Internet search titan Yahoo announced plans yesterday to trumpet its revamped search page and enhanced features in a global advertising campaign complete with trademark company yodel.
"We are bringing back that Yahoo spirit uniquely in an updated, celebratory way," Allen Olivo, company vice president of worldwide marketing said. "Hearing that yodel again, I think, will make people very happy."
Olivo was referring to the yodeling of the Santa Clara, California, search engine's name that has long served as an audible exclamation mark for its advertising.
Yahoo ads would be online, in theaters, played on radio stations and shown on television beginning on Thursday in what Olivo described as "by far the biggest roll-out in recent time."
Newspapers and magazines would be skipped, according to the ad plan. Aspects of the campaign were to be played out in 14 countries.
"It is a way of saying `Yahoo!' again and having fun," Olivo said. "Yahoo is an interactive marketer and from time to time we like to use mass media as punctuation."
New Yahoo ads offered humorous depictions of parallel lives; one in which the protagonist used Yahoo and the other in which they did not.
In one, the fate of a school boy being hounded by a bully is dictated by whether he got an e-mail warning from a classmate, a preview showed.
In another, a barbecue host is transformed from blundering to brilliant by being in the know regarding the woes faced by his friends.
"We are creating dual worlds of life with Yahoo and life without Yahoo," Olivo said. "Showing, in a quirky way, the benefits of using Yahoo."
He added there was "some irreverent" ad content along the lines of "My boyfriend stays up all night playing with his Yahoo" and "My husband's Yahoo hasn't looked this good in years."
Yahoo unveiled a transformed main Web page earlier this year in a shift to focus on online social networking services for its more than 500 million users worldwide.
For example, "Yahoo Answers" lets users pose questions to the search engine's community and a "Pulse" feature provides updates regarding trends or stories getting the most online attention.
"The bigger picture here is we have more than half a billion people a month who use Yahoo," Olivo said. "That is about half the Internet users in the world. We'd like the other half to come in and use Yahoo as well."
Yahoo declined to reveal how much money it would spend on the campaign and claimed the push was not driven by the intense competition between Internet search engines for devotees whose visits translate into advertising revenue.
"This campaign is not a response to any other competitor or market factor; I can't emphasis that more strongly," Olivo said.
"This is about getting people to come and see the great things we have," he said.
TYPHOON: The storm’s path indicates a high possibility of Krathon making landfall in Pingtung County, depending on when the storm turns north, the CWA said Typhoon Krathon is strengthening and is more likely to make landfall in Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said in a forecast released yesterday afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the CWA’s updated sea warning for Krathon showed that the storm was about 430km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point. It was moving in west-northwest at 9kph, with maximum sustained winds of 119kph and gusts of up to 155kph, CWA data showed. Krathon is expected to move further west before turning north tomorrow, CWA forecaster Wu Wan-hua (伍婉華) said. The CWA’s latest forecast and other countries’ projections of the storm’s path indicate a higher
SLOW-MOVING STORM: The typhoon has started moving north, but at a very slow pace, adding uncertainty to the extent of its impact on the nation Work and classes have been canceled across the nation today because of Typhoon Krathon, with residents in the south advised to brace for winds that could reach force 17 on the Beaufort scale as the Central Weather Administration (CWA) forecast that the storm would make landfall there. Force 17 wind with speeds of 56.1 to 61.2 meters per second, the highest number on the Beaufort scale, rarely occur and could cause serious damage. Krathon could be the second typhoon to land in southwestern Taiwan, following typhoon Elsie in 1996, CWA records showed. As of 8pm yesterday, the typhoon’s center was 180km
TYPHOON DAY: Taitung, Pingtung, Tainan, Chiayi, Hualien and Kaohsiung canceled work and classes today. The storm is to start moving north this afternoon The outer rim of Typhoon Krathon made landfall in Taitung County and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島) at about noon yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, adding that the eye of the storm was expected to hit land tomorrow. The CWA at 2:30pm yesterday issued a land alert for Krathon after issuing a sea alert on Sunday. It also expanded the scope of the sea alert to include waters north of Taiwan Strait, in addition to its south, from the Bashi Channel to the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島). As of 6pm yesterday, the typhoon’s center was 160km south of
STILL DANGEROUS: The typhoon was expected to weaken, but it would still maintain its structure, with high winds and heavy rain, the weather agency said One person had died amid heavy winds and rain brought by Typhoon Krathon, while 70 were injured and two people were unaccounted for, the Central Emergency Operation Center said yesterday, while work and classes have been canceled nationwide today for the second day. The Hualien County Fire Department said that a man in his 70s had fallen to his death at about 11am on Tuesday while trimming a tree at his home in Shoufeng Township (壽豐). Meanwhile, the Yunlin County Fire Department received a report of a person falling into the sea at about 1pm on Tuesday, but had to suspend search-and-rescue
RSS