Yellow Pages to relaunch as it looks to grow revenue

Yellow Pages Kenya, which maintains a directory of businesses, is planning a relaunch to update its brand.

After years of facing the perception that it is old fashioned and stuck in the print era, the company is planning on a new direction that will see it increase its focus on digital opportunities.

The firm has also appointed a new chief executive, Pedro Gomes, a Cape Verde national, to guide its turnaround.

“We want to relaunch and concentrate on our new digital platform, though we will still be in print,” Mr Gomes told Business Beat last week.

“We want to target a mainly low-end clientele now, although our brand will still be represented by our traditional yellow colour. Everything will be yellow, from our books to our website. Our phrase will also remain, ‘Let the fingers do the walking’.”

For the last three years, the company has been experiencing a drop in revenue, which it largely generates from charging businesses to list their contact numbers and addresses in its print directory and website.

“Our revenue three years ago was approximately Sh335.5 million. This has been reducing at a 20 per cent rate annually. We intend to stop the drop,” Gomes said.

Yellow Pages, however, remains the market leader among its competitors, circulating 167,000 print copies in Nairobi alone, he said.

The company is hoping to boost circulation by distributing its directories more vigorously through postal outlets, hiring a larger sales team and getting couriers.

“The most important part of our relaunch is that we have introduced a very user-friendly mobile phone application. We will help our customers download the app, which they can then use to access data from our website and other digital platforms. We will also quickly update data so that our clients do not miss out on anything important,” Gomes said.

He replaced Jose Saldanghe, who had worked at the company for 23 years.