Robin Hood Foundation Award To Yellow Pages!

29 July 2005

And the 2005 Robin Hood Foundation Award for Sponsorship Integration goes to...Yellow Pages!

Marshalling the entire company to back its sponsorship of What's Up has paid off for Yellow Pages®. Last night it was named Robin Hood Foundation Award Winner for Integration at the 2005 Marketing Magazine Awards.

What's Up is the largest phone counselling service for young New Zealanders. With corporate sponsorship dwindling its survival was in doubt last year. But financial support from Yellow Pages was only the start. The real challenge was to gain the support of the whole company.

"Yellow Pages inspired its entire organisation so that initiatives to support What's Up were being suggested from every corner," says Jude Mannion, CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation. "In evaluating this year's award entrants, we found that Yellow Pages had created a number of new mechanisms for including What's Up in its business and substantially exceeded our current benchmarks."

"In particular, Yellow Pages' internal integration and engagement of internal stakeholders is one of the best case studies we've seen," adds Jude.

"When a business takes on a sponsorship, it's too often a case of signing a cheque and hoping that alone will yield results," says Dudley Enoka, General Manager of Yellow Pages, publishers of White Pages®. "We wanted to do things differently and take a 360 degree approach to supporting What's Up, because it's a service that really makes a difference in the lives of so many young New Zealanders. What's Up is something our customers really engage with and our staff feel passionate about."

"We think in the same way that White Pages helps you find what you're looking for, What's Up connects Kiwi kids with help when they need it."

What's Up Chief Executive Grant Taylor congratulates Yellow Pages on receiving the award. "What's Up has certainly benefited from the partnership with Yellow Pages, and the relationship continues to grow as Yellow Pages staff learn more about our work with young people," says Grant. "I am greatly encouraged by the genuine interest of Yellow Pages staff and their support for our work."

In order to include the What's Up sponsorship in every part of its business, Yellow Pages developed strategies for involving its people, products, programmes and communication channels. For instance, White Pages directories are delivered to every home, business and organisation in New Zealand, so White Pages featured What's Up on prime household real estate: the directory covers, delivering unprecedented exposure to the service. More information about What's Up and how the White Pages Art Awards supports What's Up is available inside each of the 18 directories.

Yellow Pages also integrated What's Up into its other communications channels. It created a microsite, www.whitepages.co.nz/whatsup, which looks at common problems facing kids who call What's Up. It promoted What's Up and White Pages' support of the helpline through billboards, magazine lift-outs promoting What's Up friendly zones, and online ads.

And Yellow Pages has made What's Up the beneficiary of its cover art awards programme. Every dollar raised at November's White Pages Arts Charity Auction will go to help kids through What's Up.

Yellow Pages staff took to the sponsorship with passionate enthusiasm. They sought community work involving schools and gave away What's Up promotional material, and staff held fundraisers to raise cash and awareness for What's Up.

The sponsorship partnership has worked for What's Up, because it's now receiving more than 1000 calls every day - up from 400 - and more adults are learning about this widely used service. And it's good for Yellow Pages, because it marks the company out as an organisation making a measurable social difference. Due to the wider exposure it's given What's Up, more Kiwi kids can find help when they need it and more adults are aware and appreciative of What's Up.

However, this isn't the only recognition for the successful sponsorship partnership between Yellow Pages and What's Up. Back in March, Yellow Pages was awarded the Robin Hood Foundation's inaugural Corporate Social Responsibility Audit Marque.

The Robin Hood Foundation gets businesses and charities together to make a measurable social impact, believing that doing good is good for business.

About Yellow Pages Yellow Pages, publishers of Yellow Pages®, White Pages® and Local Directories(tm), was formed in 1988 as part of the Telecom Group. Yellow Pages is responsible for printing and distributing more than 2.7 million copies of Yellow Pages products (Yellow Pages, White Pages and Local Directories) across the nation. Every year Yellow Pages produces 18 regional and 22 local directories and the online directories www.whitepages.co.nz and www.yellowpages.co.nz . These resources provide the information New Zealanders need to keep in touch and link people and businesses through telecommunication and classified directory information.

Typically every week in New Zealand 772,201 people refer to the White Pages (book) and 254,508 purchase as a result.*

Typically every week in New Zealand over one million people refer to the Yellow Pages (book) and 587,104 purchase as a result. *

About What's Up What's Up is a free, professional telephone counselling service for Kiwi kids and young people aged five to 18. Its lines are open noon to midnight, seven days a week, and they receive up to 1,000 calls every day. Some 45 percent of the issues raised relate to relationships with peers, family and friends. One in seven callers is affected by bullying, the main reason pre-teens call the service.

Callers talk confidentially with paid, trained and supervised professional counsellors, who work with them to find their own solutions. This builds on the callers' strengths and problem solving skills, and reinforces appropriate help-seeking behaviours. For more information about What's Up, please visit www.whatsup.co.nz. What's Up can be called on 0800 WHATSUP (0800 942 8787).

ENDS

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