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

At Yahoo!, we talk about Purple quite a bit. Some folks internally would say we’re obsessed with it, in fact. From our earliest days, Purple has been the official color of Yahoo!. You can see it in our offices –- our furniture, our building signs, even our sprinkler heads. You can also see it out in the world –- we’ve created Purple taxi cabs, Purple trains, even Purple brains. Every day, visitors to Yahoo! hear us talking about Thinking Purple and Bleeding Purple… Yes, we take it that seriously.

Why Purple? Back in 1996, our humble digs needed quite a bit of renovation so our co-founder, David Filo (notoriously frugal), went out to buy some paint at the store. Once everyone had painted most of one large wall under dim fluorescent lighting, they stepped back and realized Filo had bought light purple (it was probably on sale). From that day on, Purple stuck.

But Purple ’s not just about the paint on the wall. It’s not just the blend of blue and red. It’s not just the latest trend in gardening and fashion (though it is). Purple is the color of innovation and ingenuity. It’s fun and youthful, but also courageous and daring. It represents a spirit of individuality but also a sense of connectedness with others. For us, it represents the spirit of our company, our culture and our products –- Purple is Yahoo!.

As a resident brand marketing guy (though we often say that the Yahoo! brand is too important to be left in the hands of brand marketers), I’m pleased to share that we’re launching a variety of Purple projects over the next few days and weeks. We’re embracing our Purple and sharing the spirit and pride with hundreds of millions of users who, perhaps, feel a bit of that spirit and pride as well.

“Start Wearing Purple” is the theme (and theme song) of this effort to celebrate Purple. It’s not about selling Yahoo! clothing – though we do have some amazing new limited-edition gear coming in from partners like Pony, tokidoki, big wave surfing legend Jeff Clark, Mimoco, and more. “Start Wearing Purple” is about celebrating that unique, charmingly eccentric side of all of us. You’ll see and hear about Purple Picks, the best Purple content from across the web hand-picked by Yahoo!; Purple Photos on Flickr and omg!; Purple Pranks with our friend Charlie Todd from Improv Everywhere; Purple Bikes that take photos; and even some Purple Acts of Kindness. And you’ll meet the Pioneers of Purple, inspiring people who’ve changed the world by following their passions and pursuing their dreams. “Start Wearing Purple” is, quite simply, an invitation to embrace and share the Purple in you.

Check out what we’re up to at startwearingpurple.com. And may some of that Purple pride rub off on you.

Purple reigns,
Nick Chavez
Senior Director, Brand Advertising

I get one response, and one response only, when I tell people I help manage advertising at Yahoo! — “Ya-hooooo!”. We’ve been lucky enough to create some pretty funny, memorable ads over the years, and even luckier to create the oft-repeated and oft-imitated Yahoo! yodel. We get requests all the time for the audio file as well as our logo and even copies of our ads. Talent rights and licensing issues make it difficult (OK, expensive!) to share many of our really old ads, but the good news is that we’re opening up the door for you to create your own Yahoo! ads using our logos and even our yodel.

The theme of this new marketing program is “Your Yahoo! is changing.” It’s an admittedly irreverent celebration of our new Yahoo.com home page. And rather than hiring a production company, our ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather, worked with film schools around the world (including the London Film Academy, Yale, Parsons The New School in New York, and the Art Institute of California — San Francisco) to produce 11 new commercials, each with a unique take on the theme. You can check them all out here.

The film students were amazing to work with — they submitted over 100 treatments to our agency, met with our creative directors, argued with our creative directors, and ultimately proposed such amazingly creative and imaginative work that we’re using it in an ad campaign running all over the Internet right now. Here’s a fun little behind-the-scenes video on how the students used talking fruit, pirates, robots, line drawings, and longshoremen to get the point across.

Now, we’re inviting you to create your very own commercial. Click the “Make Your Own Video” link on the campaign site to download scripts, Yahoo! logos, and even our yodel. So all you budding filmmakers, ad critics, marketing skeptics, and honorary Yahoos, go ahead — give it a shot. We hope you enjoy the program and find the spots as funny, charming, and, well, odd as we do.

Cheers,

Nick Chavez
Marketing Director, Advertising & Media

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UPDATE: As part of this campaign, we decided to roam our campus to find out how just how Yahoo! is changing. We discovered our fellow employees play with their Yahoo! quite often. Have a look.