Saturday, October 10, 2009

From the "Yeah, whatever" department

Yeah, whatever d00d


I think one of the first rules of marketing is that merely repeating an assertion ad nauseum doesn't make it true, particularly if the direct experience of your existing users shows it to be false. Yahoo! seems to be doing its best to pull the outdoor advertising marketing out of its deep recession with this campaign splashed all over London. Meanwhile, I have a colleague who uses Yahoo! mail, and for the past two months, he would say that the internet has been under the control of a Diabolical Denial of Service attack. I don't know if this is an isolated problem, or relates to his being a Mac user (as if that should really make any difference), but seeing his suffering, I am now programmed to ignore or laugh at billboards like this. Also, in case no one at Yahoo! corporate had clocked it, hooded figures like this in the UK are associated with muggings and other pointless acts of antisocial behavior, so my guess is that drivers passing this billboard will immediately assume it is yet another government fear appeal message and pay no attention.

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