Anecdotally, it’s becoming apparent that restaurants are struggling as consumers pull in their spending reins. It seemed to start with the gas price crisis, and certainly is continuing through the economic downturn.  People are simply not going out as much as a higher share of earnings are applied towards savings, and as job security fears weigh heavily on consumer’s minds.

I discovered a year end research report synopsis on consumer restaurant spending by a small blog post on the finance blog, Infectious Greed, which linked to the NPD Group’s 2008 research results summary.  The details are insightful, and point to the critical importance of incentive offers to entice consumers into restaurants in 2009.

From NPD’s Consumer Report on Eating Share Trends:

“…According to NPD, promotion-related visits supported all commercial foodservice gains, as deal visits increased six percent and non-deal visits slipped by one percent. For the annual period ending November 2008, 23 percent of all traffic involved some type of consumer-recognized deal. Over 90 percent of the increase in deal visits came from quick service restaurants (QSR).

While QSR traffic growth slowed in 2008, the segment fared better than full service restaurants. The modest growth at QSR offset losses at midscale restaurants. Deal-related traffic kept QSRs in a positive position. Casual dining traffic was stable for the year; however, trends weakened n the latter half of the year with a two percent decline in traffic for the fall quarter.

As consumers took advantage of discounts at lunch, lunch traffic increased after realizing no growth in 2007. However, visits to restaurants for supper continued to trend down. Morning meal and snack-related occasions slowed over the previous years’ growth, but did experience positive growth in 2008.

“I don’t believe consumers, no matter the state of the economy, will abandon restaurants entirely, they will just use them differently – more cost-consciously,” says Balzer, who has been observing how American eat for 30 years. “There will be no recession in eating; there will just be winners and losers. The restaurants that deliver value and make it easy to get food cheaper, in new and compelling ways, will win.”

boldface emphasis added by me.

These results reinforce the importance of promotion and discount offers to survival in one of the largest segments of online local advertising.  Promotion content has never been in the cross-hairs of online yellow pages.  Interestingly – so far – I have not seen Yelp embrace this trend, although it would be a really obvious next move.  It seems to have become an increasing part of CitySearch’s model.

While the obvious conclusion for YP publishers is to concentrate more seriously on promotion based content, the YP brand has never been recognized as the place to go for live promotion or coupons. Likewise IYP sites have done little to bring offers or promitions into their use cases.

I’d suggest that the focus should be on the distribution of promotions. Promotional content and SEM programs need to be more tightly connected.  There’s not a more Pavlovian moment to offer a consumer a deal then when they have just clicked a search box looking for restaurants. Perhaps we can convince Google to let a bell ring alongside the SEM ad!

image credit: motherjones.com

Somehow, the time feels right for some fresh/absurd, Hail Mary thinking when it comes to evolution in the troubled Local Media landscape.

When I look at the problems infecting two major sectors of local media  – newspapers and yellow pages – an idea springs to mind.  Try it on…

Slam them together into one integrated local media business.  Collapse redundant distribution and operations, re-align and trim the sales forces. Infuse the newspaper’s strength with promotion and retail into the scalable SEM/search infrastructure of the YP channel.  Construct a true local consumer portal and promotion channel that has local search and promotion embedded throughout.  Trim out the low-value display ad junk and create real local shopping applications that generate leads and solve consumer problems.

In the off-chance that you’re still reading, perhaps I can explain my thinking a bit more.

Newspapers have a deep infrastructure for collecting and publishing local content for consumers. Sure, there are increasing content challenges, but consumption of online newspapers continues to rise, their share of local usage is deep, and the brand is still meaningful to mainstream consumers.

The problem with newspapers is their defunct revenue model.  Newspapers simply don’t have the business foundation to sustain a position in the future local media landscape.

Yellow Pages print and distribute a publication whose relevance to consumers is systematically deteriorating. Yet, they are fundamentally succeeding in becoming a dominating agent for hundreds of thousands of local advertisers in commercial search, and are beginning to execute on the key growth segments of mobile and video.

If you take the traffic generating foundation of the newspaper industry, and combine it with the revenue and sales engine of YP, you may just have a sustainable ecosystem that can invest more in local online publishing, make commercial use of scads of truly local content, and actually sustain a viable local media publishing empire.

The Newspaper Picture

Newspapers have a terminally ill business model.  Feel good placebos continue to be dished out, but the effects of the disease have become so apparent that it’s not worth discussing anymore.  The classified ship has sailed, and the remaining ad math simply does not compute.

Newspapers missed Search, and the resources/effort required to catch up is fantasy league fodder – investment capital is non-existent.

The Yellow Pages Picture

Yellow Pages is not, and never was, a true consumer publishing business.  It is an amazing engine for selling, placing and distributing local advertising.  The utility and performance of the websites owned and operated by YP businesses is floundering, and long-term sustainability carries very real risk.

YP publishers did not miss the search shift.  The channel and tools are being systematically constructed for selling ad products into a scaled network of owned & operated properties, partner sites, and SEM-based distribution.

The Combined Business Case

The newspaper publishing infrastructure is something to build on. Yellow Pages has a viable business model as a scaled local sales channel, but their future as a consumer publisher is open to debate.

The improved margin that comes with owned/operated consumer traffic is critical to the composite business case. If YP cannot sustain this role, it risks a continued margin erosion to “channel-only” margins.

Add to this the fact that newspapers have the best current ad position in retail and promotion-based ad spending.  As these budgets are morphing into lead gen packages in online and mobile media, working from the newspaper’s pole position further sweetens the synergies.  Newspapers have the relationship, but lack the products/distribution infrastructure; YP fills in the blanks.  In a down economy, measurable promotions will be one of the most promising elements of online advertising.

Could this effect happen any other way? Sure, in theory, but I think you have to look inside the fabric of these organizations.  The DNA of a newspaper is editorial and promotion centric, and the DNA of Yellow Pages is sales and distribution based.    The pressures on both of these business make it enormously difficult to be championing reinvention investments from the inside.

Hey, isn’t it more fun to read wedding announcements than obituaries?

So….is this scenario really THAT far-fetched?