Imagine my surprise when I opened the newspaper today. Spread on the FRONT PAGE of around 4 national dailies (I noticed in the list – Hindustan Times, Times of India, DNA and the Mint — the links are the epaper links) — the bold title : “The Internet is under NEW MANAGEMENT — Yours” with the tagline “It’s Y!ou” emphasising that the new Yahoo was all about the user. And it’s not just me who was surprised – TechCrunch covered the story as well, (faster) 
Yahoo’s changed a lot over the years, from it’s dynamic homepage, which they are now actively marketing to handing over their search to Bing. I still remember Yahoo as that e-mail service which I use occasionally. Yahoo, however is popular in the USA. And Yahoo is all set to change their image globally. We recently wrote about their $100 million campaign to focus on the whole It’s Y!ou theme.
It kicked off the USA on September 28th to a mixed response from different groups of people. In India — today was D-Day, the launch of their campaign. Those who’ve been following the Champions League would notice the promotion give to cricket.yahoo.com.
Ogilvy & Mather is the creative agency for Yahoo! India — the same agency that spawned the ZooZoo ads. In an interview, Nitin Mathur, Director — Marketing, Yahoo! India, explained, “We see this as a mid- to long-term transformation of our brand, which will have marketing programmes running over the next 12-18 months. This brand campaign is actually is a follow up on a lot of new product innovations, which we have launched over the last few months. Our strategy is to build products that are not only ‘open’, ‘social’ and ‘relevant’ to consumers, but also available across devices. The brand campaign is all about how we give you the best of Web and make your Internet more personal to you. It is all about you, the consumer.”
Other taglines include “Now, the Internet has a personality — Yours”
The campaign is cross-platfrom, from radio, to television, to print, to out of home (billboards etc), to of course, social media. Let’s face it — getting a full page ad in almost all the leading dailies is an impressive feat. Yahoo clearly hopes to lure Indians away from Google (and whatever local competition) there is. Yahoo already has a large presence in India, reaching 26 million of the 35 million online Indians (according to Comscore, August 2009). In an interview Yahoo India MD Arun Tadanki said “India is a promising market for us. India’s importance to Yahoo! can be gauged from the fact that our global campaign is first being launched only in three markets- US, UK and India.“
Yahoo’s focus is on making people aware that it’s homepage is all they need — their one stop shop for everything on the Internet, including everyone’s favourite pasttime — Facebook.
Will they be successful?
Let’s look at Yahoo’s presence in the USA. An article I read recently had a quote by new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. Bartz said to a roomful of journalists and bloggers at the unveiling of Yahoo’s $100 million marketing campaign about “Y!ou.”
“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. You got me pissed off.”
While the ads by Ogilvy and Mather are supposed to sweep you off. Below is one of the ads they launched in the USA. Though they’re nice — I was not blown away.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqbaZcX67L0
Meanwhile, Yahoo’s also faced criticism with some claiming the $100 million campaign is a failure.
I, personally, am amazed over how Websites are so aggresively marketing on conventional media platforms. Leveraging conventional media to drive people to their websites, to use their services, and use that as the playing field for income via ads and digital advertising. The blending of the old and the new. We’d like feedback. Are you more tempted to try out their new “www.yahoo.in”. (Wasn’t it www.yahoo.co.in a while back?”, or are you going to stick to your existent homepage?
What do Y!ou think?
