Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Pxtl | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. I think the unprofessionalism, the BS, the Mayer-hands-on thing... that is part of Yahoo's new branding strategy.

It's all about making Yahoo feel more personal. More like your friend. Mayer is trying to personally invite you out for coffee to and talk about the fun she had bashing out their logo.

I'm sure there are refinements that are happening behind-the-scenes after Mayer's "weekend". Hopefully resized forms of the logo will still get some TLC - the public doesn't generally notice when those things happen.

Remember the demographic that Yahoo survived upon - women. Non-geeky grown-up middle-class women. That's why the new logo reminds you of a department store like Macy's, or the makeup counter at Shoppers Drug Mart. That's who Mayer is targeting with this ad, even this blog. It's a huge number of people that most of the technorati ignore - Facebook captured that market practically by accident, and Pinterest is exploding because somebody finally thought to actually aim in that direction on purpose. And what's pinterest about? Craftsmanship. Craftswomanship. Getting your hands dirty on a fun little artistic project.

Like making a logo.

Latter-day Yahoo has always found strength in ignoring the geek elite. They lost the geek elite a long time ago. This includes you, design geeks.

>the Mayer-hands-on thing... >that is part of Yahoo's new branding strategy

Yes, and you're exactly right that it is so breezy and fun because that's the image she's trying to project.

And because no one has accused her of robotically testing 41 shades of blue, or getting asking designers to prove their case on border widths, she's winning mindshare of the demographic she needs.

Hardly anyone has noticed this approach of logo design goes against her deep affection for process & data. But she's doing it for the positioning she very much needs: both for herself as a human CEO and the Yahoo brand fuzzies can relate to.

Yahoo is never going to make self-driving cars or rocket ships. So let's have fun and craft a purple logo, shall we?

I think part of why everyone gets so offended by this situation is that Mayer's little adventure does nothing at all for communications professionals, in fact does the entire state of the art a huge disservice and tells other people that just playing around on a weekend is a good idea.

Over the last few decades we've advanced the state of the art so immensely that people from the 70s would not believe you. Instant, global communication. World wide brands. Full color customized print runs in hours. On mugs! Page layout, design, photography and lithography by one person on a PC that costs less than 3k. It's all amazing, it's hardly fathomable.

What is good about doing brand positioning professionally, is that you are feeding back into that process, advancing basically the human condition (excuse the hyperbole) and generally leaving the world better than you found it. What Mayer is doing, is taking a huge dump all over that process and setting back an entire industry. I sure as hell hope this is not the beginning of a regression back into the CEO's smart nephew drawing up business cards in CorelDRAW! or something. We would have peaked as far as design and communication strategy is concerned and that's just sad.

It's a mistake to think that this whole exercise was about changing the logo. Mayer has inherited a demotivated and dispirited team of developers and designers that she has to forge into a company capable of competing with Google.

One of the things that she can do to motivate her teams is to take an interest in what they are doing - a weekend retreat for the design of the logo? Great! Marissa cares about what I'm doing, I'm important to the company!

On the other hand, having your CEO show an interest in what you are doing is generally speaking a huge motivator for people. It's cold indifference to anything you do that will drive people away.

I'm willing to bet that the actual target for the logo redesign story was internal. Mayer is sending a very clear signal to all Yahoos that yes, they are good enough, and no, she isn't going to get external help to do the things that are core to Yahoo's business.

Very good points, my spirits would indeed be lifted if the CEO did this with me.

In what way does brand positioning advance the human condition or actually improve the world? What does "communication professional" even mean?

> In what way does brand positioning advance the human condition or actually improve the world?

Assuming you are actually interested and not trolling: properly positioning a brand before a global audience makes the world smaller, and can bring people closer. Say you are visiting a foreign country. You might feel lost, nobody speaks your language, you are walking around kind of taking it all in.

Being confronted with a brand from home can reduce some anxiety. It's an anchor point, and anchors are safe. If you're hungry, you can walk into a McDonald's and point to things you know will feed you. Leaving nutritional value out of the conversation, the brand value is positive. The same goes for all consumer goods. Brand recognition reduces stress, and allows people to see the entire globe as a village. As this beings people together, I see that as a positive.

> What does "communication professional" even mean?

A person who works in marketing, media, corporate communication, or design. A person who gets paid to communicate a message.

So your idea of making the world a better place is to modify other cultures until they are familiar to you? According to your post, your ideal world would be filled with copypasted cities, themselves exclusively populated with chains and products that are familiar to Americans; all of this so that Americans travelling abroad feel less anxiety. A nirvana for the heads of American multinationals but a nightmare for everyone else. Imagine if the entire planet was like an airport mall. You'd have a ton of "brand recognition" but not much else.

Brands do not make people feel that there is a "global village". They do not create a sense of cultural belonging or strengthen relationships between individuals. Buying things does not make you reach out or empathize with others. Advertisers frequently try to associate products to concepts such as freedom, sex, friendship but this connection is artificial and manipulative. At best, brands elicit a sense of loyalty that pushes consumers to purchase the same products over and over again out of habit. This loyalty can be highly dangerous: a lot of people get health problems because they are regular patrons of fast food chains.

In fact, most brands actually increase stress. One of the usual marketing goals is to create a need in people that didn't exist before. This can be achieved through fear, making the consumer feel inadequate or inferior if they don't own the latest items. This is especially prevalent in the fashion industry. Creating additional needs is the opposite of stress reduction.

Yes - let's not forget she wrote this on a tumblr - with a kind of unprofessional-looking freebie theme (Fluid Neue by PixelUnion, for those curious), as opposed to an official Yahoo blog. There's no way Marissa Mayer can't design a decent blog theme (or have one designed for her) - this was (at least, I certainly hope it was) an intentional choice.

> Remember the demographic that Yahoo survived upon - women

interesting - can you tell me more? Whats the source of this (not challenging you, just want to quote it in the future :-)

edit: reminds me of Whistler / Wilde reparte:

  Wilde: James, that was hilarious, I wish I had said it.
  Whistler: You will dear boy, you will.

Read it a few years ago... can't find the link anymore. Article said that the things that kept Yahoo alive were finance, women, and sports, and I bet they lost that finance thing since then.

edit: best I can find is this article pointing out Yahoo mail's 63% female userbase, but it's pretty thin.

http://blog.hunch.com/?p=34824

The finance page hasn't changed drastically. It's a bit more polished, but, shrug... looks all right to me.

For free data, the Yahoo finance API has remained stable and usable. The Google finance API, well... https://developers.google.com/finance/

Wow I hadn't realized but even my mom uses Yahoo for mail.

Excellent observation, thanks.

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