14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo! announced that, in collaboration with Celestial Marketing, a company that studies and frequently produces actual cosmic phenomena, it would offer Brazilians a partial lunar eclipse. On August 16, people from Brazil will have the opportunity to see an impressive phenomenon - created by man, but special nonetheless.
The event is part of the campaign entitled "Never underestimate the purple," which has the purpose of establishing Yahoo! as a bold company, capable of the most notable things. "With a name like Yahoo!, we really know we have to be bold. In fact, we picked the color purple as our company color. To show off our boldness and show off our heritage, we're gonna do something really crazy. We're gonna create an eclipse right here, in Brazil." says Yahoo!'s CEO Jerry Yang, in a clip posted on the website launched especially to cover this particular event. People from other countries are invited to watch the Yahoo! exclusive event on the webpage of the company, where a live broadcast of the cosmic show will be hosted.
What the two companies will do is, according to Yang's statement, to slightly move the Earth in order to align it with both the sun and the moon, which will cause the moon to be partly covered by the Earth's shade. However, the lunar eclipse scheduled to take place on August 16 will be only partial, as it is impossible to have the Earth cast its shadow on the whole surface of the moon.
"When you think Brazil, you might think large country, long river, giant rainforests, that huge statue (one of the Seven Wonders, in fact), major soccer stars, and colossal Carnival festivities. It seems like everything is big and bold. When you operate in this country, the fifth largest in the world, you have to go big (and maybe even a little bit crazy) to get noticed." says a blog editor on Yodel Anecdotal, one of Yahoo!'s weblogs.
As you can imagine, a lunar eclipse is a natural phenomenon, having nothing to do with a supposed intervention of the Sunnyvale based company. So, in the end, Yahoo! will only broadcast the event, integrating it in a campaign aimed at proving its boldness - and it is to this extent alone that the "boldness" will go. But Yahoo! does deserve kudos for this brilliant campaign, that much is for sure.