Find local business features from phone books and ring tones

By Flickr user Ed Kohler

No one will ever accuse me of having the most avant garde musical taste.  But even so, I’m a little too cool to want the Folgers coffee advertising tune as my mobile phone ringtone.

That isn’t stopping the iconic coffee brand from touting free ringtone downloads of its “Best part of wakin’ up…” jingle.  The coffee maker offers seven versions of its decades-old melody, including one sung by Johnny Cash.  Perhaps some avid java fans are using it as the alarm tone on their smart phones?

They aren’t alone.

Not long ago the Harris Teeter grocery chain made available free ringtone downloads of its advertising jingle.   The GEICO insurance firm also offers a variety of ringtones, some featuring what it calls the “witty banter and snappy repartee” of its little green mascot.

It’s an interesting little idea, especially so because the once-booming market for paid ringtone downloads has waned in recent years as consumers became more savvy about creating their own.  Offering free downloads of nostalgic jingles – the advertising equivalent of comfort food – is a fun and inexpensive marketing ploy on the part of well-known consumer brands.

Check around to see if any iconic household names in your region are offering ringtone downloads of their tunes.  Most markets have auto dealerships, remodeling firms, grocery stores or other established businesses whose advertising music is part of local popular culture.

Sticking to the telecommunications theme, consider the lowly phone book as a springboard to a different kind of local business feature.

Just today I picked up another soggy lump of cheap paper and tossed it directly from the rain-soaked lawn into the recycling bin.   As some of my Reynolds Center colleagues asked recently, where do all of these unsolicited phone books come from, who is publishing them, and why?

Apparently we are not the only ones to wonder.  The Yellow Pages Association, an industry trade group, just last month inaugurated a new sustainability report which it says will take a yearly look at the $13 billion industry as it adapts to a more green and Internet-based consumer.

From an opt-out Web site for consumers to smaller directories to more eco-friendly paper, the industry is trying to stay relevant.  It’s also migrating, apparently, to digital media.

Check out the board members page on the YPA site; members’ affiliations will lead you to companies and organizations in your area.   This blog, YP Talk, has some interesting industry links.   And here’s an interesting alert to the old Yellow Pages billing scams.

An interesting small business feature might arise if you’d call some of the advertisers in these directories and ask them about their cost-benefit analysis, etc. and how they balance this sort of static print advertising with digital exposure through search engine optimization, etc.

Talk with marketers, ask consumers about their use of directories and quiz recycling companies and trash handlers about phone books in the waste stream.