Q&A with Cammie Dunaway, Yahoo! Chief Marketing Officer

Q: What adjectives come to mind when you think Yahoo!?

A: Fun is always the first — from our employee environment to the personality that's ascribed to us. Any brand that has a whacky logo and a yodel as its signature has to have fun at its heart. Then I'd say either open or inclusive — it's a sense that there's something for everyone at Yahoo! and we embrace all types of people, interests, passions. Everybody can have a home here. And last, energetic. There's just always something going on.

Q: Describe Yahoo!'s marketing strategy and how it might differ from competitors.

Everything starts from an understanding of the consumer. That goes back to the heritage that Jerry and David brought to the company when they were sitting in that trailer at Stanford. It was all about putting stuff in the directory and seeing the feedback from people all over the world. So at the heart of the DNA of Yahoo! is consumer passion. Not sure that's the case for all of our competitors. In marketing, we try to think about the consumer insight in everything that we do and we try to help support the product team and engineers with innovation that will really delight our consumers because great marketing starts with great product and great innovation. And then we try to come out with marketing communications that really inspire action — inspire passion for our brand, discovery. The third point is that we're really focused on results here — we measure the impact of our programs and are very accountable for delivering on the programs we put together.

Q: Others may not take that approach?

We try to find a nice balance between marketing art and marketing science. We try to push the envelope creatively with things that will really connect to our consumers. We experiment and are constantly looking for new ways of engaging people with our brand. But we also measure, test, optimize, and use the best tools of marketing science. In my experience, most marketing departments either do one or the other. I think we really try to do both well.

Q: As a global brand, how does Yahoo!'s marketing approach differ in the U.S. vs. abroad.

I think it's pretty consistent around the world. It's very consumer-insight driven and we try to "put the yodel" in everything we do. So that might be creating the world's biggest brain in Times Square or creating a glass think tank in Australia where ad creatives are working 24 hours a day on online creative briefs, or it might be creating a campaign for an imaginary coffee in Taiwan. But it's all designed to get maximum impact, to get people talking, to surprise people, to keep the sense of fun and irreverence in the brand.

Q: You oversaw the Doritos "Bold & Daring" brand campaign, which was named the top campaign for 2001 by the American Advertising Association. Outside of Yahoo!, which campaigns do you personally enjoy?

I love the Mini Cooper campaign, because it was extremely interactive and it used online well. But they also did great things in print, where you could peel off little stickers. Great advertising today engages people with the product. I've really liked some of the work in the past year by Ikea because I think it's simple, surprising, iconic. And they also do a lot of innovative things like they set up living rooms with Ikea furniture in surprising public places to let people interact with the product. I think the work that Norelco did for their Body Shaver for Men is amazing. They needed to build awareness for a product that men are not comfortable talking about. Check out shaveeverywhere.com to see how they tackled it. It is hysterical. Also they did it all online with a pretty small budget and blew past all their sales goals. Another great online campaign is the work Ogilvy did for Ameritrade. It was great use of video and really drew the audience into the story.

Q: What's the one thing in your cube you can't work without?

Probably my photographs because they're of the people who inspire me: my mom, who really taught me how to dream and work hard to achieve those dreams, and my son Davis, who's 7 and I know is going to be my best source of market information. For example, Davis' best friend, who's Korean, recently came back from visiting Korea. Davis now tells me about all the cool stuff they do in Korea and how we need to do more of that. Davis’ friend showed him this super cool game on Yahoo! Korea that he now plays all the time in spite of not being able to understand any of the Korean characters!

Q: Are there any campaign concepts that went too far that we decided not to pursue?

One of the things that I really had to reflect on last year was my feelings about our event with Howard Stern and whether I felt it was appropriate for the Yahoo! brand to be associated with him because he's not someone who reflects my personal values. But what I realized, and it was kind of an "ah-ha" moment for me, was that the Yahoo! brand is so open and inclusive that there's room for everybody. We weren't advocating Howard Stern — we were saying that Yahoo! is a place that will empower all the people who do love Howard to come together, share their photos, their podcasts, use an avatar that showed how they felt about him. So it was much more about Yahoo! empowering communities than it was Yahoo! connecting with Howard Stern. Also, I think we would never do anything that we felt was really mean-spirited. It's irreverence but it's fun and light. It's goofy in a good way, as some of our consumers have described it.

Q: How are brands changing with word-of-mouth marketing?

You can't put the kinds of controls around what people say about your brand that you could in the past. So I think as a marketer now you have to think much more about "What can I do to create great brand experiences?," because you're not going to be able to just rely on your communications tools.

Q: Why not?

Information is so transparent. If one person has a bad experience with our brand and puts it on their blog, and that gets linked to by hundreds of other blogs, or they do a video in the case of AOL customer service — you can't hide.

Q: So what does that mean for the marketer?

It means they have to spend a lot more time working on great product experiences and listening to the consumer, rather than just thinking about marketing communications.

Q: What role can user-generated content play? Are there precautions?

We did a campaign for "My Yahoo! Is Changing" with user-generated content. But one of the things we realized in watching some of the other attempts, like the Chevy Tahoe remix campaign, is that you really need to go to the consumers who are most passionate and loyal. You don't open it up for everybody to create brand messages for you. Yahoo! Music's Shakira "Fans Only" video is a terrific example of that. You only reach out to the people who love Shakira.

Q: What were some fun moments from your past ad shoots?

One great story was a Doritos spot we did with Enrique Iglesias. We'd talked to the stylist about keeping his wardrobe simple — black T-shirt, jeans. And then he came out of his trailer wearing a T-shirt with a "Circle R Ranch" logo on it. I had to go up and delicately say, "Your T-shirt looks really great… but we have to be really careful about legal issues. So I think it would probably be better if you didn't wear that T-shirt." He kind of growled at me, went back into the trailer and came back out a few minutes later with the same T-shirt on inside out! The stylist eventually helped get him in the black T-shirt. Also, we pushed the envelope in the Doritos "Bold and Daring" campaign. It was targeted at males 18–24, and the setup was that you'd see someone doing something bold and then something daring. So we had this paraplegic playing basketball, which is really cool and bold. And then you see him being daring by dunking the basket with his prosthetic leg, which actually won all kinds of awards from American with Disabilities because of the positive portrayal. But then I had another one with a male cheerleader. He lifts the woman up, which was bold. But then he looked up her skirt, which was daring! And so now at Yahoo! we have this butt-toucher spot...

Q: And I understand that you had to tell the skeptics that if the word butt-toucher wasn't used in our current ad campaign, the spot would not be used.

You can't take the butt out of the butt-toucher. But I love working on brands that have permission to be a bit irreverent. I still wouldn't do anything that would embarrass my mother, but it's OK if she doesn’t get it.