There she sits, looking very much like, well, a sitting duck. Man, can we relate - perhaps we’ve found our mascot!
Some fun facts about the short-tailed albatross:
- lays only one egg per year (the sales canvas?)
- has yellow webbed feet (multi-modal!)
- the largest colony in existence is sitting on an active volcano that threaten to wipe out the population (debt?)
The YP print brand has officially become the industry’s albatross. The brand we’ve all relied on for fundamental industry definition has been put on the endangered list by just about every business analyst and publication in existence.
The latest shot across the bow comes from the guns of the venerable Wall Street Journal, with yet another death knell article, “Yellow Pages Facing Extinction“.
the right pedigree
One of my industry pet peeves is the fact that we so glibly label this industry as a “publishing” business. I’ve worked in non-YP sectors of the publishing business, and cry fowl on the publisher label for Yellow Pages. I think it is holding us back.
I bring this up because I feel the industry desperately need to kill the hard-coded connection with the print publishing business label. The more we can do to reform to a channel-centric image, the better a chance we have to reclaim a solid foundation.
Most publishing businesses have a deep DNA centered on two functional disciplines which are key levers of business success - editorial and distribution.
Stop and ponder those disciplines. They really have little to do with the DNA of YP.
The average Yellow Pages print publisher has very very few editorial bones in their body. The editorial decisions commonly found in the published product are driven by ad sales not consumer/editorial judgment. Size and seniority, combined with alphabetical order drive the fundamental layout, design and organization of the book. The publication is most emphatically not editorially dependent or driven.
Distribution? Publishers commonly live and die by the success of distribution to consumers. How much has distribution factored into the picture of YP? Distribution has been an assumptive birthright, not a business strategy; there have never been real business challenges in getting product to consumers.
Yes, we can all argue at the margins of these comments, but it’s a fundamental fact that the disciplines of editorial and distribution are all but vacant from the DNA of a YP business.
This is a business that can massively sell, create, collect and package millions of local ads. It brings scaled and orderly lead generation to the most fragmented segment of the advertising industry. This is a different animal from conventional publishing, and re-labeling the business to it’s lead generating core is, in my opinion, critical to successful reinvention.
power in de feet
I re-posted below the graphic which to me captures the concept (albiet in a slightly freakish looking image!) This business should be positioned on the strength of the walking feet, not the walking fingers. We need to flip the business description on its head.
There is a very promising upside with this business in sustaining and re-creating a consumer publishing business that can form an anchor tenant relationship with the advertiser. It’s highly strategic, but the business should define itself as channel first, publishing second.
