#372 Most Likely To

I always like it when the new phone books come out. The first thing I do is turn to the lawyer section. A lot of my friends are lawyers and because I don’t see them as often as I used to, I want to check out their pictures to see how much they’ve aged. I feel sorry for lawyers. Advertising goes in cycles and the current one has everyone jumping on the full-page color phonebook ad¾or at least dentists and lawyers and chiropractors. And I’m not sure why. Phone books are what I call a passive advertising medium. The people that sell you on sinking a thousand or more a month into the phone book say that your ad is there 365 days a year and it’s always on your potential client’s desk. The truth is the only person who uses a phone book that much is the phone advertising salesman, looking up the poor sheep he fleeced last year. Because while a phone book is great for looking up a number once you decide you need a service, it really sucks when it comes to suggesting that service in the first place. Phone books can’t do suggestive selling. Nobody drives to work in the morning listening to a phone book. And nobody picks up the phone book for some light recreational reading. Until someone absolutely needs your service, your phone ad is like an old piece of candy moldering in the corner of a kitchen drawer. And now that there are three phone books you just tripled your ad budget without even trying. Which of the three do you turn down? You might as well have a matched set of moldering candy in the drawer. So tell me this, at what point in our Hollywood celebrity culture did we cross over into the thinking that having a picture of yourself was so important to getting business. Go through the phone book these days and it’s pictures, pictures, everywhere. Did the advertiser think, hey I’m spending a lot of money for this ad I might as well get a professional picture out of the deal I can use someplace else. Or heck, maybe a picture of my family too. That way next Christmas, we could just send out our phone book ad to all the relatives. Is America just that vain? Aren’t there ugly people in business too? What about people who have the misfortune to look untrustworthy but aren’t. The best practitioners of various trades that I’ve ever had, have been the odd ducks and the misfits and the obsessive compulsives who have poured so much of their life energy into their profession they didn’t have time to comb their hair this morning. I mean really. I was looking through the phone book and I came to the section on auto repair. Is it really important that I make my buying decision based on how my mechanic looks? This picture thing has gotten completely out of hand. The phone book is starting to look like a high school annual. Look there’s Ted, voted most likely to repair a transmission….
America, ya gotta love it.