InfoUSA has budgeted $20,000 for a multimedia campaign urging congressmen to loosen do-not-call provisions for small businesses.
The effort includes print ads, direct mail, faxes and e-mails, according to Rakesh Gupta, InfoUSA’s marketing officer.
The Omaha-based vendor serves many small companies.
The print ad is designed to look like a “Dear Lawmakers” letter from InfoUSA CEO Vin Gupta. It appears under the headline, “Exempt Small Businesses from Do-Not-Call Legislation.”
“I am asking you to consider excluding small businesses from this do-not-call legislation…businesses with fewer than 100 employees making fewer than 100 calls each day,” the letter reads in part.
It also states, “…this legislation has done more than protect consumers from large telemarketers pushing unwanted products and services. It is also destroying small businesses. Small businesses like beauty salons, independent travel agents, doctors and dentists and small restaurateurs are being hindered from calling their neighbors to inform them of a special sale or service. These are people who cannot afford a more expensive means of advertising.”
The bulk of the budget went to full-page tabloid-sized advertisements in the Feb. 11 issues of Roll Call and The Hill, two Capitol Hill newspapers that cover congressional goings-on. The ads were scheduled to run only once.
Additionally, every federal legislator was sent a letter containing a copy of the ad, as well as a letter from Vin Gupta, on Feb. 8.
InfoUSA also sent e-mail messages to the chiefs of staff of each of the 535 Hill legislators. The e-mail and fax portions of the campaign were sent on Feb. 11. Those elements were a last-minute addition, since InfoUSA planned only to run the print ads and send the mailings. But the recent ricin incident that shut down the Senate office buildings caused the company to add the two channels.
The letter is not the first congressional outreach InfoUSA has done in connection with this issue: Since December, it has been in contact with Rep. Lee Terry’s (R-NE) office. Besides representing the district InfoUSA is headquartered in, Terry sits on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications.
While Terry’s office did not play a direct role in creating or placing the ad, “There is a lot of good talk, and a lot of good discussion [regarding the do-not-call exemption],” according to Robert Stien, telecommunications counsel to Terry.
Stien continued, “Discussions are happening between industry and this office, and Terry is speaking to other interested members here.”
InfoUSA has mulled contacting businesses within its database that would fall under the proposed exemption for the purpose of grassroots organizing, but that proposal has not gone beyond the talking stage, according to Rakesh Gupta.
