by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
Even Harry Houdini couldn’t get into a phone book these days without seeing an advertisement for a lawyer.
Today’s phone books offer opportunities to advertise on the front and back covers, inside the covers, on magnets attached to the front cover, on the spine, on the edges of pages, and on separators, or tabs, inside the pages of the phone book. These placements are dominated by law firms and that’s not counting about 115 yellow pages filled with attorney listings.
This market generates more than $1 billion in U.S. advertising revenue annually, which includes $800 million spent on yellow pages advertising, according to the Yellow Pages Association.
This is a stark contrast to the 1975 Bell South phone book’s offering of four-and-a-half yellow pages listing only the name, address and phone number of Jacksonville attorneys. Today’s explosion of color and different formats was made possible by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1977.
Bates v. State Bar of Arizona allowed attorneys to advertise their services in print. John Bates and Van O’Steen opened a legal clinic in Arizona in 1974 and in an effort to increase business they placed an advertisement in the Arizona Republic newspaper in 1976. The Arizona State Bar filed suit against the law firm charging the firm “with violating the State Supreme Court’s disciplinary rule, which prohibits attorneys from advertising in newspapers or other media.”
The state bar disciplinary committee conducted a hearing and recommended that the pair be suspended for not less than six months. Bates and O’Steen requested that the State Supreme Court review the case because the rule violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and the First Amendment. The court rejected both claims, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it had appellate jurisdiction over the case. The country’s highest court ruled that lawyer advertising was a form of commercial speech and protected by the First Amendment.
Citation 433 U.S. 350 says, “Though advertising does not provide a complete foundation on which to select an attorney, it would be peculiar to deny the consumer at least some of the relevant information needed for an informed decision on the ground that the information was not complete.”
The law community slowly began to realize the value of phone book advertising. The 1983-84 Jacksonville yellow pages contained 24 pages of attorney listings and some law firms began to place half-page ads.
The law firm of Harrell & Harrell, formerly Harrell & Johnson, realized what a valuable tool the phone book was for attracting customers to the firm’s personal injury practice during that time. The firm later used the phone book as a part of its overall advertising campaign with “...on the back of your phone book” included in television and radio ads. The firm has occupied the sought after back cover of at least one phone book for over a decade.
“The phone book was a strong part of our ad campaign,” said Bill Harrell. “Is it cost effective? That’s harder to answer these days. When we first started it was clearly the most cost effective because we only had one phone book. There are about 27 different phone books these days, so there is a lot of dilution in the market.”
That market will shrink during the next advertising cycle as Verizon will not publish a directory for 2009. Idearc Media, the publisher of Verizon Print Directories, is steering customers looking to advertise toward its online product.
Harrell’s firm uses many platforms to reach the public including radio, television, Internet and billboards, but still considers the phone book as one of the “cornerstones” of the firm’s advertising.
This notion is justifiable when considering that the attorney yellow pages heading is the seventh most used by consumers out of about 300 headings, according to a 2007 study by the Yellow Pages Association. The yellow pages were also used 27 percent of the time consumers researched a purchase, according to a 2007 Media Impact Study by TNS Marketing and Research. Newspapers, Internet and television were each used 9 percent of the time.
Phone book placement may get a firm’s name in front of a large audience, but firms may not find it useful if it isn’t the audience they are trying to reach.
“It’s not wise for firms to spend all of their advertising money on the phone book,” said Harrell. “In the area of personal injury practice, phone books are one of the better forms of the advertising mixture. Maximizing that mixture is more complex than it may appear. It is an art form and will probably remain so.”
With Harrell & Harrell locking up the back cover of the Jacksonville phone books for many years, other firms have sought out alternative placements to catch consumers’ attention.
One of the more popular tools within the last five years has been magnets that are attached to the front cover. The product may cost more than the back cover, according to Greg Garrick Vice President of Marketing for White Directory Publishers, but it provides advertising on a place that might be visited more than the phone book, the refrigerator. Chris Johns, Barnes & Cohen and The Williston Firm are some of the local firms who have invested in the product and one firm is still monitoring the success.
“It’s always a matter of judgment whether it’s worth it or not,” said Chuck Barnes. “It’s not easy advertising with the phone books because they keep coming out with new gimmicks that you are forced to buy or you risk losing your priority placing.”
The latest tool phone books have created is the gate fold. It’s name is derived from how it swings open from inside the front cover and it gives advertisers two-and-a-half pages of advertising.
The firm of Thomas & Lawrence secured the gate fold in an AT&T phone book for 2008.
“It seems like it’s the place people are going to find an attorney,” said attorney Greg Lawrence. “It’s one of the few ways to get your name out to such a large audience, besides television.”
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