Not two days ago, I returned home to my apartment building after weathering the harsh Denver elements while walking my dog. A large pile of phone books had been hastily dumped in front of the entrance. Thinking back, my initial reaction was one of frustration and inconvenience. Then I thought to myself “Wow, I’m glad my apartment finally started recycling!” After all, this is not a once-per-year occurrence. These days, we can expect to have not one, but two or three releases of various Yellow Pages spin-offs. In modern times of conservation and efficiency this is one major waste of resources. Dex, Verizon, and others who overcharge for useless listings clog my hallways and landfills (or hopefully recycling bins) like greasy movie theater popcorn clogs the arteries. But at least movie theater popcorn is delicious.
My apartment hallways are a testament to the usefulness of the phone book in 2009, and it goes something like this:
• Phone books get delivered, tossed haphazardly in some unsightly heap of paper and plastic. Each one individually bagged, as if to preserve their eternal freshness (and of course phone book aroma).
• At some point over the next 24 hours, the phone books are distributed to each one of the apartments. They are gently laid next to each door in the hallway, waiting to be eagerly received by the tenant.
• On these glorious days when the phone book fairy delivers its treasures, I immediately take a trip to the garage where the hungry recycling bin awaits. The paper phone book goes into the paper bin, and the plastic bag goes into the other.
• Three or four days pass, and maybe 50% of the tenants have removed their phone books from the hallway.
• Five or six days later, perhaps another 10% decide to do something with their precious phone books.
• One full week later, our apartment manager has to post an official notice to the tenants. It usually reads something like this: “Attention ****** Tenants: If you do not wish to use your phone books, please remove them from the hallway and dispose of them properly.” These notices get posted by each entrance, as well as on each floor of the building.
People fall into three categories in my apartment building, which I think I can safely extrapolate to the rest of the US population. There are a percentage of people who actually still use the phone book. These tenants welcome this thick volume, removing them from my clean hallways very quickly, only to replace last year’s out of date publication. There is another percentage of people (like me) who immediately dispose of the nuisance and quickly forget about it. And then there’s the rest; they walk by the phone book, time after time, day after day, almost blind to the useless mélange of paper, ink and glue. It takes a letter from our apartment manager to draw attention to the phone books.
What does this all mean? Well it means three things to me. First is the waste of resources to create and dispose of these phone books. Most phone books use recycled material, so they do not directly kill trees. But think of the millions of pages wasted on consumers like me, who immediately dispose of these books. Whether recycled or thrown away, this takes countless more resources to deal with the discarded phone books. Not to mention the amount of energy that went into the printing of the books. And I never signed up for this service, in fact I wish I could opt-out of this service, like the plethora of credit card offers that infiltrate our mailboxes.
Second, and just as important, is the waste of finances. Small business owners blindly invest thousands of dollars per year to have their small ad in the wholly grail which is the phone book. With hopes high, they shell out their hard earned dough to advertise here. What is the ROI? Very often 0%. The only people who benefit from this are the salespeople working for the phone book companies, who are paid on commission.
Last, it means that advertising should be re-directed from the phone book to a much more efficient outlet. Where do I go to find phone numbers? The Internet, of course. Google is your friend. Google doesn’t take up space in your closet or drawer, and stays constantly updated. If more businesses focused advertising budgets on Internet marketing they would see much greater ROI. A successful combination of search engine marketing, search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising can yield incredible results for businesses small and large.
The Wall Street Journal reports that advertising dollars are down, triggering layoffs and closures at newspapers around the country. Here in Boulder, the Rocky Mountain News has shut down, but nationwide, USA Today, The New York Times, LA Times, and other large publishers are cutting staff.
Tags: blitzlocalnewspapers declinepublisher ad revenue declinerocky mountain news closurewall street journal
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