Firstly, the term ‘Yellow Pages’ is a globally recognised meaning for a telephone directory of companies.  In some countries the term is trademarked and the business is operated by the IP holder, however, in other countries like the USA, the name is not registered so many people can legally use the name with their business directory service.

Specifically, in the UK the brand is owned and operated by Yell Group and is listed on the London Stock Exchange.  The company was originally owned by the GPO and later BT and set up the first directory in Brighton in 1966.  During the subsequent 40 years the business grew from just the one directory area in the UK to over 100 at the peak of its performance.  In the 2000’s the company invested heavily in foreign markets headed up by CEO John Condron at the time – this was a controversial decision given the inevitable decline of printed media due to the actual and forecast growth of the Internet and supporting technology.

In 2003 Yell decided to float on the LSE with an initial IPO of 276p – over the next 3 years the company enjoyed steady share price growth achieving 634p in Feb 2007.  However, the party wasn’t to last as soon after the share price fell rapidly over the next 2 years to just 13p in March 2009, and has stayed low up until today at just 4p.

So why has the ‘Yellow Pages’ brand and confidence in its abilities fallen so much in recent years after such a long history of growth and expansion?  Well the answer is quite clear today and really can’t be blamed on the benefits of hindsight.  Just 13 years ago you didn’t have to be an Internet guru or strategist to realise that print media will inevitably decline at some point.  If you think back, offices were already implementing paperless solutions, early adopters of the Internet were already looking for businesses online and expecting richer content, technology was developing at a rapid pace enabling the publication of data faster and more accurate than ever before, homes across the UK were buying more computers per year than television sets.  However Yell kept doing what it’s always done and concentrated its core efforts on printed media (as it worked so well for them in the past) – they did dabble in Internet technology but really just published the Yellow Pages business directory on the net.  In the UK Yell brought out a product called ‘YP Ad Online’ – as the name suggests, it was simply publishing printed media content online – not the most forward thinking publishing strategy you may think.

Simply put, Yell didn’t grow up with and embrace the Internet – in the early years it saw it as an auxiliary product to the printed directory media, and still invested most of its RAD, processes and money in the printed and 118 offerings.  This resulted in Yell being on the back-foot, and 10 years too late to exploit its brand and the potential it once had to be a market leader of providing advertising services on the Internet, thus enabling it to migrate its offline / printed media customers to online solutions and products.

So what’s the future for Yellow Pages globally and specifically Yell Group in the UK / USA and Spain with nearly £3b worth of debt?  Well it’s not too late for management to finally wake up and start developing relevant products people will actually want to buy without being sold to.  Yell really need to stop blaming the ‘economic environment’ and navel-gazing by commissioning internal ‘in depth reviews’ as per its latest 2011 Q3 results – you don’t read about Google’s revenues in AdWords dropping or being impacted by GDP.  They constantly out develop and out-perform the market though innovation and exploitation of new technologies, and produce advertising solutions that people want, understand and most importantly work.

Yellow Pages in the UK is still a respected and trusted brand, however, with each day that goes by this is eroding faster than a dictator’s grasp on a war torn country - so someone better act quickly.  The brand is an institution that we have all grown up with, however, brands (no matter how super) are all fragile and bad management, strategies and products will almost certainly kill a company in today’s fickle, fast-paced, fast-growth technological world – you only have to look around at brands such as Woolworths to realise that.

So do people still use the good old Yellow Pages printed product?  Well according to Yell and their published online Facts and Stats they do – in fact they claim over 80% of UK adults use the printed business directory.  However, when you look at the small print this figure was actually generated in 2006 – that’s 5 years out-of-date and of course we’re living in a different world now.  A more recent statistic published by Yell indicates the book is used over 600m times in 2009/2010.   Whatever the current figure is I personally don’t know of a single person that uses the book anymore – except by boys wanting to stand on them at Christmas to reach up to kiss a girl under the mistletoe (perhaps their 1990’s TV campaign of that very situation was a subconscious prediction of their fate).  Perhaps a cynical person may assume that the book only survives today due to the capabilities of an efficient and formidable 3,000 strong sales force.

Wampit® is a free UK business directory offering high quality advert listings for all companies.  Simply visit wampit.co.uk to register, and create your free advert listing in minutes.

Wampit® was created by UK entrepreneurs Paul Holland and Adam Purrier who decided to use their wealth of experience gained within the advertising industry to create a new breed of business search engine / directory.

Adam and Paul believe that Internet business advertising is still ‘traditionally old school’ and ‘sales focused’ and wanted to bring in a more modernised approach to online business directories.

Working from offices in London, they decided to create a UK business search engine that is not only at the forefront of the developing online video revolution, but also takes in the ethos of social networking i.e. free rich content such as video and images and live twitter feeds.

Let’s break these down further to explain why Wampit® has focussed primarily on these two areas:

The Online Video Revolution:

• The growth of online video has been unprecedented with the number of videos viewed online in the UK growing nearly 50 per cent year on year (source – comScore).
• Businesses are starting to understand that video is something they now need to consider in their marketing arsenal, as it can be the closest thing they can offer their potential customers to actually being there.
• As with any “new opportunities” businesses such as online video production companies are a growth area charging up to £1000 for a professional business promotional video.  Wampit enables you to upload a video for free whether it has been professionally or home produced.
• With the quality of even basic digital camcorders and phones today businesses can make their own video/clip of their products, service, premises and upload it onto their free Wampit advert in minutes.
• The growth of online video is greatly supported by the belief that video increases online conversion rates by up to 300%

The Social Networking Revolution:

• 38 percent of British Internet users now have a social networking site profile which is up from 22 percent in 2007 (source – Ofcom)
• This means that people are not only used to but “expect to” create a profile for free using rich content such as video, images etc.
• Wampit is the first true business search engine that allows you to create your business listing for free using content such as images/video.
• The growth of social networking websites and blogs now account for nearly ten percent of the total time spent on the Internet, exceeding even email, according to a new study released by Nielsen Online.
• 17 per cent of all time spent on the Internet in August took place on either social networking or blogging sites – a 300 per cent increase from the previous year. (source – The Nielsen Company)
• Twitter has also rapidly become the darling of the Internet and approx 19% of Internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others which is an 8% growth since April 09 (source – Pew Research)
• Wampit® is the first UK business directory that enables all businesses to simply create a “live twitter feed” onto their listing to display their latest tweets.

So you can now see why Wampit® has been created for UK businesses, and  in summary,  it offers quality free business advertising listings that are rich in content and innovative in their design (video/Twitter feeds).

Importantly the Wampit® site is clean and easy to use for businesses and users alike, with no superfluous information or third party advertising.  Businesses can register themselves and create their free business advert by completing one, easy to follow registration page.  Also, once registered they can log back in at any time to update / amend their details.

Each business that registers also gets their own individual “landing page” which Wampit® automatically submits to major search engines in order to provide further exposure for their listing, as well as drive traffic back to the site.

To find out more about what Wampit.co.uk offers visit: http://www.wampit.co.uk/freebusinessadvertising.aspx

Or just visit the site and create your Free Advert today: http://www.wampit.co.uk/

For further reading and information, please also visit the Wampit® blog comparing and recommending that you also advertise on the top 10 free business advertising directories such as  BT Tradespace (British Telecom), Free Index, Thomson Local, Yell.com  ( Yell Group / Yellow Pages / Yellow-Advertising ), Scoot and five others…