Marketing Mayhem

To promote their new homepage, Yahoo has released a fun little flash site that analyzes your public tweets and tells you what kind of tweeter you are. Whether or not it’s accurate it is up to debate, but it is some simple fun. You can check it out here.

While this has the potential to go viral, the bigger question remains….is it effective?

First up is the home page:

I think Yahoo did a good job with the landing page. It’s not overly cluttered with graphics or text and is very easy to figure out what to do. Plus it’s simple. You enter your user name and click the “Gimme Mojo”. They don’t require you to register, nor that you have a Yahoo account to use it. This is good because more people will play with it and tell their friends because there is a very low involvement factor.

I also like how they’ve incorporated the Yahoo purple, and have the Yahoo name twice, one in conjunction with advertising the new Yahoo home page. As a user, I appreciate how unobtrusive their logos are, however, the page is definitely designed so that your attention is immediately drawn to the center making it very easy to overlook Yahoo’s involvement completely.

Next we’ll look at the results page:

Again, we have the Yahoo purple and the same size & placement for the logos as on the home page. On the left, you get a cute description of your tweeting style. As you can see, I’m a Name Dropper. On the right side, Yahoo offers suggestions for websites you can add to their new home page that might suit your mojo style. Is this effective? I think it could be very hit or miss. If their suggestions really are a good fit for you, then there’s a good chance you’ll check out their new homepage. If not, you may be less likely. However, here, I know I am already slightly biased. I might be in the minority, but I don’t use MSN, Yahoo or Google as an all encompassing home page. I would be very interested ot hear what others think on this.

The Share Mojo button is nicely prominent, however, in my opinion, should have been larger than the try another username button. When you click on it, this is what you get:

Yahoo makes it very easy for people to share this on either Twitter or Facebook with the message short and to the point with a personalized bit.ly link. I especially like the bit.ly link. Not only are they tracking the traffic directly from it, they’re making it possible for others to go to the bit.ly site and see how much it’s been clicked on. (As of this post, it was currently at 15,117 Total Clicks, mostly from the U.S.) You can also see who’s tweeting about it using the link. Want to check out the stats? Click here or put http://bit.ly/knowmojo+ into your browser.

Finally, After you’ve received your result, Yahoo makes it easy to see what the other mojo types are, and what they mean. The only thing I don’t like about this page is it’s inaccessible directly. Most people won’t want to go back through it to figure out what their friend’s mojo results mean.

Overall, I think this is a fun promotion by Yahoo, but don’t expect it to last more than a few days. It definitely has the potential to go viral, but whether or not it will help their new home page is yet to be seen.

What do you think? Is Yahoo’s Know Your Mojo promotion effective for their new homepage?

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. ~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Words have meaning and names have power. ~Author Unknown

It’s old news by this point, but if you haven’t heard, Radio Shack is changing their name to The Shack.

My first thought when I started seeing this on Twitter? “Oh, I bet that’s a funny Onion article. I’ll have to read it later.”

That’s probably not the reaction they were going for, but I definitely wasn’t alone in the thought it wasn’t true. It sounds absurd because the images it conjures doesn’t fit. To me, The Shack sounds like a club of some kind, not an electronics store.

So what made them decide to change their name?

My assumption would be an attempt to reposition their brand. For years, Radio Shack has been battling an image of lower quality products despite them expanding their offerings to include high end products like iPods and cellular phones. Changing their name to The Shack however is not going to counter that image on its own. The term shack doesn’t inspire images of quality but instead makes it sound even cheaper.

Rebranding is always difficult. On the one hand you’re shedding the negative associations with the previous branding, but you’re also losing the good will associated with it. You’re also essentially starting from scratch, however, instead of just trying to introduce a new brand, you’re trying to get people to understand that it’s the same brand which in many ways defeats the purpose. As we become more and more inundated with marketing messages, consumers are even more likely to go for the brands that they’re familiar with. After all, how often when you’re grocery shopping do you grab the items you need based on recognition?

Personally, I don’t think it was the best idea, but only time will tell. What do you think?