How we made our “Anthem”

Posted September 29th, 2009 at 10:30 am by Nick Chavez, Vice President, Integrated Marketing

 14 Comments / Filed in: Behind the Scenes, Video

An anthem is a song of praise or loyalty.  Our anthem is dedicated to you, to the 500 million other “you’s” who frequent Yahoo! every month, and to the billions of new “you’s” who will visit in the years to come. Yahoo! has a simple promise: We will strive to be the center of your online lives by connecting you with the people and things that matter most.

To bring this promise to life, we shot a series of videos, lush vignettes set in multiple countries around the world, intended to represent the beauty, vitality, and diversity of you.  We used the best of that video library to create the 60-second anthem you see below:

There were some great creative minds and stories behind the video footage.  Our advertising agency Ogilvy assembled a star-studded production team that designed, shot and edited the videos in about a month.  The team included director Samuel Bayer, who directed Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around Comes Around”; costume designer Colleen Atwood, who won Academy Awards for her work in “Chicago” and “Memoirs of a Geisha”; Longinus Fernandes, the choreographer from “Slumdog Millionaire;” and Patrick Lumb, production designer for “Valkyrie.”  The result of their work is a tapestry of scenes that reflect the core brand attributes of Yahoo! — human, fun and inventive — expressed by people like you.  Every shot, every expression has a story to tell.

We shot in five cities around the world– Los Angeles, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, London and Hong Kong.   We braved the summer heat in the Mojave desert.  We got caught in a monsoon in Mumbai with only Pokemon (!!) slickers to keep us dry.  We fished for a soccer ball in the Arabian Sea using a bucket.  There was plenty of action behind the scenes.  Here are some fun tidbits about a few of the key shots:

• Dancers in feathers: The dancers’ feathered skirts and headdresses were all hand-made by Colleen Atwood and her team. In the last scene, the lead dancer floating to the camera is suspended by cables.  And guess how many total dancers there are… only four.
• Rose petals in the desert: We’re an environmentally conscious company. We actually swept up every rose petal during our time in the Mojave and brought them back to our studios in LA (okay, permits required us to do so as well).
• Man jumping across frame: This scene is meant to evoke how using Yahoo! propels people to go further and to achieve more. We got the effect by having a gymnast jump from a trampoline across a picture frame suspended 25 feet. He nailed it on the first take.
• Ice cream cone kid: Spencer is our star 4-year old who you’ll see not only in this commercial, but also in various ads on the Web and in print. If you’re an Oprah viewer, look for Spencer at the end of her show.
• Soccer players: Soccer is the best way to illustrate the global nature of sports and to show Yahoo! as the place where sports fans share their passions. We shot these scenes in Los Angeles, Mumbai, London and Rio de Janeiro. The take in Mumbai was an ordeal. Besides the torrential downpour, our only soccer ball ended up in the Arabian Sea after the first take.
• Celebrity paparazzi: Millions of people visit Yahoo! for entertainment, celebrity gossip, and news.  A small crowd of people showed up in Los Angeles the day we were shooting to try to catch a glimpse of our “stars.”
• Video game character: This scene represents the online games available on Yahoo! Games. The “purple gobbler” character was created for us from scratch.
• Keystone cops: This is a tongue-in-cheek nod to Yahoo! Finance, one of our most popular sites. We shot this in the studio and employed techniques used during the days of silent pictures (the guy with the money bags is running on a treadmill).  Take a close look at the tires on the police car.
• Club scene: Shot in Filmistan Studios in Mumbai, the dance sequence was arranged by Longinus Fernandes, who also choreographed the final dance sequence in “Slumdog Millionaire.”  The “club smoke” you see is actually dust and dirt from the floor of the sound stage.
• Walking exclamation point: We climbed up to a rooftop in lower Mumbai to get this shot.
• Light artist: This scene features an LA artist “painting” the air with an LED flashlight. In post production, the effects company, Method, tracked the point of light he emitted and mapped lighting effects to the path. It emphasizes Yahoo! as a source of creativity. This effect harkens back to a similar photo taken of Pablo Picasso in his studio (link).
• The yodel: One of the highlights of our brand campaign is the re-launch of our signature yodel. Listen carefully at the end of the commercial. You’ll notice there isn’t one voice yodeling, but many. We recorded literally hundreds of different people yodeling and then blended them together to create a chorus. We wanted the new yodel to sound full and global, and to evoke a cheer from all the people around the world who visit Yahoo!.

There are many, many other amazing scenes that you will see in the weeks and months ahead.  Our plan is to leverage this library of video footage in online formats, in additional television commercials, on mobile phones, and even in digital billboards.  It began airing yesterday in the US, and you’ll see it in the UK and India starting October 5, and in other markets in 2010, including Brazil, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, and Taiwan.

We hope you enjoy Anthem, and, more importantly, we hope you see YOU in it.

Nick Chavez
Vice President, Integrated Marketing

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14 Comments Add your own

Dave | September 29th, 2009 at 2:24 pm

Great job. I love how positive it is.

Except the shots of girls just shacking their booty is out of place and character with the ad. It seems this is a HUGE oversight.

Alexei | September 30th, 2009 at 12:59 am

Why YouTube video, not Yahoo video in doc.?

jucarii | September 30th, 2009 at 5:16 am

5 Cities around the world just for this? Great, great work. Go Yahoooo!

Jon Hoar | September 30th, 2009 at 5:47 am

The backing track is superb. I bet people will be looking for it… I hear it’s an original composition – why not make an extended version of the song available for Yahoo! users to download for free?

gag | September 30th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

nice ad it made me happy and sad coz its about nice things but also misses out the sad things, off-course i guess its being practical right, who will see a ad with many real world realities, anyway i loved all the colors in it

well everything seems to revolve around products and ads, i mean their are lot of people who cant buy products or most of the ads will not matter in their life

however a person in their environment talks, sees, communicates, shares, works, etc.,
how can the Internet and Yahoo! create value out of this

skill based work n jobs should be on equal scale

gag | October 1st, 2009 at 12:00 pm

should search results be provided based on what the user already knows about the subject, can a search engine do this
or what the users tells about the query and based on that the results are given

gag | October 1st, 2009 at 12:05 pm

i love Yahoo! but Yahoo! does not seem to like me or want me, makes me sad
i am glad i get to post my comments here but still

me | October 2nd, 2009 at 5:51 am

Sweet!

Holt | October 2nd, 2009 at 10:35 am

Bravo! Keep up the great work.

Steven | October 5th, 2009 at 2:21 pm

Nice ad. But don’t talk about an ad as if it’s an actual business accomplishment. It’s just an ad intended to make people feel good about your brand. And those “apps” on the front page are mostly just links to other sites. An app is an application that would run in your environment. Come on. I’m sure you’ll censor this post but please pass it on.

Brain Gym | November 13th, 2009 at 5:46 am

This is a decent ad, but I think the best shots were of Hong Kong. They seemed “real” with real people. The other stuff was just Hollywood fluff. Boring, fake and designed to sell.

I’ve been to India and this whole India part is just BS fantasy. India is nothing like that nor are the people like that. Again, more Hollywood fluff.

London was alright, but can’t we get more creative than shooting at the Tower Bridge and the Tube? So cliche.

Again, whoever worked the shots in Hong Kong should be getting a medal. Definitely the most convincing part of the ad and something this ad needs more of.

jason | November 24th, 2009 at 6:17 pm

the girl from 0:43~0:46 goes to stanford med school. funny…

Nino Amato | December 6th, 2009 at 12:08 pm

The Yahoo New Anthem ad was outstanding and the subtle message is international friendship and peace. I especially like the lead feather dancer floating to the top of the camera . . . she just happens to be my youngest daughter.

An | December 24th, 2009 at 3:24 am

The ad being shown in India is different apart from some sequences moved around and the translation, there is an extra shot where a person is carrying the Yahoo exclamation (purple cardboard) on a scooter.