BigShinyThing

Saturday 10 May 2008

What do people actually do with Yellow Pages directories these days?

This door-dropped card from Hackney Council offers their considered opinion on the subject — Yellow Pages is the only branded item on their list of useless waste (think engine oil and foil) to be put in their green recycling bins. We think they’ve got it about right.

Posted by Darrell Berry | Tags: Hackney, London, marketing mistakes, old media, recycling, yellow pages

5 Comments

charlie robertson [May 10th, 2008 at 10:53 am ]

Fantastic piece of stimulus for our training work!
We use Yellow Pages all over the world in our travels as our acid test for our method of developing strategy led ideas for brands saying even a boring utility can be made interesting.
Hackney Council has just raised the bar on this one.
Ollie [May 12th, 2008 at 3:58 am ]

Huh? There’s a few branded items there, Halford’s, Ever Ready, Coca Cola? This seems a bit trivial either way, what’s the point, I’m lost!
(Long time viewer, first time confused!)
pete [May 19th, 2008 at 11:29 am ]

Im surprised this is the first time you are confused, Ollie. It seems quite obvious to me. The green boxes are the generic item, which should obviously be ‘telephone directories’ or somesuch, whereas the photos may show brands as examples.
Anyhow, this aside, the principle is the environmental message that directories are a stupid waste of time. The brackets help you associate the product with engine oil if you still dont understand!
Anne-Fay [May 20th, 2008 at 1:53 pm ]

@pete: yes that was exactly the point we were making, thnx!
Ollie [May 26th, 2008 at 3:18 am ]

Oh dear, yes, that’s pretty obvious now. It’s not the first time I’ve been confused in general, just by this blog…

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