Sunnyvale, California — On the heels of a disappointing $100 million ad campaign, which Yahoo unveiled late last year, is having another go at revitalizing its brand with a second big-budget advertising campaign, hoping to gain traffic to its home page and win back share in the Internet-search market with a new ad blitz that takes a shot at larger rival Google.
Yahoo posted a sneak preview of various creative pieces that will become part of the next phase of the company’s “It’s You!” marketing campaign, but this revitalized campaign seems a bit more focused than “It’s You!”, although it remains to be seen if it will prove more successful. The new catchword is: “Your favorite stuff all in one place. Make Yahoo your home page,” a definite improvement over the vague and grammatically abusive previous one.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo will now spend around $75 million and $85 million on this second phase of the campaign. This second phase of the campaign starts from May 18, and will run through the year. The ads will appear online, on billboards, airplanes, television and radio. While the campaign aims to highlight Yahoo’s products and services and what they mean to consumers, a video on Yahoo’s site sets the tone.
This second phase is formulated “to get people to collaborate with our products,” according to chief marketing officer Elisa Steele.
That said, improving Yahoo’s battered image has been a top priority for its chief executive, Carol Bartz. It is an full-scale effort, and the first ads are beginning to show up and the one that is catching everyone’s attention is a video that takes a blatant jab at Google.
“Yahoo’s mission now is to convince consumers that Yahoo is the place where you go to navigate the entire Web,” says Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of Goodby.
To drill home that message, the video aims to make a comparison between Google’s cold blank homepage without a name, it features a search box, a button and some links on top, the minimalistic approach Google takes much pride in, and as soon as you arrive it hustles you out the door. “When you look at this homepage nothing looks back at you. You come to this place so you can leave,” a voice-over says.
The narrator then explains that when you look at this homepage nothing looks back at you. Yahoo’s homepage, on the other hand, turns out to be the center of your online life by getting to know you. It comprises the news and sports you want to read about, as well as items you are searching for on eBay and connections to friends on Facebook and Twitter. It is a network, homepage, search engine, as well as everything you are into.
Then, as colorful Scrabble-like tiles adorned with various website logos come together to form women’s faces, the voice-over praises Yahoo: “It does not hustle you out the door. It is a place that gets to know you, a place that finds things for you.”
A spokeswoman for Google declined to comment.
Yahoo’s Steele defends last fall’s campaign, saying it was intended to “bring Yahoo back into the conversation” and repair its image. “We were in an identity crisis,” and the “brand’s health,” by such measures as consumers’ likelihood to recommend it, was “in a four-year decline,” she says.
The campaign, Steele adds, was successful in markets such as India, and has “neutralized the drop” in the brand’s health in the U.S.
It is still vague whether the Sunnyvale, Calif., company can pull off a turnaround, though most folks hope for the best. It is also not clear if Yahoo’s campaign will have or has had any impact. Then again, it is this very trend that has helped Facebook close in on 500 million users. And Facebook is set to pass Yahoo in all important metrics. Right now, Facebook is much more of a threat to Yahoo than Google has been for years.