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How many times has a humorous radio or TV ad caused you to actually buy the advertised product? While some of the most successful ads have used humor ' Wendy's 'Where's the beef?' ads for example - far too many 'funny' ads utterly fail to generate increased business or ROI; more than half the ads on any given Super Bowl fall into this category - anyone remember the Petco sock puppet?

For radio and TV ads, humor or surprise serve the same purpose as eye-catching graphics in a Yellow Pages ad. A humorous ad will actually get you to consciously listen to the ad ' and this is a good thing in an age when more and more of us are tuning out (physically and mentally) advertising. But, when the humor is a separate element from the message of the ad, prospects remember the joke but not the business, and the ad budget is wasted on entertaining prospects rather than persuading them to buy.

So does this mean Yellow Page advertisers shouldn't worry about eye-catching graphics? Of course not! Yellow Pages advertising is one step up over other mediums because rather than tuning the ads out as background noise, prospects are actually looking for them! But you still have to break through the clutter. Your Yellow Page ad has to have the design chops to visually overpower the other ads, relegating the competition into the background as the prospect focuses on what YOU have to say.

The point is that eye-popping graphics are discarded by the reader when they are gratuitous. The message carried by the graphic has to be tied into the emotional needs of the customer and has to reinforce and lead into the persuasive message of the copy. Otherwise, your Yellow Page advertising budget will be wasted as people smile at your graphic and then move on to call someone else.

A genuine Yellow Page ad design expert doesn't think of your ad in terms of separate elements. They don't use separate or stand-alone strategies to design your graphic, then use another strategy for the headline, and another for the copy, etc. The "successful" Yellow Page ad design process simply isn't modular; all of the elements have to work together to move your reader to call YOU first!

So forget about 'catching their eye' with graphics and THEN persuading prospects with the copy. The graphic elements of your ad have to catch their eye WHILE SIMULATNEOUSLY establishing an emotional connection with and persuading your customer.

Also, notice I said 'graphic elements' and not graphics. The font size and style, spacing, proper use of negative or white space, and eye-flow contribute as much to the visual appeal of your Yellow Page ad as the pictures. Make sure your Yellow Page ad design 'professional' has the design background to successfully orchestrate these elements for maximum impact!

Are you contemplating humor in your next Yellow Page ad design? Remember, there's nothing funny about wasting ad dollars on a loser Yellow Page ad that will run for an entire year. A holistic approach that considers both the emotional needs of your target audience AND the interdependence of its' parts is crucial to your success.