Montreal-based Yellow Pages Group wants Canadian business owners to let their fingers do the clicking, and has launched a new campaign to encourage them.
Created by Taxi 2 in association with YPG’s in-house marketing team, the “Allow us to (re) introduce ourselves” business-to-business campaign debuted this week across Canada and will run until Nov. 28.
The campaign is comprised of newspaper, radio and what YPG calls a “significant presence” at select small business conferences.
A print ad appearing in major metropolitan dailies features images of a laptop and a mobile device on the Yellow Pages’ iconic yellow background accompanied by the message “Allow us to (re) introduce ourselves.” The copy below the image reads “Yellow Pages is digital. Are you?”
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In “Say Ya,” one of three radio ads, the announcer exhorts a business owner to say “Ya” if he runs a business and again if he wants customers to find the business online. After the business owner says ya both times, the announcer’s request to say “Ya” if he knows how to maximize his business online is greeted by the sound of crickets chirping. The spot then urges listeners to visit GetFound.YellowPages.ca to find out how they can accomplish the objective. Each spot concludes with a simple five-note sound mark.
Media was handled by PHD Canada.
It’s not a matter of building awareness for the iconic brand, said Anne Marsolais, YPG’s director of communications, but shifting the common perception of YPG as a thick print directory delivered to consumers’ doorstep each year.
The print product “still works tremendously well for the majority of businesses,” she said, but the campaign objective is to promote YPG’s ongoing “digital transformation”–which began in earnest last year with a consumer-focused campaign.
With roughly 375,000 advertisers across the country, YPG has covered off about 40% of Canadian businesses.
“A lot of businesses still don’t advertise with us, and a lot of them still don’t know that we have a very important online presence,” said Marsolais. “We wanted to make it loud and clear that Yellow Pages is digital and offers all of the solutions that business nowadays need to get found.”
A Yellow Pages app introduced in April 2009 has already been downloaded 1.8 million times, said Marsolais, while mobile is expected to account for up to 20% of its digital searches in 2010.
In addition, its network of online properties, including YellowPages.ca, Canada411.ca and AutoTrader.ca, reaches 11.5 million unique visitors each month.
“We have been built to be a mobile company,” she said. “We have the local data and the content, but we need to also bring businesses along with evolving consumer habits.”
