The Yahoo Ad Campaign Creative We’d Like to See
by Kara Swisher
Posted on September 22, 2009 at 5:41 PM PT
Yahoo introduced its new $100 million marketing and branding campaign in New York today with “It’s Y!ou” as the new motto, making use of the Internet giant’s famous exclamation point.
Sure, it’s clever and all, but BoomTown felt the need to jump in and help Yahoo (YHOO), since our posts have been a little tough when it has come to the Silicon Valley icon’s tumultuous ride over the last two years.
So, while CEO Carol Bartz (pictured above as a giant lady on the Nasdaq Jumbotron in Times Square) explained–as reported by MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka–that “Yahoo is the only site where you when you wake up in the morning and you want to know what’s going on everywhere about everything, you can find it one place,” I’d say there’s more to the brand that just that!
In fact, there’s Bartz herself, a sassy and ofttimes salty exec whose pugnacious utterances have become legend quickly.
Today, for example, when asked about a comparison with its search rival, she noted, “Why not be cynical about fricking Google?”
That was mild in comparison to her cursing me out at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference when she thought I was insinuating she was too old to be an Internet exec (you can see that exchange in the video below).
Thus, please take a gander at our branding effort for Yahoo below.
(While Yahoo has Ogilvy & Mather to do its work, ATD has the very clever Photoshop stylings of Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski to work our marketing magic.)
Best of all, you can switch out the picture and moniker to denote any Yahoo foe–Google (GOOG); Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer if he does not behave in the new search-partnership deal; billionaire investor and Yahoo board member Carl Icahn; and more!
Fondly dedicated to Carol–and the rest of the Yahoo crew, especially Judy–here’s our ad (click on the image to make it larger):
And here is Bartz in action at D7, cussing me out at 00:57 in the video of the interview:
Comments
Hadn’t seen the Bartz clip from D7 – guess she told you! But seriously, it’s refreshing to see that they are doing some good things like getting rid of extraneous offerings like Zimbra and HotJobs. But what is it that makes the Yahoo! “experience” all that compelling for an Internet user? Great brand, but content aggregration does not a business model make.
Posted by Danny Miller at September 23rd, 2009 at 9:17 amHow come you never criticized her for that unbelievably ugly red top?
Posted by David Owens at September 23rd, 2009 at 10:13 amKara, though you have dedicated the image to carol, i still cant help, but read(as though Carol is telling you)
“F*** Y!ou Kara”
Posted by Prem Jay at September 24th, 2009 at 9:19 am