Lasers, man-eaters, and our new brand campaign

Posted April 29th, 2007 at 9:10 pm by Allen Olivo, Global Brand Marketing

 6 Comments / Filed in: Behind the Scenes, Cool Stuff, Trends & News

Last summer, I wrote about how Yahoo! hit the airwaves with super-wedgies, projectile motorists, and reincarnated pets to launch the new Yahoo.com. Today, we’re upping the ante with more bold and quirky ads that you’ll catch online, on TV, in a movie theater near you, and on the radio.

We’re launching the most integrated and interactive brand campaign in company history, taking last year’s theme of “life is better with Yahoo!” to the next level. In partnership with our ad team, Soho Square and OgilvyOne Worldwide, we’ve come up with a simple call to action that puts you in charge: drum roll please… “Be a Better ____.” Why should you care? This campaign is essentially all about you and helping you enhance that bit of your life you’ve always wanted to be better at.

Don’t be afraid of the blank — it’s the best part. Fill it in with whatever you want, as many times as you like. Think big or small. Want to be a better Casanova? A better know-it-all? Better thrill seeker? Better fashionista? Everybody wants to better at something and we think you can find that nirvana on Yahoo!.

While the campaign spans many of our products, it highlights two products in particular: Yahoo! Answers and Yahoo! oneSearch. Using the special-sauce formula that’s worked so well in the past (our “Garden” spot won the third funniest commercial title in the U.S. last year), we’ll show you how dramatically different life is with and without Yahoo! — absurdly, of course, through man-eating plants, potent herbal enhancers, and spine-straightening laser beams. Check them out here! (Starting this Saturday, you can even mix and match your own endings — stay tuned.)

The television spots will debut tonight on NBC’s “Wedding Crashers,” “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” and “Last Call With Carson Daly” and ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” so wait until tomorrow to “be a better channel hopper.” They’ll also air over the next month during other shows on NBC, Fox, ABC, MTV, Comedy Central, fuse, and TBS, with radio spots airing today across major U.S. markets. And if you go to the movies this summer, you’ll want to get there before the previews start.

Now for the behind-the-scenes skinny: It took about a week to shoot both TV spots in Southern California. We brilliantly picked the coldest and windiest time of year to be in L.A.’s Griffith Park for the “Explorer” commercial. In fact, we almost had two casualties, as two rather substantial trees came crashing down on the precise location where I’d been standing with SoHo Square managing director Alda Abbracciamento just moments earlier.

For the “Handyman” shoot, we found ourselves in Downey (home of the world’s first Taco Bell restaurant) on an empty studio lot that looked like Wisteria Lane with just suburban facades. The most memorable moments came during breaks we had to take between every “Handyman” take to let the actor who played Grandpa take a load off. He often entertained us with toe-tapping harmonica jams. We also had a good time with the visitors who jumped out of hiding (gorillas, clowns, bikini-clad maidens, ninjas) — you’ll see them again when you remix your own commercial.

We had a blast pulling this campaign together, and hope you’ll enjoy interacting with it. Let us know what you think!

Allen Olivo
Vice President, Global Brand Marketing

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6 Comments Add your own

Sam | April 30th, 2007 at 3:05 am

Nice! Good work. I didn’t get the explorer ad the first time, though.

Joseph Hunkins | Joe Duck | April 30th, 2007 at 10:53 am

As a research person (and Yahoo shareholder) I’m very skeptical that the cost of this type of branding campaign yields a positive ROI, and I’m confident that the small cost / big scale social media campaigns would be much more productive for Yahoo’s branding efforts. Yahoo is, after all, an online company.

Why? Why do you do this silly stuff? Is there any research on ROI of past campaigns?

NO, Ogilvy concluding their branding campaign “worked” does not count!

Allen Olivo | May 2nd, 2007 at 6:19 pm

Thanks for your comments Joseph. To give you some background, we have several measurable objectives for this campaign, including brand awareness and relevance among our target customers, new Yahoo! Answers participants, and Yahoo! oneSearch trials and usage. This is a long-term effort across all Yahoo!’s properties and around the world, and a new way to look at “why you should Yahoo!”.

We’re an online marketer so the majority of the campaign is online and on Yahoo!. We’re deploying the best of viral and word-of-mouth tactics online to extend this campaign beyond traditional “media” boundaries, and do use other media to reach our customers where ever they may be. To address your point about ROI, we do employ a variety of measurements for our campaigns, managed by our research team. Our last major brand-building effort for the new Yahoo.com showed a very positive economic ROI, including new users, page views, and more people making Yahoo.com their default home page. We also saw positive response to appeal, relevance, and likelihood-to-recommend among target customers who were aware of the campaign vs. those who were not.

Most importantly, we feel we’re really creating a new model of brand-building, performance marketing, viral word-of-mouth marketing, and even platform-agnostic marketing (such as mobile messaging) that celebrates our users and gives them new ways to use Yahoo!.

Mark Edgette | June 4th, 2007 at 1:19 pm

Allen,

Your job is amazing. How exciting to be able to create your own campaign and then help with the filming and production as well. My youngest son, Mike(almost 20) is just finishing his Sophomore year @ Winona State (MN) and plans to go on for his Masters in advertising @ U of Minn.in Minneapolis.

Today marks the beginning of the last week of my special ed. teaching career after 31 years. I’ve been looking around for something new, but nothing interesting yet.(Well, except for the 4a-1p shift @ the cheese factory).

Anyhow, best of luck with the campaign and life. Catch me up on the details some day when you get a chance!

Peace and Love from Wisconsin

Mark

Richard L | July 20th, 2007 at 9:26 am

Keep up the great work Allen. You’ve come a long way since Grodin’s.

Dana | October 22nd, 2007 at 9:01 am

Hey Allen,

Read about you today in the WSJ. Hearty congrats!

Dana