JCOM 2300 Yahoo's new strategy

This week Yahoo! unveiled their new ad campaign. The campaign is essentially a brand campaign which hopes to build Yahoo's reputation with its customers as being user friendly. Taglines like "the Internet is under new management, YOURS," and "It's Y!ou," highlight Yahoo's aim to build credibility with new and future customers. 

The total cost of the brand campaign will be 100 million dollars and it will last approximately 15 months. There are critics of the campaign, which I agree with. Why would you spend so much money trying to get your brand name recognized when you are already the third most frequented website in the world? People know about Yahoo, the reason that people don't use it deals with how user friendly the features are. If Yahoo spent 100 million developing new features and improving their current content then I would be interested in checking their website out. If you have the best product you will naturally attract and keep customers. If you produce a good product, especially when you are one of the biggest names on the Internet word will get around. 

There is one other thing that makes me skeptical of Yahoo's new campaign, timing. Yahoo just hired a new CEO and reported its first loses in a quarterly report since 2002. In a competitive online marketplace Yahoo has struggled to stay ahead of the pack. This campaign looks like a re engineering effort to me. In order to stay in the mix they are looking to change their image, often times plans like this are too late. Companies that have surged ahead like Google will continue to innovate and grow, and the gap between them and Yahoo might follow suit. Yahoo's focus shouldn't be on brand recognition it should be on innovation. 

Source: PR week,  www.prweekus.com