I was going to write something completely different than what turned up below but somehow this article emerged.

Over the last 12 months I have come up against a lot of reasons and excuses to  not use “Social Media”, “New Media”, Digital Marketing” or embrace the “New Rules of Marketing“. It certainly doesn’t mean that you have to discard what is currently working in your marketing program and it doesn’t mean throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

This list is a bit of a “Tongue in Cheek” look at why the CEO still wants to use the Yellow Pages and not embrace the “New Marketing” of the 21st century. I came up with 40, but feel free to add more in the comments. Hey… have a bit of fun.

40 Reasons Why  The CEO Still Uses The Yellow Pages

1. The “Yellow Pages” have no room for comments
2. The “Yellow Pages” are easy to control (and they can be used to keep the door open)
3. They look good on the bookshelf ( and I have very nice bookshelves)
4. So what do you mean by “Kindle”?
5. You can stack “em” high
6. The grand children can use them for “Papier Mache”
7. Very hard to measure  “social” or “community”
8. It’s big and thick and comfortable (like my slippers)
9. You can recycle them (you can’t recycle bits and bytes)
10. Change is still a dirty word
11. It’s hard to say “No” to the account manger from the yellow pages (she is very cute)
12. It’s got nice pictures (and it’s in high definition)
13. You can use nice safe corporate speak in the Yellow Pages
14. It’s safe one way communication
15. Like everything they will always come back into fashion “just you see, young man”
16. Digital and Social Media is too trendy and “GenerationY”
17. I am going deaf (I can’t listen to a webinar)
18. I am going blind (I have trouble viewing a YouTube Video)
19. The Yellow Pages don’t need batteries (like my hearing aid)
20. Direct mail has worked for us for the last 30 years
21. “Look, I can see our company name up in lights (TV)” – Ego
22. When I started this company I started with the Yellow pages and a telephone, so start cold calling.
23. What do you mean by “Blog” … I fell into one of those when I was hunting
24. Facebook is for only for teenagers and it doesn’t fit our companies demographic
25. They are old (sorry.. mature)
26. Conservative is cool after the “Great Financial Crisis”
27. They own a desktop and not a laptop
28. “Tablet” is something you take before going to bed
29. New means scary, I prefer comfortable
30. They have one eye on the retirement plan
31. They only have one eye
32. Email is still safe (sort of)
33. You don’t get sacked for doing what always worked 10 years ago (last century)
34. Can’t spell “New Media” or “Social Media”
35. Google is something that babies say
36. You can’t measure the “ROI” for Social Media
37. They haven’t worked out the costs of “Return On Ignoring”
38. “SEO, what does that mean?”
39. Now we can’t have our competitors seeing what is in our catalog if we put it online,they might steal some ideas…Guess what, they already have it!
40. “Mobile Marketing that sounds like a good idea, so where will we keep moving those mobile signs to”

So what exceptional excuses did you hear in 2009?

Click here to view the embedded video.