If you’ve spent any time on the Web, a highway, a taxi, or in front of your TV lately, chances are you’ve seen elements of our new global brand campaign, which launched in the U.S. in September, in the U.K. and India earlier this month, and more markets to follow.

We decided to catch up with our chief marketing officer, Elisa Steele, to get some skinny on the effort. We asked her about the campaign’s genesis, the significance of the “It’s Y!ou” messaging, why we decided to launch a campaign now, why we went with a vignette approach in the campaign video, her favorite scenes, and why we introduced a new form of the Yahoo! yodel at the end of the new spot. Here’s the Q&A:

And we’re trying something new here — this is the first in a series that we’re dubbing Yahoo! Yodelcasts. We’ll interview Yahoos from all walks of life, share tips and advice, and take you behind the scenes. We’re all ears if there’s something you’re particularly interested in hearing about.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

In the two months we’ve been on Twitter, no tweet has gotten more replay than the one about the yodel that’s hidden in our homepage (just click the exclamation point in our logo and see for yourself). Clearly the sound of the Yahoo! yodel still makes people really happy. Which got me thinking about Wylie Gustafson, the guy who started it all back in 1996.

Wylie’s not some commercial voiceover talent. He’s the real deal — a true singing cowboy. He’s got the belt buckle, hat, ranch, and 20 horses to prove it. I caught up with Wylie to find out how on Earth he got his start in yodeling, how Yahoo! found him for our first ad campaign, how life has changed since then, what he’s doing now, and what it’s like to be the world’s most recognized yodeler. You can read a full transcript of the interview here. But for you multitasking, RSS feed-scanning, I-only-have-time-for-300-words-or-less types, here are some highlights:

• Wylie yodeled for brands like Mitsubishi, Taco Bell, Porsche, and Miller Light before creating his 3-note hit for Yahoo! in 1996.
• When our ad agency brought him into the recording studio, he came up with 10 different yodels of the name Yahoo! in a matter five minutes.
• Wylie yodels for a living with his “Wylie & the Wild West” band.
• Wylie’s yodeling notoriety has landed him gigs with A Prairie Home Companion, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. He has appeared on the Grand Ol Opry more than 50 times.
• Wylie trains cutting (or cattle) horses on a ranch near Dusty, Washington (population: 11).
• His dad was a Montana cowboy and ranch veterinarian and yodeled on horseback.
• Wylie learned to yodel from a reel-to-reel tape his aunt received from an Austrian ski team.
• Wylie and Yahoo! settled a lawsuit in 2002 after we inadvertently used his yodel in a national ad without the proper contract.
• Wylie toured the country as the emcee for the national Yahoo! Yodel Challenge in 2003. The winner, via write-in submission, was Taylor Ware, a 9-year-old who went on to becoming a finalist on “America’s Got Talent.”

And, yes, we’ve sent him his very own Insta-Yodel button. No home is complete without it.

Here’s Wylie in action, singing his most popular live song, about some guy who made it big by yodeling for a little Internet company in the mid-90s. And you can learn how to yodel like Wylie here.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Photo by Bill Watts