Yell Group is bringing in-house the consulting partner who wrote its new digital strategy, to help implement it in 2012.
Matt Anderson is on Booz & Co’s consumer media and digital practice in Houston.
He was senior adviser on the Booz team that helped the local classifieds publisher develop a new strategy for emerging from the days of Yellow Pages and improving Yell.com to compete with rivals.
Now he is becoming Yell’s chief strategy and business development officer.
The plan, announced last summer, charges Yell with building out “the first local emarketplace platform for consumers and small and medium enterprises to connect and transact locally”, including loyalty programmes, payment services and business operations.
Yell aims to flip its revenue make-up (75 percent print, 25 percent digital) around by 2015, with digital product development all funded from cash.
It also sets out to simplify Yell.com on a self-service ad sales model, and to cut £100 million in costs over 2012 and 2013.
MSN executive producer Scott Moore became Yell Group’s chief digital officer in October, with the group opening new offices in Seattle, a month after Yell announced a new partnership with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Advertising.
“Partnership” is the watchword for Anderson, too, according to Yell.
Before Booz, Anderson was part of Enron’s commodities trading team.