marketing - Industrial Engineering

MANAGING PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS CHAPTER 19 539
will do with their online messages and activity. Consumers could place a video in undesir­
able or unseemly places.
But many feel the pros outweight the cons, and the Web is attracting marketers of all
kinds. Visa blanketed the Web with rich media ads as a major component of its first new
brand campaign in 20 years, "Life Takes Visa." To reinforce its image as a technology innova­
tor, IBM launched an online campaign for two new B2B platforms, "What Makes You
Special?" and "Take Back Control." Amgen and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals used a series of
online ads to build awareness for the rheumatoid arthritis drug Enbrel. 28
To capitalize on advertisers' interest, firms are rushing online services and other support
to marketers. Microsoft has invested in a broad range of businesses for placing ads on the
Web, videogames, mobile phones and alongside Internet search results. "Breakthrough
Marketing: Yahoo!" describes that company's online efforts.
For marketers of automobiles, financial services, personal computers, and telecommuni­
cations, marketing activities on the Web have become crucial. But others are quickly follow­
ing. Although beauty pioneer Estee Lauder said she relied on three means of communica­
tion to build her multimillion-dollar cosmetics business-"telephone, telegraph, and tell a
woman"-she would now have to add the Web, which helps to support brands such as its
antiaging treatment, Advanced Night Repair Concentrate. 29 Consumer packaged-goods
giants such as Procter & Gamble, General Mills, and Kraft are also significantly increasing
.their online budgets. Pepsi spent between 5% and 10% of its overall ad budget online in
2006, compared to just 1% in 2001, because of its cost-effectiveness. 3o
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BREAKTHROUGH
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MARKETING
which enables users to specify their favorite Yahoo! features and con-
tent to fit a single page. With a database of information about where
its millions of registered users live and what their interests are, Yahoo!
can present users with both more relevant search results and more
relevant advertising. Each month more than 475 million people worldwide
visit one of its myriad sites, with billions of page views each day.
Yahoo! continues to expand. Its acquisition of photo-sharing ser­
vice Flickr in March 2005, social bookmark manager del.icio.us, and
online video editing site Jumpcut strengthened the company's capa­
bilities in those areas. In March 2005, it launched its blogging and
social network service Yahoo! 360°. Its mobile display advertising
platform on the company's Yahoo! Mobile Web service (m.yahoo.com)
allows advertisers to reach consumers around the globe on their
mobile phones.
A large percentage of revenues comes from advertising, but the
company continues to supplement its revenues through subscription
sources such as online personal ads, premium e-mail products, and
services for small businesses. In February 2007, Yahoo! launched a
new search advertising system, Panama, to increase the quality of its
search results as well the advertising revenue it generales from search.
Yahoo! attracts a diverse range of advertisers. A long-time fan is
Pepsi, an early sign-up for the mobile service. "We've had excep­
tional results reaching our consumers on Yahoo! online," said John
Vail, director of interactive marketing, Pepsi-Cola North America.
"Now we can reach consumers when they're on the move and com­
municate with them in a way we haven't before."
Yahoo! has grown from a tiny upstart surrounded by Silicon Valley
heavyweights to a poweriul force in Internet media. David Filo and Jerry
Yang, two computer science PhD students at Stanford University, created
asimple search engine In 1994. Using a homemade filing system,
the pair cataloged sites on the newly created World Wide Web and pub-
Iished the directory, called Jerry and David's Guide to the Worlej Wide
Web, on the Internet. They named their effort Yahoo! after they left
school to devote their full attention to the business.
From its start, Yahoo! conveyed an irreverent attitude that came
from the top of the corporate ladder, in the personalities of Filo and
Yang. The two had conceived of Yahoo! while housed "in trailers full
of pizza boxes," and each of their business cards bore the title "Chief
Yahoo!" The name even contains a hidden joke-Yahoo is a selfdeprecating
acronym meaning "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious
Oracle." Yahool's marketing reflected the company's style as well: In
one ad, Eskimos ordered a hot tub online. For years, each ad closed
with the tag line "Do You Yahoo!?" and the signature "Yahoo!" yodel,
an audio cue to reinforce brand recall.
Yahoo! has worked hard to be more than just a search engine.
The company proudly proclaims it is, "The only place anyone needs
to go to find anything, communicate with anyone, or buy anything."
Its wide range of Web services includes e-mail, news, weather,
music, photos, games, shopping, auctions, travel, and more.
Yahoo! sees one of its main advantages over rival Google as its
vast array of original content. Yahoo l partners with hundreds of premier
content proViders to offer a personalization option in My Yahoo!,
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YAHOO!
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ources: Catherine Holahan, "Yahoo!'s Bid to Think Small:' BusinessWeek, February 26, 2007, p. 94; Ben Elgin, "Yahoo!'s Boulevard of Bmken Dreams," BusinessWeek,
March 13, 2006, pp. 76-77; Justin Hibbard, "How Yahoo! Gave itself a Face-Lift," BusinessWeek. October 9, 2006, pp. 74-77; Kevin J. Delaney, "As Yahoo! Falters,
Executive's Memo Calls for Overhaul:' Wall Street Journal, November 18, 2006; "Yahoo!'s Personality Crisis:' Economist, August 13, 2005, pp. 49-50; Fred Vogelstein,
"Yahoo!'s Brilliant Solution:' Fortune, August 8, 2005, pp. 42-55.
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