Mktg - Yahoo Messenger New Campaign

Shruti Tripathi

In sync with their brand proposition of ‘Log on to new’, Yahoo India! has rolled out a new TVC to communicate the revamping of Yahoo! Messenger. The TVC uses a bizarre creative idea, bordering on the eerie, to support the tagline: ‘It pays to know people better”. Conceptualised by O&M Bangalore, the campaign is a 360-degree initiative straddling TV, radio, outdoor and innovative on-ground promotions like redesigning buses, which sport the purple and yellow colour of Yahoo! Messenger. The latest TVC broke on October 10 on all national channels.

While Los Angeles-based Shyam Madiraju has directed the TVC, Ramesh Deo Productions is the production house. O&M Banglore’s Neel Roy (Associate Creative Director) and Suzanna Kurian (Creative Controller) were the script writers.

Elaborating on the campaign, Nitin Mathur, Director-Marketing, Yahoo! India, said, “After successfully launching Yahoo! Search, we decided to further the campaign by rolling out a new TVC for Yahoo! Messenger. Through this campaign, we want to reinforce that the Yahoo! Messenger is backed by a totally different experience, which just reiterates our brand proposition: ‘Log on to new’.”

He claimed, “Yahoo! Messenger is a far superior Messenger product available on the Internet. With an array of new social features being added, it makes it a powerful communication tool and a talking point among our TG. Clear leadership pillar product for Yahoo! in India made the case for inclusion in the brand campaign.”

The new features of Yahoo! Messenger include sharing of pictures and videos, activity updates from friends and allowing users to create profiles, among others.

Talking about the motif of the campaign, Amit Akali, Group Creative Director and Joint Creative Head, O&M Bangalore, said, “The crux of this TVC lies in the phenomenon of individuals not bothering to acknowledge each other’s presence and not taking an initiative to get to know each other. But when we stumble upon a person and get talking, it dawns on us that getting to know more people, even a tad bit better, has a lot of advantages.”

Malvika Mehra, Group Creative Director and Joint Creative Head, O&M Bangalore, added, “The creative brief we got from the client was to enhance the features of Yahoo! Messenger. Therefore, we have coined the campaign, ‘It pays to know people better’, as it best describes the features of Yahoo! Messenger.”

The TVC shows a man on his way home after a long day at work. As he enters the office lift, he sees a guy on it who has only one eye on his forehead (somewhat like Cyclops). The startled man tries to avoid him and rushes out of the lift the moment its reaches the ground floor. Even as the man tries to flag down a taxi, the one-eyed man stops his car next to the office guy, offering him a lift. However, the terrified protagonist tries his best to avoid getting into the car, but is persuaded by the one-eyed guy to get in. As he starts driving, the office guy sees a newspaper on the car seat with a bold headline stating ‘Mystery death rocks’. This further terrifies him.

The one-eyed man takes the office guy home and introduces him to his wife, who, unlike him, is very pretty and ‘normal’. Assured, the guy steps in and is introduced to the even prettier sister of the one-eyed man’s wife, which brings a smile to the office guy’s face. The tagline on the TV screen drives home the point: ‘It pays to know people better’.

The ‘Log on to new’ campaign is supplemented by a website, worldsearchchampionship.com, which engages the consumer to answer 10 questions in the shortest time possible.