Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is embarking on one of the more bizarre marketing campaigns I've seen in a while. TechCrunch reports that the company launched the Start Wearing Purple campaign Monday. The website includes tidbits like the discovery of the purple frog, obnoxious background music and a special Flickr account celebrating the color purple. There's also a fleet of purple bikes.The campaign is apparently intended to push consumers into associating Yahoo with innovation, since the color purple is associated with innovation. Or so they say -- I've never heard that myself, but I'm just a consumer.
In any case, it's a shame that Jerry Falwell isn't alive to see all kinds of gay world order conspiracy stuff here the way that he did with the purple Teletubby.
This is a pretty strange brand awareness campaign, and I'm not convinced that the color purple is the magic ticket to bringing Yahoo into the year 2008.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-16-2008 @ 8:36PM
jim calocci said...
any chance you folks
could get your heads out of your tuch
that is innovation that would
get people to take a look
the color PURPLE is it
why do you INSIST on BEING such TWITS
the effort you give assing around
it's a MIRACLE you are STILL AROUND !!!
9-16-2008 @ 8:43PM
RC said...
What about that music? Is Russkiy-Elektro-Polka replacing Yahoo's familiar and all-American bluegrass jingle? :-)
9-20-2008 @ 6:38PM
Petula said...
That's the name of the song.. "Start wearing Purple" by Gogol Bordello - old song. (BTW?Their live shows are fun).
Perhaps they thought it would be cute to have the music in their ads. Wondering what the pitch/presentation for this marketing idea looked like. It's always interesting to see creative forms of selling (Purple is the color of yahoo's original logo and Fall 2008's fashion/decor color trend...it was all over fashion week). With the campaign they're connecting the color with their brand/company...not to mention the possible endless sponsorships, present outside and in-house merchandise that could be tied to the marketing plan. They're selling you something without being obvious about it.I think it was a good effort and not strange at all.