“Yell is changing to hibu. What it means for you”. File this under, “Frankly my dear …”

What thrills you and your colleagues is of no interest to us. Especially if your website is like amateur night at the opera

I just got this message that Yell is changing to hibu. What it means for you from Richard Hanscott, who is the CEO, hibu UK and has a great signature.

After the subject line “ there was a logo that looks like it’s for a toy company, and then “Yell is changing to hibu. It’s official.”

“It’s official”.

“Are they running the country?” I wondered.

Whether they are or not, we can safely say that the news about horsemeat in hamburgers is about 3.2 million times more interesting. In fact even the tiniest item of news in your local paper is more interesting.

And that is what this email is competing against – besides all the dozens of others I’ve had today.

This simple fact escapes almost all the people who send out emails.

But Mr. Hanscott goes on:

I wrote to you a few months ago, to tell you about our new hibu brand. The next step of this journey is the change of our company name, from Yell Limited to hibu (UK) Limited from the 18th January.

Why would I remember his email out of many thousands since he last tried his hand at writing one?

Anyhow I don’t give a rat’s arse about his journey. I’ve got roadblocks of my own. I do wonder, fleetingly, about the silly name hibu. Is it Finnnish or Japanese?

He then goes on:

As your business is featured on our existing products, I’d like to emphasise that Yell.com and Yellow Pages won’t be changing.

I have no idea what his products are – though I suspect he means services. I don’t recall that they have been any help to me for years. I never use Yell.com. I threw my Yellow Pages thingy in the rubbish three days ago, as chance would have it. We had a meeting with someone from there about three years ago. She was nice but dim.

But let us press on. Mr. Hanscott – no chance of getting a job writing copy, believe me –  thinks

This is an incredibly exciting time with changes happening now and many more developments over the next few months. I’d like to reassure you that the hibu team and the great service they provide, will remain the same.

We have a new online store – hibu business (visit hibubusiness.co.uk), and have updated our toolkit too (visit hibutoolkit.co.uk). These give online access to even more great products and services, help and advice designed to help your business grow and remain competitive.

 And so on. I have never dealt with the hibu team and experienced their “great service”, but out of interest I tried to click through to hibubusiness.co.uk and got Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to www.hibubusiness.co.uk

So I went there manually and reached http://www.ihubbusiness.co.uk/.

Then I tried manually again and got a web design company. I wasn’t mad about their website. Are they the same people?

Then I tried the Yell website.

It is just what you would expect. All about them, nothing about me – and a crap site, too with zero humanity, no offer, no attempt to get a response.

All this means  nothing to me – I am busy making and trying to correct my own dumb mistakes. But to the people trying to sell whatever they sell (I have no idea) I suspect it means unemployment eventually.

Not a clue. It’s official.