Apparently Yahoo is now ‘You’.  Wait, wasn’t it just last year where they were claiming that the Internet was ‘Y!ours’?  Well – at least they’re spending less on bad advertising – down from their $100M investment last year.  Decide for yourself – do you want Yahoo to be ‘You’?  I don’t.

Honestly, this campaign baffles me a bit – hasn’t the Internet always been ours?  Now Yahoo is giving us the persmission to actually state that obvious fact?  Apparently so, and it is costing them $100M to grant that permission.   Reading a summary of the campaign announcement on the Wall Street Journal’s Digits Blog, I found myself shaking my head – until I read one of the user comments that summed up my feelings in one sentence:

badgett wrote:  No new core value proposition =>wacky marketing

Well said.  Perhaps Yahoo should go back to the drawing board on this one.  Working at Intel for the last 10 years, I’ve been through my share of rebranding efforts and this one has several components that are, frankly, similar to our current campaign with the most obvious being an updated soundmark – an auditory, recognizable symbol of a company.  According to the WSJ article:

“The rebranding effort includes a modified version of Yahoo’s well-known yodel, something she called ‘an essential part of Yahoo’s DNA, but I think we have to admit it’s a bit dusty.’ Yahoo will use several new yodels, and the new campaign ends with one sung by a choir that ends with children’s laughter.”

Interesting… oddly similar to the way we end our newest TV spots.  Coincidence or Flattery?

It’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday…. Like Boyz II Men, Yahoo can look back at the last 90′s and wonder ‘What Happened?” In a 2 month span,  Yahoo went on a spending spree that accounted for nearly $10Billion in cash or stock outlay.  The largest ‘investments’?  Broadband.com (somewhere, Mark Cuban is STILL doing this) and GeoCities.com.  Last week GeoCities followed the lead of Broadband and was laid to rest.  Like many others, I built my first personal web site there so it’s a little sad to see them go…