Speaking Sensis

Back in November, the Australian newspaper syndicated a story by Emily Steel from News Corp’s Wall Street Journal, on the significant challenges facing the Yellow Pages directories and directories industry generally in the US (unfortunately you can now only view the first few paragraphs of the story without subscribing – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122688313315132107.html?mg=com-wsj).

It showed how a number of the US Yellow Pages businesses are doing it tough and “Facing the real prospect of extinction, the publishers, many of which have considerable debt, have been slashing jobs, scrapping dividends and exiting unprofitable markets,” wrote Ms Steel.

It’s scary stuff for any business. But what about the situation in the Australian market? Surely the same story applies to Sensis’ Yellow Pages® directory business in Australia? It’s an all-too-easy conclusion to draw and one that is far from the truth.

So in the interests of the 400,000 or so small and medium sized business that advertise with Yellow Pages® in Australia and the 7 million people who, on average, use the Yellow Pages® print directory nationally each month, we thought it was important to set the local record straight.

And much to its credit, the Australian business section gave Sensis the opportunity to present readers with the strong value story driving the success of Yellow Pages® in Australia. The result was an accurate account by Sara Rich, which was published on 29 December 2008 – http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24850211-7582,00.html

As Sensis’ Stephen Harvy says in the article, we’re continuing to invest, develop and fine tune areas of our Yellow Pages® operations in order to keep enhancing the value we deliver to our customers.

And while this investment has been critical to growing our Yellow Pages® print directory business, it has been just as critical to growing our Yellow Pages® business in the digital arena – namely online and mobile.

Digital technology is exciting and offers more and more ways of connecting buyers and sellers – but as we continue to demonstrate, so too does the trusted and reliable print directory.