Retro Moment: Yellow Pages
Do you remember the last time you used the Yellow Pages to look something up? I know I can't. It was likely back in 2003 or something like that. With the internet, its much easier to use Google to look for what I need. Which is an interesting note to small businesses, get online, or die!
"Let Your Fingers Do The Walking" was the slogan of the Yellow Pages. And granted, Yellow Pages did try to get in on the online search market, but sadly, while their searches were generally more accurate, they were not exactly thought of as the 'go to' place for information. Not when you have Google which is the basic default search engine for a majority of people these days. Maybe if they designed a smarter local business look up search system, they could market it by saying "Let Us Do The Searching!". Would be cool and useful if they actually made a searchable database for companies which would list the products or services that they specifically sell. Maybe not individual products, but brand lines?
That being said, with the purchase of Yellow Pages by Cerberus Capital from AT&T, might we see a bit of a revolution in how they operate?
I will say that it probably costs a good chunk of change to deliver huge heavy phone books to every address in a city once a year. I remember when it was a sign of how successful your town or city was when you compared the thickness of your Yellow Pages to that of another towns. Some places out west have actually banned the distribution of Yellow Pages entirely unless people subscribe to it.