Yellow Pages was once an essential resource in every household for finding all the information about your community. But in an era of apps, blogs, and up to the second twitter feeds, people see Yellow Pages as a 'dusty old book' and not as the go-to resource for everything you need to know about local.

The challenge was to help accelerate Yellow Pages' digital transformation by leveraging its mobile app and repositioning the brand as the digital resource for the best local neighbourhood knowledge.

With "Highlight your Hood" the approach was to dominate neighbourhoods across the GTA with a wide range of media reaching Torontonians where they work, live and play. Then YP had to go deeper and find a compelling way to get the app experience directly in the hands of neighbourhood dwellers so they could connect with Yellow Pages digitally and discover all the local gems around them.

At the heart of every great Toronto neighbourhood is a great dog park. The plan was to infiltrate several of the city's most populous dog parks for one day with a massive 40-foot dog bone pop-up installation made of over 2,000 yellow pet-friendly balls. The excited dogs discovered the branded balls and proudly brought their new toy back to their owners. It was a perfect icebreaker for Yellow Pages ambassadors to introduce the mobile app and directly showcase Yellow Pages' deep local knowledge.

The brand also installed a number of custom poop and scoop stations and garbage cans to elevate the overall experience. And everything was branded with fun and relevant dog messages that directed people to download the app to find local gems in their local neighbourhood.

At the conclusion of the one-day activation, Yellow Pages had achieved over 1,000 direct interactions that led people to download the app. As part of the larger citywide campaign, Yellow Pages achieved its breakthrough goal with a 65% aided recall score at the conclusion of the campaign and total mobile visits were up 21% during the campaign period vs. the previous year. The GTA program was so successful that it is being rolled out to other markets.

In addition, based on all of YP's advertising activities in 2013, app awareness increased from 28% Q4 2012 to 39% Q4 2013. These results were certainly a highlight and proved that YP was starting to accelerate its digital transformation.