Brand: Yellow Book (Yellow Book USA)
Execution: TV
Link: Not Available Online (website here)
Target: Small Business Owners
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David

Description:
Yellow Book discusses the possibility of extending the brand now that they are so successful. They show us a host of different possibilities from Yellow Book cereal to Yellow Book Sneakers and Yellow Book gas. Finally, they point out that since they are the best at what they do, they should focus on what they are good at.

What Works:
This clever spot is perfectly pitched at small business owners but resonates for a wider audience. Yellow Book manages to neatly spoof the trend of absurd line extensions while at the same time reinforcing their brand. The spoof is accomplished by fully realizing the crazy Yellow Book line extensions in vivid yellow. The brand reinforcement is all of that yellow along with the Yellow Book name in virtually every frame. It is more effective than a standard product shot, because each dubious new line extension focuses our attention right back on the Yellow Book brand name. This is one of the most effective executions of product-as-hero (or in this case, anti-hero) that we have seen.

This spot would not work if the execution were not dramatic and crisp. Each line extension is brought to life and vividly rendered with bold cinematography. The pacing of the spot is excellent. There is enough content to get target audience viewers to watch carefully the second and third time they see the spot.

What Doesn’t:
This spot does not position Yellow Book with a unique, ownable benefit over its competition. This ultimately makes it category advertising – which we believe should be acceptable for Yellow Book. As the branding is so strong, it may have the effect of narrowing brand recall for the competitor.

It should also be mentioned that Yellow Book does not have PR acumen on par with the execution of this spot. When asked for an MPEG copy of this spot to stream online, they responded as follows:

Since our Yellow Book “Cola” TV spot began airing across the country, we have received an encouraging amount of positive feedback, and have also rec’d a couple of requests similar to yours. As in the past, we continue to maintain a policy of not releasing the spot electronically for use on any Internet outlets. Our Agency also advises that there would be incremental Talent payments that would be incurred for Internet Use (as required by SAG/AFTRA).

This is remarkable considering that Yellow Book made a significant investment to produce and air the spot and considering that advertisers are among those who read this advertising blog as well as excellent industry blogs including Adrants, Beyond Madison Avenue, Jaffe Juice, Adverblog, Adjab, Adfreak and Adland which might also have covered this campaign. This is a good modern example of ‘penny-wise and pound-foolish.’

Branding Bottom Line:
Yellow Book punches holes in our marketing playbook.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 4:15 pm and is filed under news, Yellow Book. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.