People Prefer Pictures of People - Yellow Pages Advertising Tip #14

This tip submitted by Matt Michael of the Service Roundtable

Contractors love trucks. There’s nothing more appealing to a contractor than a great big shiny new service or installation truck. If you want contractors to look at your ad, put a truck in it. If you want people to look at it, put a person in it.

People are warm, friendly, and expressive. Trucks are cold and metallic. The same thing is true about condensing units, water heaters, and so on.

Personally I agree with Matt, but I wanted to see if there was any research to support his theories. I contacted Dennis Fromholzer, President of CRM associates, a Yellow Pages research firm and Larry Small, Vice President of research for the Yellow Pages Integrated Media Association.

Dennis Fromholzer wrote . . .

I don't have direct comparisons of pictures vs clip art, but the logic described above is very consistent with my conclusions.

Ads have to make people feel comfortable with whoever they are calling - because they instill a sense of confidence & trust in the business for the potential customers. The user has to be able to "picture themselves" as a customer of the business, having the business solve their problem for them.

All vehicles that help this process along are the vehicles that work.

The whole purpose of the ad is to get the user to the point where they say to themselves, "I can see myself doing business with that person / business".

Larry Small agrees . . .

"I think 20 years ago when our production processes were not very good, clip art made a lot more sense than photographs, but today we are able to produce photographs that are equal to or better than newspapers."

This tip submitted by Matt Michael of the Service Roundtable