Yr
Watching TV in the home	284,396	284,574	281,746	0.9%
Watching Time shifted TV	82,297	79,533	62,240	32.2%
Using the Internet	191,035	163,110	159,986	19.4%
Watching Video on Internet	133,962	131,102	119,164	12.4%
Using a Mobile Phone	233,722	230,436	221,651	0.5%
Mobile Subscribers Watching Video on a Mobile Phone	15,267	13,419	9,004	70.0%
Source: The Nielsen Company, September 2009

Monthly Time Spent in Hours:Minutes Per User
Activity	2Q 09	1Q 09	2Q 08	% Diff Yr to Yr (2Q 09 to 2Q 08)	Absolute Diff Yr to Yr (2Q 09 to 2Q 08)
Watching TV in the home	141:03	153:27	139:00	1.5%	2:02
Watching time shifted TV	7:16	8:13	6:05	19.5%	1:11
Using the Internet	26:15	29:15	26:29	-0.9%	0:14
Watching video on Internet	3:11	3:00	2:12	45.5%	0:59
Mobile subscribers watching video on a mobile phone	3:15	3:37	3:37	-10.0%	0:22
Source: The Nielsen Company, September 2009

Nielsen data also shows Americans are using DVRs more than ever, watching one hour more of time shifted TV each month than a year ago. Currently, 30% of homes in the U.S. have DVR devices.

Jim O'Hara, President, Media Product Leadership, The Nielsen Company, says "Although we have seen the computer and mobile phone screens taking on a significant role, their emergence has not been at the cost of TV viewership... "

As of June 2009, the Nielsen Convergence Research Panel shows 57% of consumers with Internet access at home watch TV and go online simultaneously at least once a month. On average these consumers spend 2 hours, 39 minutes each month simultaneously using the Internet while also watching TV. Their online experience at home is in front of the television almost a third of the time.

Persons Watching TV and Using the Internet Simultaneously (At Least Once Per Month, June 2009)
Activity	Use
% of Persons Using TV/Internet Simultaneously	56.9%
Estimated Number of Persons Using TV/Internet Simultaneously	128,047,000
Time Spent Simultaneously Using TV/Internet Per Person in Hours:Minutes	2:39
Average % of TV time Panelists spent also using the Internet	2.7%
Average % of Internet time Panelists spent also using TV	27.9%
Source: The Nielsen Company, September 2009

Other Key Facts and Trends

• As Americans continue to watch more TV each year there are also more TVs in each home than people - in 2009 the average U.S. home had only 2.5 people vs 2.86 television sets. 54% of Americans have three or more TV sets in the home.
• Online usage is relatively flat since last year, though more people are viewing video online than ever before. Certain age groups also view online video more than others do - Adults 18-24 watch more than 5 hrs each month vs. Adults 65+ watching just over 1 hr of online video
• Short form video (such as YouTube clips) still makes up the lion's share of online video viewing - 83% in May 09 - while name-brand TV network content comprises the majority of mobile video viewing
• Younger demographics aren't using the Internet as much as older demographics, yet the growth rate of kids 2-11 online clearly outpaces the overall Internet penetration. The number of kids online has increased 18% compared to 10% growth for the total active Internet universe
• Mobile video viewing continues its upward trend, with over 15 million Americans reporting watching mobile video in Q2 2009. This is an increase of 70% versus last year - the largest annual growth to date

Video Audience Composition (2Q 2009)
	Composition by Age
Audience	2-11	12-17	18-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55-64	65+
On TV	10%	6%	8%	12%	14%	17%	15%	18%
On the Internet	6%	8%	9%	15%	19%	21%	13%	9%
On Mobile Phone	n/a	19%	12%	32%	20%	11%	5%	1%
Source: The Nielsen Company, September 2009

For more information from The Neilsen Company, and to access the PDF report, please visit here.

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Yellow Pages are now the Red Pages

As in Red Ink:

Major Yellow Page Publisher Files Chap 11

Traditional marketing avenues continue to take punishment in ways never seen before. Of course, we all know about newspapers and the trouble they are having. Now, it’s time for another stalwart of traditional small and medium business advertising, the Yellow Pages, to take more of a beating.

Amidst news stories about Microsoft actually making search inroads and the “Tastes Great / Less Filling!” wars between Facebook and Twitter is the reality that the old guard is struggling to hold on. Late last week, R.H. Donnelly Corp., a major yellow pages publisher, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection so it can get out from under a $10 billion (that’s right, with a B) debt load. The Wall Street Journal reports

The Cary, N.C., company sought protection from its creditors in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., after reaching a deal with a majority in dollar amount of its bondholders to exchange $6 billion in debt for 100% of the equity in the reorganized company and to exchange a $400 million note for a new $300 million note. Holders of most of the company’s $3.5 billion in bank debt have agreed to extend the maturity on the loans to 2014.

Most Internet marketers have been putting the Yellow Pages in the grave for quite some time now. The sales tactics and question of ROI is something that can no longer be swept under the rug in the age of the Internet and social media. While there is arguably a place for Yellow Page products they are no longer viewed as necessities to small businesses. Even the online versions of these offerings are wrought with confusion over their true value. Add to that the continuing murkiness of online yellow page “products” (i.e. buy x amount of clicks per month) and the future seems kind of cloudy as well.

The following three quotes tells the tale very well of R.H. Donnelly and its current state of affairs

In an interview Thursday, R.H. Donnelley Chief Executive David Swanson said the downturn in the U.S. economy and housing market hit the company’s advertising sales, which in turn caused it to run into problems keeping in line with its debt covenants.

R.H. Donnelley racked up billions in debt over the past several years through a series of acquisitions. The company bought Sprint’s directory business for more than $2 billion in 2003 and three years later acquired Dex Media Inc. in a deal worth about $9.5 billion.

Mr. Swanson said R.H. Donnelley entered Chapter 11 to fix its “unhealthy balance sheet” but doesn’t need to address any operational issues while in bankruptcy. “It’s business as usual here,” he said.

For me, the last line says it all. The CEO of a business that has seen shareholder value go to near nothing still says that it’s business as usual. If you were a stockholder in this company that was holding shares in its current state you would be a little ticked at that kind of statement. It’s hard to feel confident that this filing will change anything if the attitude still remains. Oh, as an aside, Mr. Swanson has enjoyed some nice personal compensation over the past few years despite engineering this train right into Bankrupt Station. No wonder it’s business as usual.

Donnelly joins Idearc, who publishes the Verizon Yellow Pages, in Chapter 11. Idearc did so in March of this year.

So are the yellow pages dead? Is the online version still an option if you are an SMB who has been buying from them for years? Which Yellow Pages is the actual real one anyway? While we make this transition from traditional to new media options will this model have a place?

But this is not a surprise. Look at this from last summer: http://blog.jippidy.com/?p=21

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Turning Hold Time into Sold Time

I make dozens of phone calls a week to various companies, and I'm amazed at the way incoming phone calls are handled. Sometimes you think you are on hold, but there are no sounds at all, so maybe the call was dropped, but you never really know.

A few years ago I met a friend who noticed the same thing and he did something about it. From their website, Profits On Hold Productions LLC:

Here are some amazing telephone on-hold statistics: Executives spend 15 minutes a day On-Hold according to USA Today. That is 68 hours a year or eight and half business work days spent On-Hold over the average year! Maxi Market reports that 88% of callers placed on hold prefer on-hold messages to other hold options and 18-20% make a purchase based on an on-hold offer! A typical incoming phone call is placed on-hold for an industry average 42 seconds. To your company, that time can be very profitable. Why not use this time to educate callers about new products or services that your company provides...ones that the average caller might not know about?

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Good News for Yellow Pages?

Every now and then I feature a story regarding the decline of the phone book.

Here's a few you can check out:

Bye-Bye Yellow

Saying No to Yellow Page Advertising

Another view of the Yellow Pages

Yellow Page Predictions

Why I Don't like the Phone Book

Online Yellow Pages

Yellow Pages & Nursing Homes

Yellow Page Alternatives

However, despite all the doom and gloom, this survey says many folks still use it according to Adweek:

Study: How Consumers Find a Business

Print Yellow Pages, search engines top list

Dec 17, 2008

-By Mark Dolliver

NEW YORK When searching for a business or service -- from dentist to pizza parlor -- Americans employ a mix of old and new media, according to a Knowledge Networks report released this week. Based on polling conducted in the spring among respondents age 13 and older, the report says 77 percent turn to print Yellow Pages. Forty-eight percent of those polled said this is the source they use most often. Search engines were the runner-up, with 49 percent saying they use them to seek out a business or service, including 21 percent for whom this is the most-often-used source. The only other resources to register in double digits in the survey were Internet Yellow Pages (36 percent, 13 percent most often), free or fee-based 411 (30 percent, 8 percent most often) and newspapers (19 percent, 2 percent most often). For all the talk about people roaming the streets with mobile devices in hand as they seek stores and restaurants, just 5 percent of respondents included "mobile search" among their sources, including 1 percent who said it's the source they use most often. The study found that users of mobile search "were most likely to see themselves as 'opinion leaders' in their social groups," with 55 percent voicing that self-assessment. It was beyond the purview of this survey to determine whether these opinion leaders actually have opinion followers.

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Someone else's view on the Phone Book

Nearly every time I feature an article from someone about the Yellow Pages, or Phone Book, the folks who publish the book or sell the ads seem to flock to see what I wrote.

This time I'm featuring a white paper from Killian & Company Advertising:

Why Are the Yellow Pages like Nursing Homes?

They’re shockingly expensive, few people under 70 use them, and many who do are just a little out of it.

Moral of the story? When you invest in Yellow Pages ads, you’re setting fire to money.

Are we being a little harsh on this venerable (read: antique) information source? Hell no. This obsolete technology sucks millions of dollars away from more cost-effective marketing tools, while delivering less every year. There are better uses for your budget, especially if you market goods and services to people who don’t remember the Truman Administration.

Way back in the 20th Century...
The answer to Where can I buy a refrigerator? used to be let your fingers do the walking. But the only people who continue to walk those fingers in this millennium are the ones who got into that habit decades ago. Google and Yahoo, to cite two sites, offer vastly more information, from more sources, more quickly. Fresher info, too. Phone book accuracy begins to decay the moment it comes off the printing press.

Look at your brand message: how can you best tell your story? If you can draw prospects – via broadcast or print ads, good search engine rankings, or sponsored search – to your website, you can offer information precisely tailored to those prospects, with as much drill-down information as they desire. And pictures. And video. And animations. Even pages of technical specs if prospects need them. Bingo. Yahtzee. Home run. Hibachi.

Note carefully: we said "prospects" three times in that last paragraph, and not by chance. In branding, we pay less attention to your customers. Customers' attitudes toward you are contaminated by reality; product performance will dictate repeat purchases. The bigger lever to your growth is to create a powerful brand, to influence positively the collective perception of your best prospects.

Given that, why would you want to spend a king’s ransom on Yellow Pages display ads? Those rectangles of static, limited information will be … this is where your investment gets monumentally unproductive … surrounded by every competitor you have. You’ve spent good money just to set off a round of comparison-shopping phone calls. If you’re the one called first, you can’t close the sale; if you’re called second or third, you have to be the low-price spread. It’s a lose-lose. You may even be ignored totally if the prospect focuses on your competitor and never sees you. YP is a “put two dollars in, get one dollar out” crapshoot.

Measure your ROBI
Companies try to analyze Return On Investment to justify their continued YP use, comparing the cost of the ads to the sales attributed to the medium, but this is deeply flawed, for two reasons.

The first flaw is the dilemma discussed in the last paragraph: you’re spending money to be compared to every competitor, right there on the same page. It’s impossible to measure but easy to imagine how many sales you lost that way, greatly reducing your ROBI (Return On Bad Investment). Let's get real: is your YP ad so magnetic that you will capture a reader's eyes totally? So powerful she won't even look at the ad next door?

The second flaw? Too many sales are attributed to Yellow Pages: Prospect A has seen your magazine ads and bus sides, heard your radio spots, and decides to call. If he looks up your phone number, the answer to “where did you hear about us?” will often be misattributed to that thing sitting in front of him. Look at your numbers. If you're a YP advertiser, you're probably seeing declines from year to year, a trend we predict will continue. The total number of YP users will decline, because, as a tobacco client once put it to us about their brand's diminishing number of loyal users, every year a portion of them "leave the market."

It’s an addiction, and fear of withdrawal is what keeps the Yellow Pages on life support.
All the smoke-and-mirror fear tactics of “combined rates” and “volume discounts” and implied threats to banish you to a “bad position” if you reduce the size of your ads miss the point: they are all bad positions – overpriced, underperforming, and outdated. Join the revolution: you should keep a simple line listing for older people who need to look up your phone number, but quit display ads cold turkey. Start now, because it will take 12 to 18 months to recapture and redeploy those budgets.

Consider anyone who says “oh, our company has always used the Yellow Pages” as a person failing to adapt to changing times. That’s understandable, actually, because none of this would have been true ten years ago. Even five years ago, before high-speed connectivity got so widespread, it was not a slam dunk. Many of the clients we speak to admit their YP results are in year-to-year decline, but they persist out of fear.

Are there exceptions? Of course.
If you’re a locksmith, or a computer repair shop, you must advertise there: your prospects are temporarily deprived of search engine access. Likewise, if you’re marketing to the elderly or to the poor (credit furniture, payday loans, monthly-pay car insurance, bankruptcy counseling ...) YP might be cost-effective – might be.

Your best media strategy?
Assuming you’re not one of those rare exceptions, your most effective, most leveraged approach to media can best be planned by brand strategists with the help of media planning specialists, considering your service or product, your geography, the demographics and psychographics of your primary and secondary market segments, your seasonality, budget, research … it gets even more complicated than that, but we’ll be happy to help you sort it out, to get you into this century’s best branding practices.

One thing is fairly straightforward and immediate: if you’re spending more than the very minimum on YP, it’s time to kick the habit.

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Ignorance or Ignoramus?

Over at Labov & Beyond's Idea Factory Blog, they wrote about the tech troubles with the new Blackberry Storm and Verizon that I've seen a lot of ads for recently.

Apple's I-phone had problems when it was launched too, but at least they addressed problems instead of hiding.

What happens if you pretend a problem doesn’t exist?

“So far, RIM has not commented on the problems of its first all-touchscreen BlackBerry, considered a strong competitor to Apple’s touchscreen iPhone. Verizon Wireless, the exclusive carrier of the device in the United States, has said little, except how well sales have gone. The company, like most, doesn’t publicly share sales figures.”

Which is funny, because before the Storm was launched we could not escape its omnipresent marketing campaign. Now that things seem to have not gone as planned in its first few weeks in the marketplace, however, everyone’s clamming up. And, as we all should know, what happens when you leave a void where your information and reassurances should be? That void is filled with negativity and online mob rule. And your supposed iPhone killer becomes dead on arrival.

Avoid the void, people. Avoid the void.

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Learn from a Whiner

Seth Godin is whining, cause he is in pain. Learn from he wrote recently:

How to answer the phone

The KitchenAid tea kettle (adorned in bright Squidoo orange, of course) in my office melted, leaving hot orange plastic on my thumb. Yes, it hurts as much as you probably imagine it does.

But that wasn't the worst part.

I called 1-800-334-6889 to whine a little bit and to hear why they made a meltable teapot. I counted how many prompts I had to press in order to talk to a human being. It was NINE.

Nine! Try it. I'll wait.

The last step was a recording that they were closed and I should call back after 10 am. Click.

I know you've heard this before, but it's really simple:

The only reason to answer the phone when a customer calls is to make the customer happy.

If you're not doing this or you are unable to do this, do not answer the phone. There is no middle ground on this discussion. There are no half measures. Saving 50 cents a call with a complicated phone tree is a false savings. Think of all the money you'll save if you just stop answering altogether. Think of all the money you'll make if you just make people happy.

Your choice.

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Yellow Pages Online

Over the weekend, I saw the TV ad for the Yellow Pages several times but didn't follow through on checking it out until I saw this story. So, is that due to:

• The ineffectiveness of the TV ad? (I like the ad.)
  
• My watching TV instead of being on my computer at the time? (No, I also had my laptop with me when I saw the ads.)
• My not needing the service due to other ways to get the information that I already use?

I believe it is the last option. How much money will AT & T have to spend to get the traffic to their site to make it profitable for them and their advertisers? Is it a battle they should even attempt?

For the details of my horrible experience using their service today, click here.

Here's the story from Mediapost:

Yellowbook: New Campaign Trumpets Local Innovation

Yellowbook.com shows off its new interactive features--such as rating local businesses--through a new advertising campaign that allows users to choose and rate the ending of the company's latest TV commercial. "The futuristic aspects in the new television commercial represent Yellowbook's commitment to continued innovation, and importantly, to helping consumers find what they're really looking for--wherever they search--today as well as tomorrow," says company rep Louise Thatch. The campaign builds upon a tagline introduced in May, "Say Yellow to the future." The spot, directed by Vadim Perelman, who directed the movie "The House of Sand and Fog," depicts a futuristic world in which a man breaks up with his girlfriend via an interactive television screen. As he's breaking up with the woman (using lines like "I need time for myself"), his scantily clad new love interest walks around behind him. The dumped woman uses the screen (by waving her fingers in the air) to find businesses such as "relationship counseling," "chain saws," "personal trainer" and "pawn shops." A voiceover asks viewers to visit the site to choose the ending they like best. "Within the new TV, the interactivity provides the entry point to see and learn about more options on yellowbook.com," Thatch says. "By engaging viewers to rate potential endings, the campaign provides an opportunity to extend the rating experience from the television creative to business listings on our site." On the Web site, users are given three choices: Healthy Heart, in which the heroine finds new love through a personal trainer; Vindication, where she encounters her former boyfriend in a store while trying on a sexy cocktail dress, and Satisfaction, where she pawns the items he left in her apartment. Users are also asked to rate those endings. Also on the landing page, users can rate and review local businesses (as well as read the ratings of others), find and download Yellowbook applications for their mobile devices and view video ads of local Yellowbook advertisers. "[Adding] ratings and reviews provides a forum for users to share comments and experiences about a business with other users," Thatch says. "Mobile is another example of providing vital local business information to Yellowbook users regardless of where they are." In related news, AT&T Inc.--which publishes Yellow Pages--is renaming its advertising and publishing unit AT&T Advertising Solutions, to better reflect the scope of services it provides, including Internet, TV, print and wireless. In addition, the company's YellowPages.com has been renamed AT&T Interactive to account for its local search capabilities that include online and mobile platforms.

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Yellow Page Predictions are Materializing

An advertising consultant once told me, that the Phone Book was, "the directory of ineffective advertising".

Wish I knew who said it, I'd give them credit. Years later, with the rise of cell phones and the web, the directory is fighting for its life.

From the Wall Street Journal this week:

Media & Marketing -- Advertising: Extinction Threatens Yellow-Pages Publishers
By Emily Steel The Wall Street JournalNovember 17, 2008
The yellow-pages industry is running out of lifelines. In recent years, as its customers migrated to the Web -- flocking to sites like Google -- the telephone-directory business followed, hoping the Internet would be its salvation. But that strategy hasn't panned out. Now, the economic downturn is sending the already ailing business into a tailspin. The audience for online yellow pages remains relatively small, and traffic growth is slowing. So many directory services are vying for the ad dollars of local businesses that no single site has an authoritative roster. Meanwhile, ad dollars are drying up as small businesses -- the industry's bread and butter -- find it harder to pay bills or have cut their spending sharply. Print and online ad spending on yellow pages will plummet 6.3% next year, more than double the rate of decline expected for broadcast TV, according to forecasts by Wachovia analyst John Janedis. Within the next four years, ad spending will fall 39% in print directories alone -- the steepest projected decline across all local-media categories, according to media-research firm Borrell Associates. "It's pretty darn hard out there for everybody, and those that have less staying power, it just looks like it's going to be a difficult environment to be able to hang on in the long term," said Dave Swanson, chief executive of R.H. Donnelley, a Cary, N.C., yellow-pages publisher, during a conference call on the company's third-quarter earnings. Facing the real prospect of extinction, the publishers, many of which have considerable debt, have been slashing jobs, scrapping dividends and exiting unprofitable markets. Shares of two of the biggest publishers, R.H. Donnelley and Idearc, have plummeted 99% in the past year. "The main pure-play companies do not have capital structures that would enable them to endure perpetual high-single-digit or double-digit declines in cash flow and remain viable entities or solvent entities over time," says Mike Simonton, an analyst with Fitch Ratings. Yellow-pages publishers have spent the past several years attempting to reinvent themselves, launching a slew of digital offerings for advertisers, and retraining their sales forces to sell digital ads alongside print ads. But Internet revenues remain anemic. At less than 10%, online-ad dollars make up only a modest portion of total revenues and aren't growing fast enough to offset steep declines on the print side, says Mr. Simonton. Analysts say yellow-pages sales teams face an inherent conflict. While they are pressured to sell both print and online ads, Internet ads are often a third of the price of the print product. The top priority for the sales teams often is to sell the print book first, then sell the digital products. Even if online revenues were growing at a faster clip, analysts are cautious about the prospects of online-only directories. Yellow-pages ads are the only form of advertising many small businesses buy, and the online ads are typically sold in conjunction with print listings, Mr. Simonton says. That means that if businesses aren't buying the print ad, then the online ad disappears too. In a last-ditch attempt to succeed online, some publishers have struck ad-sale partnerships with Internet companies like Google. White Directory Publishers, which publishes directories in 90 small to medium-size markets, says it is often more effective for small businesses to have a presence on Google than on a directory Web site. But many small- to medium-size businesses don't have the expertise or time to create effective Web sites or buy and track search ads, so White Directory is offering to do it for them. "They all believe they have the URL and the Web site that's going to win," Jeff Folckemer, chief operating officer and chief executive-designate of White Directory, part of Hearst Corp., says of the directory companies. "Our philosophy immediately was to go right to the big guys." Mr. Simonton cautions, however, that even if publishers survive, any growth they achieved since the last downtown, in 2001, will be short-lived. "That extra growth coming from new businesses are the first to fold in a downturn. You basically give back in one downturn what took seven years to grow." ---

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Another view of the Yellow Pages

Repeatedly I have sounded the death knell for Yellow Page Advertising. This comes from observation, usage and outside research. Plus comments from my own clients regarding the effectiveness of their Yellow Page advertising.

While the number of consumers using a phone book continues to shrink, some believe it is not dead yet. But watch the trend, and start moving your marketing to where people are going:

About 31% of consumers turn to a search engine first when they're on the hunt for local products and services, according to new stats from TMP Directional Marketing (TMPDM).

That's up just one percentage point from 2007, but still enough to move search engines ahead of print Yellow or White pages in terms of overall usage. About 30% of consumers turned to printed directories first, down from 33% last year.

"I think we're starting to see the traditional print products hit a baseline," said Gregg Stewart, TMPDM's SVP, interactive. "If you go back farther than the two years of this study, you'd likely see a much larger drop in usage towards the beginning and middle of 2000. It's also differential by category. Looking at something like airlines, the print product is obviously not as relevant. But for emergency needs like plumbers, consumers have still held on to their directories."

Still, Stewart said the industry could expect further erosion of print usage, particularly as mobile search becomes more relevant. "Right now, mobile usage is limited to about 10-15 product categories," Stewart said. "But we expect to see more migration to both Web- and voice-powered mobile search."

The study found that one of every five consumers with a Web-enabled phone has used the mobile Web to conduct a local search. Meanwhile, usage of free directory assistance services like 800-FREE-411 was on the rise. Nearly 30% of respondents had used the service (a division of Jingle Networks), which gives callers free, ad-supported local business info. "It's still the early days in that product area, but we're seeing some upward momentum for 800-FREE-411," Stewart said. "Marketers have engaged in some test programs with them and many have seen a substantial amount of traffic. They were first to market, but we expect that whole marketplace to blossom this year."

Indeed, companies like Google with its GOOG-411, AT&T with 1-800-YELLOWPAGES, Idearc Media, and even Microsoft (through its acquisition of TellMe Networks) have made forays into the voice-powered directory assistance space. "It makes sense because everyone can access a voice-based search feature," Stewart said. "Not everyone can activate Web-based search on their phone."

TMPDM, in conjunction with comScore, surveyed 3,000 consumers in July 2008. The Local Search Usage Study also included observed behavior (such as visits to search engines and Internet Yellow Pages providers). The previous Local Search Usage Study was fielded in May 2007.

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Yellow Pages? No Thanks.

Last week as I was meeting with a heating and cooling contractor, he mentioned how the Yellow Page advertising he had relied on for 50 years was no longer affordable. It costs more than ever and produces less each year.

I wrote about this this summer, click here.

And check this out from offcoarse.com:

Local Search and the Fall of Yellow Pages

This post was inspired by Andrew Shotland and his post about the fall of “Yellow pages” searches. His graphs he created with Google insights let him see that less people are searching for the term “Yellow Pages”.

I saw the graph and recreated my own. I saw the trend he was talking about. The interesting thing I found was that less people were searching for the generic term “Yellow Pages”, and even “CitySearch” but more were searching for “Yelp”. So why, and what does it mean?

In the above graph the Yellow line is YELP.com, the Green Line is “Auto Repair”, the light blue line is “CitySearch”, the Blue and Red line is “Yellowbook” and “YellowPages.com”.

So lets see what does this tell us? If you look a the Total number of searches they have gone up. There are more people searching for these terms now than before as a whole. However the base line “Auto Repair” has stayed for the most part constant.

It pretty much follows all of the other lines in respect to peaks and valley’s other than YELP, and CitySeach at the end of the graph. Look at YELP. They started out with very few users, then increased. Their search has followed, and people are searching for them via the word “YELP”.

So why are others not being searched for? Is it a product offering issue? The issue is not less people searching that is for sure, so it has to be the way we are searching and our level of sophistication in our searches.

The internet increases its user base every day, that is a FACT. Each time a new user comes on they have a learning curve of how to search the internet. When they start they might use the idea, of “OH i want to see the yellow pages on line”. That very well might be their search then, lets search for “Yellow Pages”.

Once they have played with the internet and found other offerings they will soon come to see there are more sites which offer the same if not much better information to them about what they are searching for other than what they originally thought. Soon they will find they can put in their exact term and find “Auto Repair 30306″ or “Tire Repair in Roswell” and find a much cleaner result.

BUT WAIT “YellowPages” has risen over time not decreased. Yes that is true, however the term “Yellow Pages” which is different than “YellowPages” has dramatically decreased, the term (”Yellow Pages”)is so large that we can’t put in on the same graph or else it will out shadow the other lines on the graph.

The increase in the “YellowPages” is small and could even be contributed to their large offline advertising campaigns on the TV and the first time Internet users searching for the term “YellowPages” because they don’t know any better yet.

This theory is sound in the fact that people are becoming more sophisticated in their searching. They are finding out to let Google do the work for them in finding the best place to find the information they want. You can see some what of a correlation between the small increase in the search term “Auto Repair” with similar decrease in “CitySearch” and “YellowPages”.

So then why the increase in YELP searches. That is a great question and my answer has to be product offering. They offer a much better product, not to mention a iphone app. You have to see the increase in their search term as an effective marketing and branding campaign which the others have not tried yet. Yelp is centered in consumer reviews, not just listings (which by themselves suck).

Consumers are saying right here on the graph, give us good content lots of it, and we will search for your site, because we like your product, and how you present it.

I think the “Yelp” sign is just as much a wake up call to catch up to what they are doing as the graph is a wake up call to “Yellow Pages” to stop spending all that money on offline TV ads, they aren’t working. In closing as more people become more sophisticated in their searching local search is going to become a much more heated topic, because people will just know to let Google say which sites provides the best content for your search. Simple as that.

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