PMP has started to reduce staff at its Chullora directories plant as Sensis confirmed plans of a massive decrease of deliveries of the White Pages in Sydney and Melbourne.
Telstra-owned Sensis has confirmed its decision to cut 90% of the 2011/12 residential White Pages directories to the cities, a fall of around 1.35m books.
Richard Allely, chief executive of PMP, whose exclusive Sensis print contract has another five years to run, said the reduction in volume did not come as a surprise, adding that the print group had a close working relationship with Sensis.
He told ProPrint that some downsizing at the Sydney plant was due to natural attrition, but admitted that some job losses were the direct result of cuts to order volumes.
“Printed directories are not the future; they are part of the past,” he said.
“We know we are going to have lower volumes and natural attrition won’t get us there. We do need to adjust accordingly and through proper means.”
He added that although he expected further reductions to the White Pages, the Yellow Pages continued to show strength and run numbers could increase.
Sensis said the White Pages will still be on offer to everyone in the affected regions. Books can ordered online, by telephone and through Australia Post.
“We will continue to fulfill our obligations to make copies of the residential directories available to these consumers. However, instead of it being automatically delivered to their homes all they need to do is order a copy,” said White Pages group manager Peter Barclay.
Nolan Giles – May 26, 2011 11:13 AM
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3 comments
i guess directory printing is a sunset business. I honestly cant remember the last time i used a white or yellow pages for it’s intended purpose.InkyMcFee
It needn’t have been that way Inky. Print can work to reinforce any on line business – newspapers will outlast the directories because they understood that. This is incompetence at Sensis – this failure was not inevitable.bhcomic
The sensis site is the most frustrating & has a high failure rate. I still find the books easier than navigating their site. I do google more often than sensis though.
PrintDiva
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proprint.com.au/Tools/Print.aspx?CIID=258639
Directory companies fail to understand what they do/did. Sensis management is completely lost as no one has had a successful past to recall why people bought ads in the first place.
Directories were there to distribute information, in a complete and content rich manner. As YP got greedier, it ony looked at ways of gouging more money, without addressing the rich content. As a consequence,with the focus on only revenue and not addresssing the need to provide content to advertisers and consumers, it lost its relevance to consumers and advertisers started looking else where for value, and response.
With rich content, they could have transfered it to online and been the major provider of online information. It is too late as YP is now no different to Hot Frog in that it is basically listings, with little valuable content.
Whist it can be argued in hindsight online would kill the print, it did not need to be so rapid, and could and should co exist.
As for the Sales Management, it should be called Mismanagement, from what I have heard, it seems that the usual clowns at the top are looking at ways to micro manage failure as opposed to addressing core issues.
Good luck, and we will see Sensis merge with telstra within 2 years to hide the disastorous results yet to be announced. The “kick ass marketing solution” is the equivalent of telling peole the FJ holden is todays “kick ass” car.