Yellow Acting CEO Darren Linton and Amanda Jordan, Strategic Partnerships Development Manager, NZ at Google. Photo/supplied
Yellow Acting CEO Darren Linton and Amanda Jordan, Strategic Partnerships Development Manager, NZ at Google. Photo/supplied
Long-time directory business Yellow is rebranding to reflect the company's focus on its role as a digital advertising agency.
The iconic black fingers on a yellow background will remain on the directories but from today, Yellow will have a new logo for the rest of its services.
The company which was previously called Yellow Pages Group, faced a number of issues in the past which resulted in the restructuring of its debt model twice in four years.
The second restructure in 2015 resulted in creditors waiving $385 million of debt, and the business cutting a number of jobs.
Yellow's acting chief executive Darren Linton said following on from this, the company had refocused on its digital offering and the services it could offer small and medium size businesses (SMEs).
"The company has been on this journey for a long period of time but we have really hit momentum in the last 18 months," Linton said.
"This financial year we did just under $95 million in revenue and 40 per cent of that was in digital.
"So we have more than 20,000 paying digital customers and the way we talk about it now is we're building New Zealand's largest digital agency for SMEs."
As well as producing its contact directories, the company has been adding services including its free Yellow Move, where customers could tell Yellow when they're moving, where from and where to. The company would then ensure all utilities and services would be turned on and ready for the customer on move in day.
Its work with SMEs, however, was the focus Linton said, with companies able to use Yellow to set up a basic website, through to advertising, adding on e-commerce solutions, booking widgets and other add-on products for an additional regular cost.
Yellow is also one of New Zealand's largest resellers of Google Adwords - helping boost customer profile online.
The cost, operated on a software-as-a-service model, would depend on what was required, but Linton said it allowed companies to use Yellow's range of offerings as they grew.
"Almost 50 per cent of small businesses have no digital presence so you can't even find them on Google.
Yellow's rebranded look. Photo/supplied
"So our focus is on how do we give these businesses access to world-class websites, advertising products and story telling products, and we're partnering with amazing companies to help do this."
In the last six months, the company has created 29,000 new SME digital profiles with more than 65,600 consumer reviews on these listings.
Yellow also won the Google Premier Partner award across Australasia for the Growing Businesses Online category earlier in the month.
As one of the country's largest digital agencies for SMEs, the award demonstrated its capacity to deliver successful digital services and expertise to its customers, Linton said.
"We're building a marketing platform for SMEs to come on, where we can say, where are you at with your digital journey and what do you need to do - and then help them get there."
Yellow • Just under $95m revenue in 2017 financial year • 40% of revenue was from digital • It has more than 20,000 paying digital customers • Yellow Network connects 1.7m Kiwis monthly • Created more than 29,000 new SME profiles in 6 months • These have generated more than 65,600 consumer reviews
