A friend of mine — a local small businessman — called me yesterday saying he was “taking a poll.”

FRIEND: When was the last time you looked up a phone number in the Yellow Pages?
ME: Uh, at least ten years ago. Everybody uses Google, don’t they? Why are you asking?
FRIEND: I got a call from a sales rep for the Yellow Pages asking me to renew my ad. I told him I didn’t advertise in the Yellow Pages. I was wrong. I’ve been paying a thousand bucks a year for the last ten years. When I asked my wife she said, “We’d always had an ad so…”

A few years ago I was in the front yard when a guy pulled up and tossed a plastic bag on my lawn. It contained copy of the Yellow Pages. I picked it up and took it over to the guy saying I didn’t want it and always just throw them in the trash.

“Yeah, that’s what everybody tells me but I get paid to toss ’em. I can’t take it back so just pitch it,” he explained. I’d love to know how many people with ads in the YP are like my friend.

During my radio days (1970’s) I noticed one of our advertisers had been running the same ad for over a year. I started nagging our sales rep to go see the client and get some fresh copy. We’d produce a new spot, no charge.

“I think we just just let well enough alone. He’d tell us if he wanted to change copy,” whined the sales rep.

I kept after him and one day he stormed into my office. “I hope you’re happy! He cancelled his advertising!” And stormed out. I called the client to ask why.

“We had no idea we were still running that spot — and paying for it. My bookkeeper just wrote the check every month. It slipped through the cracks.”

I’ll bet the Yellow Pages folks have reams of data “proving” who uses the book and how often.