Clinging to yellow paper

I was not particularly surprised when I read a headline in the print edition of my daily newspaper that stated, “Yellow Pages looks to the next chapter.” I was so certain the article was going to tell me the iconic directory was moving to an all-digital offering that I almost didn’t read it. But when I did, I discovered something a little more complex.

Yellow Pages is not going out of the paper directory business, at least not yet. Instead, it is going to employ a new strategy, starting in three Ontario cities Brampton, Oakville and Mississauga. Specific areas in these cities that have shown heavy internet usage have been identified. In these “hyper localized markets,” a term used in the company’s press release, paper copies of the directory will not be delivered to the door, but instead will be available at street boxes, grocery stores and drug stores, or delivered on request. (Modelled on the Times distribution approach, I suspect.)

So if the Yellow Pages is going to go onlineonly, it’s being done gradually and deliberately.

I must say I don’t envy Yellow Pages job. It would have been so much simpler if it had just made an announcement—say within a week following the Canada Post announcement it would cease home delivery—that the company was going digital—lock, stock and walking fingers. But so firmly is the corporate identity associated with paper, the company can’t just ditch the medium, or it is bound to feel some resentment at the other end of the digital divide from both advertisers and consumers.

The way the company has announced the change, those carefully identified areas in Brampton, Oakville and Mississauga are being deprived of something, albeit with lots of safety net. On closer examination, however, it sounds like Yellow Pages is really telling these particular directory users, “hey, you people are in the first wave! Digital only—how cool is that?” Pretty soon, other districts in other cities will be saying “hey, wait a minute: we’re just as hip as those people, if not more so. So give us digitalonly Yellow Pages, please, so we can look up those sushi bars on our smartphones.” You can ask Yellow Pages not to deliver paper to your house; so I can see community campaigns being mounted: “Join the 22nd Century: say no to paper.”

Pretty soon, all that will be left on the paper pages distribution list will be those places—like Picton—that just aren’t hip, and could request digital-only until they are blue in the face for all the good it will do; and those places—like Wellington—that could be on the hip list if they chose, but are quite comfortable in their own paper skin. Who knows? The County might see a tourism edge to market itself as “quaint” because it still receives the paper pages. Besides, some advertisers—like typewriter repair shops—will no doubt be grateful to know there is a bastion of demand for a directory still rooted in paper. (I was surprised to see three of the four cover pages of my Yellow Pages taken by ads for a firm of personal injury lawyers, but that’s a story for another day).

Frankly, I find something quite charming in the paper pages that fools who rush in to the digital-only world are going to miss. I’m talking about the pleasure to be derived from the endless flipping back and forth between subject headings before one lights upon the appropriate category.

For example, if I check “Crutches,” I am referred to “Pharmacies,” which allows me to stop on the way through at “Fumigation (see Pest Control Services)” and “Manure (see Fertilizers).” So in going from C to P I have taken brief stops at F, then P again; and then from M to F again. I have covered the whole directory with the exception of A, B and T to Z. I can easily catch most of it on the rebound (“Toupees (see Wigs and Hairpieces— Retail”) and in any event, there is no category for Z—no “Ziggurats (see Temples—Construction)”. In the meantime, my search has triggered the thought that in addition to my crutch, I might need some manure, which I can now classify as a type of fertilizer.

For all I know, to have me make these endless crossreferences may be a canny old marketing trick designed to get me to look through the whole directory. And while some people might advise me to get a life in lieu of amusing myself this way, I can’t see the harm in it.

Maybe there’s still life in the old paper pages world. I am perfectly happy with it. And I already feel hyper localized enough, thank you very much.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca