TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Last Laugh! Verizon's Directory Publishing Troubles

Re: Last Laugh! Verizon's Directory Publishing Troubles

news01@jmatt.net
25 Jan 2005 07:52:01 -0800

Alan Burkitt-Gray wrote:

> It is wrong to think that in this internet age paper phone books ar
> useful for little else than ad-hoc stands for coffee cups.

I don't know how useful they are, but apparently they're still a good
source of advertising revenue, or at least the publishers think so.

Down here in slightly-less-rural Kentucky, the number of people
receive is ridiculous. I work in Lexington, which is currently served
by Alltel, who recently bought out Verizon's business in this area.
Area residents receive directories from Bell South, Verizon, and
AllTel.

I live in a nearby area served by BellSouth. At home, I receive 2
diferent directories from Bell South, one from Verizon, and a couple
from independent directory publishers.

This of course leaves Yellow Pages advertisers in a quandary. Which
directory should they advertise in? The "official" one put out by the
telco that serves the area? The one that calls itself "The REAL Yellow
Pages?" Some of the above? All of the above? None of the above? If
they're only going to advertise in one, they have to guess which one
most people are likely to keep.

In the past, when "the phone company" screwed up the directory,
sometimes they printed and distributed an addendum. which was a pain.
Sometimes they just shrugged and did nothing until the next year.
People just had to deal with it.

Now, if one publisher screws up, people are likely to throw away that
directory, since they have others to choose from. That obviously
doesn't make the advertisers happy. I think now Verizon feels more
pressure to kill more trees and completely reprint their directories
when they screw up bigtime, to try to appease the advertisers.

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