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Yellow Pages, Anyone?
By Mark Evans | February 18, 2008
If the Yellow Pages suddenly disappeared, how many trees would that save? And would anyone really miss those heavy phone directories that have been around since 1886?
For a growing number of people, the Yellow Pages are an anachronism - a product that no longer serves a useful purpose yet still keeps getting dropped at your door every year. It’s like that unwanted house guest who keeps showing up for breakfast despite strong hints that perhaps it’s time to move on.
In my house, the Yellow Pages (as well as the Super Pages, which, in theory, sounds like it’s superior to the Yellow Pages!) arrives, only to be immediately shoved into a drawer where it collects dust until the following year when the new one dutifully arrives. (Some more creative people find a use for Yellow Pages by enlisting them as door stops.)
As much as we like to dismiss the Yellow Pages, I suspect a lot of people are still using them - probably people who don’t live and breath on the Internet all day. Maybe it’s still easier to flick through thousands of pages as opposed to a quick online search. Maybe people still like the tactile feel of the Yellow Pages.
At the same time, there is no way Yellow Page publishers are going to give up a lucrative cash-cow until advertisers disappear. Yellow Pages Income Fund, Canada’s biggest phone directory publisher, recently posted fourth-quarter results with sweet operating profit margins of 51.9%.
Now, that’s a nice business.
Just for fun, let’s do a poll, although I suspect most people who read this blog isn’t a Yellow Page user.
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