How do you “spread the yodel” and delight your audience without spending a million bucks? Get creative!

That’s the M.O. behind our Buzz Marketing department, a team of creative types that regularly dream up never-been-done-before gigs to get Yahoo! a bit of attention. Over the years, their more grassroots campaigns have included a Yahoo!-branded Zamboni, the first Internet-connected taxi and Amtrak train, an impromptu Shakira concert in Times Square, a search for the greenest city in America, a bachelorette living on a Los Angeles billboard in search of the perfect man, pedicabs and hot cocoa at the Olympics, and the world’s largest brain, flea market, snow globe, haystack (wherein visitors sought needles), parade of Santas, etc.

We recently empowered Yahoos to come up with Buzz campaign ideas of their own (on a shoestring, of course) to share some purple love. And two guys from our headquarters and Portland, Oregon, offices had a mind meld: surprise rainy-day train commuters with 150 Yahoo!-branded umbrellas. (What’s effective marketing without a little useful schwag?)

Alex Huang and some colleagues set up camp at dawn at a Starbucks near a Portland MAX train (the local commuter rail). Portlanders accepted their purple and white umbrellas with glee — including a transit cop, who rolled up on his Segway, not to cite them but to snag one for himself. The bumbershoots were gone within 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, down in San Francisco, Sreevatsan Rama assembled a street team outside the Caltrain station. In spite of inaccurate shower predictions by our perennially weather-befuddled meteorologists, the umbrellas went like hotcakes. When asked “Do you Yahoo?,” recipients responded with “Of course, it’s my homepage!” and oft-used product names like Mail, Maps, Search, Autos, Finance, etc. were called out into the air.

Except, of course, the guy who just smiled and pointed to the Google logo on his backpack. Oddly, he didn’t accept an umbrella.

There are plenty more ideas in the hopper. So don’t be surprised to see eager, tchotchke-laden Yahoos in a city near you. They might even make you yodel.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor