Last week I heard someone banging on my front door. It was the mailwoman letting me know there was a package too big to fit through my mail slot. Judging by the urgency and seriousness of her knock, one would think she was leaving something very important at the front step. I ran down three flights of stairs to see what it was. I was disappointed to find that it was just the new phonebook. This was on Friday. By Sunday, the book hadn’t moved an inch – it was still outside. Finally I reluctantly brought it into the hosue Sunday night.

I didn’t think much about this until I read an article on the WSJ today that featured a story about a taxi company owner who was on welfare because he couldn’t get enough business. He was advertising in phonebooks and he just wasn’t getting the response he was looking for. It’s no wonder he was receiving less than stellar results if my experience is any indication of what’s going on with those books.

Anyway, the cabbie decided to slap together a web site and purchase some google AdWords. Now his fleet is three dozen strong and he is no longer on welfare. Go figure. I highly recommend reading this article – it covers some grass-roots marketing and advertising techniques – it also advices against spending cash on PR firms (the article is good if you are trying to create general and unfocused C2C buzz, but not if you covet focused B2B attention).

Back to the phone book phenomenon. Nobody asked me if I wanted to get a book, they just sent it to me. What a gross waste of money and natural resources. When I asked Verizon not publish my new number on the book, they said they would be glad to do so for a monthly $2 fee!

I can’t remember the last time I paged through one of those bad boys. Why do they keep printing them? How are they still making enough money to cover the production, materials and distribution? How can that business model still be viable?

Is it possible that people who don’t have immediate access to a computer and internet connection scrape up enough mass to constitute and justify an audience for the phonebook? If so, I have a suggestion for the phonebook makers: ask people if they want a copy before they send it out. Sacrifice the cost of reduced circulation, harvest the operational savings and do a better job at syndicating the data online.