14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo just revealed its massive marketing campaign last week, which will span across several countries and into the next year. It has a budget of over $100 and will have a presence in every medium, TV, radio, print outdoor and obviously online. Today the campaign is officially launched and we're 'treated' to the first TV ad, a 50-second clip on how wonderful Yahoo is because, you know, “it's Y!ou.” Past the shock and awe technique of the high production values and aspirational message though most users and people in the field aren't impressed with the effort.
“Today we unveil our new global marketing campaign. It consists of online, television, radio, print, and outdoor creative that emphasizes how Yahoo! is focused on YOU like never before. Our new video ad, known as “Anthem,” was shot in five countries and features vignettes that illustrate the many ways in which Yahoo! helps you make the Internet your own,” the company writes on its main blog.
That all sounds wonderful except that it doesn't illustrate any of the ways in which “Yahoo! helps you make the Internet your own,” unless you consider people playing football and dancing in night clubs a compelling reason to use Yahoo. Some will argue that this is a branding campaign and, as such, it doesn't need to present any of the actual products and features but make a case for the company's overall philosophy.
Which would be entirely accurate, if it wasn't for the fact that its overall philosophy and its new brand message don't really correlate to the real world. While there are some customization options on the new homepage allowing users to choose the widgets they want to display, most of the content on the page is still dictated by Yahoo and there are startups out there doing a much better job at creating customizable homepages. Even Google has its iGoogle homepage, which offers a lot more customization options than Yahoo.
In any case, this is just the first ad in the campaign and maybe future ones will focus more on what Yahoo has to offer rather than what it wants to be. Still, if anything, the new TV ad should give Yahoo execs a warm fuzzy feeling that the company really is 'the center of the Internet' and maybe, more importantly, convince some advertisers to direct more cash toward the Internet portal and its many properties.
Here's the full video straight from Yahoo. Interestingly, despite being hosted on Yahoo Videos as well, the blog post on the official Yahoo blog actually features the video from YouTube. So much for the brand cohesion it's been touting for months and which is supposedly the core of the new campaign.