Phone book advert problems

cecilia1970_2

We put an advert in the phone book, got a proof and on it's own it looks fine, BUT, now it's in the book it has been put immediately underneath our main competitor (doing almost the same thing) with exactly the same photograph from bt's art dept. Why don't they send a proof of the whole psge, before the final print? Or at least, why doesn't someone actually check it?? 3 phone calls later, they say there's nothing they can do, because we gave them artistic licence. Did a similar ad with yellow pages who were good enough to point out a similarity in an ad next to ours. Is there anything we can do? We haven't paid, yet.

alien1234

I doubt anything can be done. Looking at their point of view, they have printed all the books and would not change anything for an advert. The best bet is get trademark, license etc, which you may be able to request they have it changed immediately by law

lincroft1710

Your competitors won't be happy either!

FatVonD

Keep arguing for a discount, if magazines place an ad with a coupon on a page backing someone else that also has a coupon you can argue for a reduction, I'd argue the toss and see what happens

cecilia1970_2

Thanks for the comments/suggestions. Think I'll write a letter, this weekend, who would I send it to?

steve1980

Which phone book is it? BT? Yellow Pages? Thompson?

Your contract that you signed when you took the advert should have the address listed should there be a complaint.

Hopefully you did sign a contract?

paulwf

[This is slightly off topic but hopefully still relevant]

I looked through our new phone book that looks like it has been revamped to look more like a Yellow Pages (maybe this has been going on for years, why would anyone look at a phone book these days?)

The general production quality looked very poor, the front page was advertising a voucher section and inside this turns out to be ONE voucher, obviously they couldn't get anyone else to sign up. Is is really cost effective to advertise somewhere where all the competitors are advertising too? Personally I'd rather advertise elsewhere and be the only company in that sector advertising. Better still invest most time and money in a decent website and social networking, it will generally have more impact and once set up will be much cheaper.

cecilia1970_2

paulwf wrote: »

[This is slightly off topic but hopefully still relevant]

I looked through our new phone book that looks like it has been revamped to look more like a Yellow Pages (maybe this has been going on for years, why would anyone look at a phone book these days?)

The general production quality looked very poor, the front page was advertising a voucher section and inside this turns out to be ONE voucher, obviously they couldn't get anyone else to sign up. Is is really cost effective to advertise somewhere where all the competitors are advertising too? Personally I'd rather advertise elsewhere and be the only company in that sector advertising. Better still invest most time and money in a decent website and social networking, it will generally have more impact and once set up will be much cheaper.

We have a great website and other advertising, but a lot of our customers are elderly (mobility scooter repair,etc) and so don't have access to the internet, obviously not all, I'm not generalising, but they do still use the Phone Book.

paulwf

cecilia1970 wrote: »

We have a great website and other advertising, but a lot of our customers are elderly (mobility scooter repair,etc) and so don't have access to the internet, obviously not all, I'm not generalising, but they do still use the Phone Book.

Ah, in that's case that's understandable then