Yahoo! goes all out in its search for more market share
Just a decade back, Yahoo! upstaged internet (primarily search) brands like Altavista, Excite and Northern Light to almost become a household name in cyberspace. And when Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang launched Yahoo! in India, he invited veteran Bollywood actor Shammi Kapoor (who shouted ‘Yahoooo’ in the picture ‘Junglee’) to launch the site.
The game-plan worked well till internet search giant Google turned the tables on Yahoo! In India as well.
But in a bid to recover lost ground and capture marketshare, Yahoo! has just initiated a $100 million global plan. India is an integral part of the Ogilvy campaign which reads: “The internet is under a new management — YOURS. It’s Y!ou’.
The internet company is going all out to promote the brand. The campaign, which will run for a couple of years in different avatars, was launched with power jacket ads in many national dailies. Simultaneously, the ‘Y!ou’ campaign’s 30- and 60-second television commmercials are being aired along with the campaigns on the internet and mobile devices. The campaign includes out-of-home advertisements and is being extended to cybercafés. Even movie star Deepika Padukone, a Yahoo! fan, has been roped in to share her experiences with the media.
“We want the world to know that Yahoo remains a very strong brand and there’s a lot more to us than mere search. We want the user to get everything in one place — and that should be Yahoo!,” asserts Yahoo! India MD, Arun Tadanki, who took charge this May.
That, however, could be a tall order. Consider this. Nearly one out of every 10 minutes a person spends online around the world is spent on a Google site, according to Comscore (July) data. And in India alone, Google sites accounted for 88.4 per cent of all searches conducted, and had a commanding share of time spent in social networking. It also commanded slightly less than half of the time spent in the blogs category.
“If this makes you think that Yahoo! is a spent force in India, consider these figures,” counters Tadanki. Yahoo! properties in India, according to the same Comscore (July) data, reached 24 million unique users per month. Its front page (homepage), for instance, gets nearly 17 million unique visitors. Yahoo’s cricket site in India has over one million unique visitors.
Yahoo! India Mail reaches over 70 per cent of the total monthly Indian online population. The Yahoo! India instant messenger (IM) reaches over 77 per cent of the total monthly Indian online population.
Yahoo! India Search reaches over 26.6 per cent of the total monthly Indian online Search users.
“Marketing is only a part of our strategy,” explains Tadanki, adding: “More important are the changes we’ve introduced.” For instance, on October 5 (the day the campaign was launched), Yahoo’s new home page, which was in beta since December 2008, went fully live and became the default option for all users. “This is a different approach. It puts power in the hands of the user, and we believe it’s a huge step forward,” says Tadanki.
Yahoo! India is also leveraging its global alliances to make the offerings on its homepage more attractive. It has tie-ups with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to make up for the lacunae of not having one currently (although it may introduce its social networking site ‘Meme’ which is currently being used in countries like Brazil). Besides, it has agreements with sites like AOL and BBC to give users a “wholesome” offering.
Brand experts say Yahoo! hardly had any other option. “From a forerunner, Yahoo! began being perceived as an ‘also-ran’. Now it’s attempting to change this image with the ‘co-creation’ theme and marketing. However, given that there’s little differentiation from what other websites are doing, the campaign may not be very effective. Search engine, for instance, is a habit and users don’t change service providers unless there’s a compelling reason. What Yahoo! may succeed in doing is to pull in new users,” opines Harish Bijoor, CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., a consulting firm that specialises in brand and business strategy.
Nevertheless, Tadanki insists: “The initial feedback is very positive. However, we are not interested in short spikes (like more traffic to the page, etc.). We see this campaign as part of a larger brand promise that we’re making to our users.”
