Ol’ Yeller: Examining the Yellow Pages

Recently while I was dusting the book shelf in my living room, I found a relic from my childhood: the thick, thin papered Yellow Pages. Dust had crept into the binding of this un-opened beast. I picked it up, cracked it open and grinned.

As a kid, I'd get in trouble for dialing 411 to find out a phone number: "That's what the Yellow Pages are for. Go look it up!" The pages stuck together, and nothing could be found under any heading I could think of. Restaurant listings were blocked in by advertisements for Chinese and Italian restaurants with the highest advertising budgets but not necessarily the best food. Oh, and the pages always smelled vaguely of petroleum product.

Flash forward to today: we turn to Google not the Yellow Pages. Furthermore, most companies have a link to social media, be it through LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, or Facebook. So, I had to ask myself, why on earth is this publication still being printed?

I had some ideas:

• Elderly drivers need them to sit on for increased visual over steering wheel
• The ink transfers to Silly Putty nicely
• The paper works well for Papier-Mâché
• Businesses without any other differentiator look to see how many A's they need in their name to be first in their section

To put it mildly, the Yellow Pages is becoming obsolete. Even when they were relevant, people only went to them if they didn't know of a service provider, or didn't know anyone who knew anyone to provide the service. Within that enormous document, you would find listings, but that's about it—no relationships, no brand feeling.

More and more, we are moving to different, more personal ways of seeking information. My four year old son uses the now dust-free Yellow Pages as a stool as he accesses the computer to go online to find out where to buy Thomas the Train products. He can potentially get reviews, search price options, and form a relationship with a particular vendor.

Even if we don't know a given industry, we can review products, services, and vendors easily and without getting smudgy ink on our fingers or inhaling the petroleum scent wafting from the thin pages.

And so, I propose a question: What other unique purposes do you have for today's Yellow Pages?