By Leigh Andrews Remember the Yellow Pages of the old days? The heavy yellow ‘contact book’ that was a staple of most homes and generally best used as an effective bug squasher? Well, if that’s your only recollection of it, you’re in for a big surprise. The Yellow Pages is now in the online space, taking this classic local brand to the future as you can now access information at the click of a button. I remember spending my days flipping through the White Pages in my early days as a journalist, frantically scanning for contact information of elusive companies. Intrigued by the challenges this change must have brought, I spoke to the Trudon team, publishers of the Yellow Pages, about their move online. Stevens Masebe, senior manager of trade marketing at Trudon, explains that the growth of internet and mobile usage has changed media consumption patterns. While in the past, consumers used to rely on the directory to check for information about suppliers or service providers, consumers are now increasingly using the internet and mobile platforms to access information. It therefore made sense for the business to follow its customers and provide them with additional platforms where they can access information about advertisers. Masebe says, “We revamped our internet site to offer our users a clean, contemporary site with great functionality. Our new site offers a better search experience and ensures that advertisers are easily found by potential customers searching on the site.” In line with the rapid growth of cell phone usage in South Africa, they also launched the Yellow Pages mobile application. The main objective of this was to offer mobile users easy access to information about advertisers, and has been a huge success. “In total, there have been over 50 000 downloads of the Yellow Pages mobile application from various application stores such as Apple, Nokia, BlackBerry and Android, since it was launched in May 2011. This is a great achievement for us given the fact that our mobile application is only a few months old in the market.” But wait, there’s more. They have also launched mobi sites and customised ‘Mysites’ to provide their advertisers with “high visibility in the digital space”. QR Codes in the Yellow Pages printed directory serve to make the book digital too, meaning that advertisers can link their print ads to their websites or mobisites. Masebe says this ensures “a richer user experience as potential customers using the Yellow Pages book are now able to access online ads by scanning the print ads. For our advertisers, it means that they are accesible from multiple platforms.” 13●JANUARY●2012●COUP