Motorola Canada is hoping that its new line of colorful pagers will change the image, and improve the sales of personal pagers.

The company has launched the Lifestyle Plus pager in five colors: smoke; clear; translucent purple; translucent teal, and white.

Motorola hopes the product will appeal to consumers who would use the pagers for personal rather than professional communications, and who might be more attracted to the ‘fashion’ pager than the basic black pager.

The Lifestyle Plus pagers have a suggested retail price of $199.

The pager industry grew an average of 15% annually between 1991-93, according to a survey by RadioComm, an association of wireless communication companies.

RadioComm estimates that about 30% of the 850,000 pagers in use in Canada are primarily used for personal reasons.

Motorola has one tv commercial for the product, by McCann-Erickson in the u.s.

The spot, which is running in the Toronto market, is directed at working mothers, and shows how they can use a pager to keep in better touch with their children.

The tagline is that you should get a pager ‘for the messages you can’t afford to miss.’