Marketing Communications Comic

The full comic can be found below. The full story of how it came to be starts here:

A while back I was engaged in a discussion on Marketing Communications delivery and how it works in a Web 2.0 world.

The usual online distribution channels were mentioned: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, eMail, white papers, webinars, podcasts, et al. And then a local businessman threw us a curve-ball and asked if the Yellow Pages were completely irrelevant today.

Now, I work with some really sharp business minds and have been privileged to witness and be involved in some extraordinarily successful sales campaigns. I believed (and still do to some degree [call me an optimist]) that with the right content, a Yellow Page campaign could yield results for certain organizations.

(Yeah, I know. That’s a lot of disclaimers. So maybe call me a cautious optimist.)

And to prove my belief, I did what I always do — I looked for proof, best practices and case studies. I searched the web and found 22,400,000 results for “Yellow Pages Consultants.” I made a few calls, wrote some emails . . . and never received a response.

So I asked my colleagues. Not a single one of ’em could remember seeing or running an effective and high-ROI Yellow Pages campaign.

Next I posted a query on HARO (Help a Reporter Out). I love this service and always get tremendous results.

But this time, I received just one response . . .

. . . From a curious marketing professional who wanted to see the end result of my research because he believed that “everyone has given up on the Yellow Pages.”

And perhaps they have.

So instead of a post on “Yellow Pages Best Practices,” I wrote a comic strip.