Can $100 Million Buy Yahoo a Sense of Humor?
I was reading a blog post by Digiday: Daily — “Yahoo Spends Big with Branding Effort; Debuts $100 Million Campaign at Ad Week”. CMO Elisa Steele kicked off the press conference by introducing the new “Yahoo, It’s Y!ou” effort. They highlight the personalization options available through Yahoo, including new personalized search options.
That awkwardly placed exclamation point certainly took me to a pause… but I wasn’t sure it was a good pause. That odd-looking character arrangement pops, but doesn’t make it pithy.
TechCrunch reveals, “Other slogans in the new campaign include “The Internet is under new management: Yours” and “The Internet has a new personality: Yours.”
It struck to me that these slogans ring a Web 1.0 era, when it is all about personalization — connecting Yahoo and You, 1-to-1. The rest of the web world has evolved into harnessing peer-to-peer influence, crowd sourcing, and socialization; Yahoo seems still living in “caves” and making “fires” about personalization. The slogans sound vague and tired. I was expecting something more refreshing that the $100 million can buy.
Digiday: Daily describes that the ever brash CEO, Carol Bartz, didn’t miss an opportunity to dish it out: “When you get outside New York and Silicon Valley, everyone loves Yahoo. I just want to transplant all of you guys out of your cynicism. What is wrong with you guys? Go be cynical about frickin’ Google.”
This sounds like a sour grape, isn’t? Would such kind of remark or the $100 million shove her opinions down to our throats? Of Course Not! I am not head-over-heal for Google camp, nor do I dislike Yahoo before. But I definitely feel that Yahoo is missing the sense of humor that underdogs needed to beat the big guys, which pushes me to like Google more. How funny, that kind of gut feeling is called “brand affinity” that marketers strive to cultivate. But, it takes arts to foster and takes minutes to destroy.
