By Pepper Parr
March 5, 2015
BURLINGTON, ON
There are some corporations that learn how to re shape themselves to meet a challenge – there are many that didn’t see the change coming and when it did hit them they didn’t know what to do and so they died.
Kodak, once a great American corporation died – the Yellow Pages saw the wave coming and turned themselves into a digital company that was slowly getting out of the printed telephone directory.
It has not been an easy change.
Cheques this size tend to bring out smiles. The Burlington Downtown Business Association was the city that made the best use of the Yellow |Pages Shop your Neighbourhood program for the second time.
Chris Long, VP Sales for the Yellow Pages was in town to give the Burlington Downtown Business Association (BDBA) a cheque for $5,000 for the job they did in making a lot of retail sales mileage out of the Yellow Pages Shop the Neighbourhood program.
The last time Long was in town he left the BDBA with a cheque for $10,000 – why the difference?
The Yellow Pages people have realized that they have to partner with people who need to get their message out to their customers. Directory advertising no longer has the clout it used to have – so the Yellow Pages people put together a program that carried the Yellow Pages “Let your fingers do the walking” logo on marketing material local retailers would use for the Shop your Neighbourhood program.
Yellow Pages honed in on a specific day that just kills local retailers – Black Friday and Cyber Monday – two days that the internet owns. The masses flood the internet and the Big Box stores run specials that a smaller retail operations just cannot compete with.
But the DAY in between those to massive events was the kind of niche opportunity Yellow Pages believed could be exploited by the local retailer.
They worked with more than 200 Business Improvement Associations across the country – providing marketing support and a campaign the public could identify with.
As he was handing over the $5000 cheque Long pointed out that those Burlington retailers who used the program did very well. He added that Burlington made the best use of the program; Your numbers he said were better than any other city in the country.
Fairholme Interiors used the program, to reach out to their client base and tell them about the 25% discounts
Long said Yellow Pages was delighted with the response and added that those who tied their marketing efforts to what we were offering did well. Retail is always going to be a “bricks and mortar operation” that are the commercial base for cities and towns across the country.
Retailers face a different marketing landscape – the telephone directory isn’t the only choice anymore – it’s a digital world and the Yellow Pages people want to be part of that kind of business.
The ladies in the yellow scarves are from Fairholme Interiors – the Burlington retailer that did very well with the Yellow Pages Shop the Neighbourhood program. Janet Sachadi, on the far right owns Fairholme. Jennifer Walker , the other woman in a yellow scarf does marketing for the retailer.
This is the third year Yellow Pages has run their Shop the Neighbourhood; they plan on fine tuning the program and running for several years.
More than 8,000 individual retailers across the country took part in the program – they recorded 750,000 visitors to their stores and racked up a reported $89 million in sales.
Was it all a direct result of the Shop your Neighbourhood program? Probably not but it is certainly having an impact.
Yellow pages provides marketing material and promotes the program on a critical day for Canadian retailers – that Saturday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday – watch for it next year.
Delightful to see this effort by the BDBA has helped their members in a difficult retail environment.
You question regarding why their efforts resulted in a $5,000 check compared to a $10,000 check last outing is an answer worth pursuing.
Perhaps the BDBA could provide one, if not maybe the Yellow Pages could.
Editor’s note:
Actually that was our negligence. This year there were hundreds of communities participating; the “prize” money available was higher but so were the participants – thus less money than the previous year. We should have made that evident. Our fault.