Nothing has become more laughable or terrifying in all of marketing than to see those monstrosities of marketing invading office and apartment lobbies. Last year around this time, I drove around in an '84 Camaro with a mulleted-American (yes, this would be the second straight post where I've conjured up the ghost of Jake) collecting unwanted Yellowbooks and delivering them to the doorstep of the local distributor. They were kind enough to take them back. Others, like Ed Kohler of Minneapolis, have been much more militant in their approach. Hats off to him and others.

This morning I learned from my colleague Julie that Seattle is considering legislation to limit the distribution of Yellowbooks. Of course this is a great idea. I'd love to see our mayors consider similar moves.

Yellowbooks may seem the most offensive because they're the most visible. In some office buildings, it would take a forklift to remove the stash of unwanted booty. Yet I wonder how many companies have their own version of "Yellowbook" waste in their plans. No secret here that I've long been a critic of banner advertising, where billions of dollars flow into ad networks with no real accountability or promise of results. The dreaded "impression" is a sort of don't-worry-be-happy metric that lulls advertisers into thinking they might actually be doing something worthwhile. So I find it curious that we loathe the sight of a stack of Yellowbooks when we ourselves might be staring down the barrel of our own deep ocean financial oil leaks. Sure, it's going on down there but just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. (Man, I love mixing metaphors! Yellowbooks! Oil leaks! Google bait!)

Here are some other egregious marketing oversights:

- Blindly taking Google's recommended spend with them on keywords that simply will never return high quality traffic.

- Batch-n-blast email campaigns where a single, non-targeted or segmented message is wantonly sent to an entire database. Waste of time, money, and efforts...over and over again.

- Twitter. Yup, I said it. I worry that agencies and companies alike are spending loads of precious brainpower communicating in a Chinese-water drip torture fashion only to their friends, employees and colleagues. I worry that no one has any idea who's following them or who cares.

So, the next time you pass a mountain of Yellowbooks in your lobby and before you become offended, think carefully and loudly about where your own looming stack of unaccountable dollars are flowing. If you don't know, you probably have a problem right there. Know. Then know a little more.

I mean this quite honestly. If you're reading this and worry even a little bit about your own wasteful ways, get your marketing team together, shut the door, and ask yourselves, "Is there a stack of Yellowbooks in our marketing and advertising plans?" Then do something about it. And if you come across some interesting finds, share them here with others. As business pundits talk of a possible depression in the American economy, I would suggest that there's no better time than now to start investigating.

www.ciceron.com
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Professional Twitter: @HeavyThinking
Personal Twitter: @aeklund