The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

February 7, 2011 | 2 min read

The Yellow Pages has revived its most famous character for the digital age, with DJ Day V Lately taking the place of fly-fishing author J R Hartley.

Nearly 30 years on since the original ad in which fictional author J R Hartley appeared on TV screens searching for a copy of his own book, an updated version for the iPhone generation has now been produced with a former DJ in search of his hit 90s dance record.

Day V Lately is shown travelling around London record shops, flicking through racks of vinyl, trying to track down his dance track ‘Pulse and Thunder’ before his daughter helps him find the record via the Yell (the updated name for the Yellow Pages brand) smart phone app.

The original Yellow Pages are now largely redundant by the internet, with unwanted phone books creating 75,000 tons of waste paper a year. The new ad exploits nostalgia for the old one while bolstering the company’s online service.

Yell’s UK brand and communications director David Parslow said of the new ad: "What better way to demonstrate how our offering has evolved over the past few years than to modernise our most iconic advert. The campaign will aim to show that Yell now offers more instant information on businesses in the UK than ever before."

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