Charter Links Up with Yellow Book USA

Co-Branding Books to Aid Phone Sales

By Linda Haugsted -- Multichannel News, July 24, 2007

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Washington -- Charter Communications will distribute co-branded phone books with Yellow Book USA -- a venture designed to help drive the operator’s digital-telephone service into small businesses while providing Charter with a book to provide to residential customers that isn’t an advertising vehicle for the incumbent competitor.

“This seems so logical for us,” Charter Telephone senior vice president and general manager Ted Schremp said.

As sales representatives have tried to sell services to small businesses with up to three phone lines, “invariably, the issue of yellow-page ads” came up in the discussion, he added.

Schremp said the lack of a phone-book deal has not been a barrier to sales, but it complicated the transaction because small businessmen feared that they’d somehow lose their yellow-pages ad if they switched providers. Those companies are commonly billed for their ads in the local dominant phone book on their monthly telephone bills.

Yellow Book USA asserted that it is the top independent publisher of print and online yellow pages in the country. Last year, it published 1,000 versions nationally with a circulation of 123 million. The company also has an ad-sales force of 6,000. Salesmen in Charter markets will help to sell the operator’s business-telephone services.

Schremp said he believes this is the first directory partnership of its kind. The two companies tested the co-branding arrangement during the past two months in Charter’s systems in Asheville and Greenville/Spartanburg, S.C.

“The partnership plays out well for both partners: We all want into the small business market,” he added.

Small businesses that buy service from Charter Telephone will be rewarded with a free, in-column display ad in the local Yellow Book. That has a value of $80 per month, Schremp said. Yellow-pages sales representatives, when they close the advertising sale, will have the opportunity to upsell the small business to a larger ad, he added.

The partnership also provides Charter with its own co-branded directory to provide to residential phone customers. Currently, Charter phone customers still have their numbers listed in the white pages of the book created by the dominant certified local-exchange carrier, which provides them a book.

Charter also gets 2,000-3,000 requests per month in systems that have launched phone service for replacement directories. The MSO would purchase branded copies from its competitor to satisfy consumers. The co-branded version will have prominent advertisements for each of Charter’s products.

Charter has launched phone service in markets serving 7.3 million customers to date. The product should be deployed to nearly all of Charter's 11 million homes by the end of the year, according to the company.