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

When our ad agency, Soho Square, came to me with new ad creative that involved wedgies, I was pretty sure they were onto something. This Thursday, Yahoo! will launch its first major brand campaign in two years, with a variety of television, radio, cinema, and online spots. But today, dear reader, we offer you a sneak preview (complete with outtakes). And yes, there’s a super-wedgie involved.

The theme of the campaign is that life is just a little better with Yahoo!. (OK, maybe more than a little better.) The campaign highlights our new home page along with a few other recent arrivals, including Yahoo! Answers and the Yahoo! Mail Beta. It also uses our classic “Do You Yahoo!?” tagline, which was born alongside our signature yodel in 1996.

Produced in partnership with Soho Square and OgilvyOne Worldwide, the new spots will debut on season premieres of “My Name Is Earl” and “Grey’s Anatomy” on Thursday night (save the bathroom and snack runs until later). They’ll also air elsewhere on NBC and ABC as well as on Fox, E!, TBS, MTV, and Comedy Central. The campaign will run in major U.S. radio markets, web sites in 14 countries, and in movie theaters across the country.

We twist the old problem/solution angle in our usual quirky way — showing people in scenarios like gardening, confronting the school bully, and wrangling defective airbags, with and without Yahoo!. I won’t say any more. Go see the TV spots for yourself (click on each of the images below) — and then come back and finish reading…

OK, are you done yet? Since everyone loves a little insider skinny, here’s some trivia about our television ads:

• They were directed by Craig Gillespie, who won a 2005 Emmy for “Surprise Dinner,” last year’s hilarious Super Bowl spot for Ameriquest, that features a woman jumping to conclusions when she sees her significant other holding a knife and her marinara-covered Persian.
• All of the spots were shot in Los Angeles. “Bully” was centered in John Burroughs Middle School, “Garden” was filmed in Studio City and “Recall” (the spot involving the faulty airbag) took up 10 residential blocks in Sherman Oaks (yet only a few neighbors loitered to watch bodies being catapulted through car windows… hey, it’s L.A.).
• “Recall” was particularly challenging to produce because it involved computer-generated imagery to connect four different shots: the airbag deployment, the dummy exploding through the window from inside and then outside, and finally the driver standing up and dusting himself off. The window was made of “sugar glass” and took 30 minutes to reinstall each time we shattered it. There were a few comical mishaps, like the time the CO2 cartridge fired the airbag and nothing happened, and when the dummy’s cord snapped through the window leaving the dummy sitting behind the wheel.
• We had a bunch of animal wranglers on the set during the filming of “Garden.” The dog was specifically trained to emerge from his “grave,” although he forgot to shake his first time out. Fred, a Cairn Terrier with his own embroidered blanket, was very well-behaved, showed up on time, and ate the lunch we provided without complaint.
• There were more parents than children on the set for “Bully.” That’s to be expected with anything that involves Fruit of the Loom. But the moms were happy.
• The car in “Recall” is a fictional “Hybris J7.” And no, you can’t buy one.
• W.C. Fields warned, “Never work with children or animals.” In “Garden” we did both and survived.
• We asked our agency to come up with a few alternatives to the phrase “butt-toucher” but somehow “booty-grabber” and “wedgie-guy” didn’t have the same ring. The spot tested phenomenally well with 18- to 24-year-olds; not so much with the older crowd. But we’re trying to connect with a bunch of age groups.

Let us know what you think of the spots. Oh, I almost forgot! This Friday, in appreciation of the millions of people who start their day with Yahoo!, everyone who makes Yahoo.com their default homepage can head to the local Dunkin’ Donuts for a free cup of iced coffee. Just print your voucher and redeem it between 9 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. (or close of business) at all participating locations while supplies last. A fun promotion on our home page will remind you. Enjoy!

Allen Olivo
Vice President, Corporate Marketing