Sunday 13 February 2011

Fly Fishing by J R Hartley


The classic Yellow Pages advert has been updated with the J.R. Hartley character replaced by Day V Lately, a Disc Jockey in search of a former recording. It is a nice idea but it doesn’t seem to have the same warmth of the original with its melancholic music.


The most important question, however, is will the advert work? Are the people who still use telephone directories also downloaders of mobile phone Apps? Or perhaps the question should be reversed. Would people who download Apps also download a dedicated telephone directory App when a simple search engine will, more often than not, provide them with the information they need?

It is reasonable to assume that people who download Apps are comfortable using the internet. The new advert does not really give a reason why the Yell App is a superior product to the other search engines available - search engines which were not available in the days of J R Hartley, played by the late lamented Norman Lumsden.