smile and nod, smile and nod.

despite the fact that i've dropped out of the marketing rat race, i continue to take a bit of interest in the way certain companies package themselves. on the radar this morning is yahoo, who appears to have forsaken its previous tactic of whoring itself to the business community in favor of a more personal touch. its most recent spate of irritating banner ads is a series (i've found three so far) featuring yahoo 'employees' (and by 'employees' i mean 'carefully chosen faces representing the different ethnic groups frequently stereotyped into association with the tech industry) and what they're doing for you: parvalli is on virus watch. hao keeps you spam-free; so does melanie. just for you.

i find it interesting that yahoo has suddenly opted to humanize its product; i suspect it's in response to the upcoming public float of competitor google--a crunchier, friendlier service that is rapidly gaining in popularity and thisclose to eclipsing yahoo entirely. in order to keep its competitive edge, yahoo appears to be doing what any self-respecting corporation does in times of possible audience loss: trying to poach users from the competitor to keep its numbers up. they've chosen to do this by attempting to offer some of the same laid back vibe that google, with its novelty logos and occasional gag pages, provides.

or, to be more clear, yahoo is trying to negate its legacy of corporate theism and replace it with a more down-to-earth accessibility. though i still suspect that if you walked into its corporate headquarters, put your feet up and addressed the president like an old friend, you'd get escorted out by security. some friendship.

what i'm most curious to see is whether this works for them or not. we tried this exact same strategy at my old company; upon the introduction of a new division (a division so mired in corporate double-speak that it took the better part of a year for our staff to figure out what it was supposed to do, and along the way completely alienated most of our private clients), our sales plummetted. though we'd started providing what many corporate clients felt was a necessary service, we'd suddenly painted ourselves into a corner with words like 'unaccessible' and 'impersonal.' in an effort to either explain ourselves or woo back our private clients (i still haven't figured out which), we produced a series of pamphlets and other marketing materials identifying staffers by name and location and function. reminding people that there were humans still running the show, despite all appearances.

it was an interesting choice, a complete reversal of their previous strategy. i have no idea if it worked, however, as i left the company shortly after we completed the suite of materials; the department (the entire office, actually) was dissolved shortly thereafter. thereby cementing my amusement with the whole idea--let's show just how personal we can get by firing a whole bunch of people.