Yahoo Tries Again With A New Phase Of Its Big Budget Ad Campaign

Yahoo Times Square

With the $100 million branding campaign it launched last fall largely considered to be a failure, Yahoo is trying again. The WSJ says Yahoo will now spend between $75 million and $85 million on a new phase of the campaign with the slogan, “Your favorite stuff all in one place. Make Yahoo your home page.” (The company clarifies that the $75 million to $85 million figure is part of the initial $100 million). The phase is designed “to get people to interact with our products,” according to chief marketing officer Elisa Steele.

That clarity is a contrast to the first phase of the campaign, which had the tagline “It’s You” and was much more “feel-goodish” with a multi-country TV commercial that talked about the “wow” of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). The campaign and the ad were panned across the web — including here — for not putting enough emphasis on Yahoo’s products.

Yahoo seems to have learned its lesson, since according to the WSJ’s report, the new phase will “include marketing gimmicks that give consumers the chance to try Yahoo products.” Strangely, though, Yahoo seems intent to pick a fight with Google (NSDQ: GOOG). One online video contrasts the two sites and states that unlike Google, Yahoo “doesn’t hustle you out the door.” We haven’t seen the video, but It’s embedded below and the obvious retort would be that the point of a search site is to get you out the door to the site you’re trying to find!

Almost from the start, there were signs that all was not well for Yahoo’s first campaign, despite Yahoo’s claims to the contrary. Just a month into the campaign, Yahoo replaced Ogilvy & Mather with Goodby as its lead ad agency. And Yahoo’s claims that the campaign had boasted homepage engagement between 3 and 5 percent during its first month were mocked when SAI pointed out that the increase could be explained by the fact that October had one more day than September.

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