Apparently Yahoo has caught the bizarre marketing bug. Today the company has launched “Start Wearing Purple”, a campaign that is trying to capitalize on the color’s reported association with “innovation and imagination” (I always thought it was tied to royalty). Purple has long been Yahoo’s official color, though the logo displayed on its homepage is now a striking red.
The campaign is centered around the web portal Start Wearing Purple, which includes features like “Purple Picks” - a daily series of links to things which the Yahoo team has deemed Purple-worthy. There’s also a special Flickr Account celebrating all things purple. And over at Purple Pranks, you can watch a few bizarre setups led by Improv Everywhere’s Charlie Todd. Highlights include an elevator full of people singing a song about their favorite color whenever a stranger walks in.
The coolest component of the campaign is Purple Bikes. Yahoo has outfitted a fleet of 20 purple bicycles with solar powered cameras, GPS, and mobile Internet connectivity, which are now making their way across a dozen cities around the globe. The bikes will be taking (and automatically tagging) snapshots every sixty seconds, which chronicle each traveler’s journey on a special Flickr map. You can read more about the Purple Bikes over at CrunchGear.
So is Start Wearing Purple a total bust? Major corporations launch marketing campaigns like this all the time in order to increase brand awareness and show their users that they have a soul. And as far as these campaigns go, Yahoo seems to have done a good job - the improv videos are funny, the bikes are cool, and the site is fun to play around with. Still, I can’t help but wonder if the marketing dollars could be better spent convincing me to actually use Yahoo once in a while.
What’s it costing them? No risk here.
Millions of dollars and lot’s of time.
Why would anyone want to go to that site? All it does is confront you with nonsensical brand messaging. If the color purple associates with “innovation and imagination” (what?), than it is obvious the team responsible was not looking at it when they came up with this dreck.
Thanks Yahoo marketing…upon loading the site you managed to completely Hot Carl all over my computer.
Next time toss me some Saran Wrap before you force me into the way-way back machine only to drop me off in 2001. Your over-flashed crapsite shat upon my beautiful screen. I’ve come to tolerate your Hot Lunch but Hot Carl??? Common guys, that’s pushing it.
yahoo wear purple campaign, i want the bike
I would like to have heard them explain this program to Icahn.
Are there any high-touch, in-person events?
I like the snarky TC better than the newly corporate PR-influenced TC
I liked positive, interesting-to-read TC ( circa 2005 ) better than today’s schadenfreude TC.
Positive is great when it genuinely reflects the author’s sentiment, but some of these posts really ought to disclose the corporate payola.
the color’s reported association with “innovation and imagination” - I thought that color was RubyRed… did I miss something..?
Because that’s what Apple told me…
startwearingpurple.com crashes Firefox 3 on a mac after pegging the CPU.
So many medicore ideas…
So much flawed execution…
Just watched the video at their Start Wearing Purple site. That’s a brief moment of my life I’ll regretfully never get back.
at least the music is good… I love that song. But the song is a play on old ladies purple hair preference… which I don’t really get with yahoo… maybe subtle hint that they are getting old and ready to retire…
Sweet. I think it is a good idea. They are reaching out in whatever way they can.
slow loading site and dorky content - once again Yahoo tries too hard to be cool.
Yahoo’s like the Chevy Cobalt SS of the tech world, pumping loud music on the strip, and everyone cringes.
I’m going to be checking the photostream for those bikes religiously until I see one where it snapped a photo just as the thing was crashing, and there’s a photo of the rider mid-air, tumbling over the handlebars.
I thought Nexium (the drug) owned purple?
The Mac/PC ads are perfection because they are funny … and clearly offer you reasons to switch to a Mac.
This color Purple thing is not funny. And the only thing it clearly did was make me loath the fact my birthstone is amethyst.
They should get Tinky Winky to be their spokesperson. That would show Microsoft and Jerry Seinfeld
Thanks for the picture Jason.
Gogol Bordello FTW!!!
Oh good, someone else got it, too
I was always told purple meant being deprived between the sheets. Does this mean if you work at Yahoo, you don’t get no love?
Oh. My. Gawd. This is pure nonsense. I cannot believe Yahoo went for this. Well…wait a minute…all the top marketing talent has probably jumped ship at this point so…maybe I can. Still, it is a sad commentary that they’re investing money into this fuzzy crap instead of delivering actual value.
Now I wish Microsoft HAD bought them. At least then they only would have had to set fire to one pile of money between them. Now, they’ve got two big, useless burning wads of cash going on the ad god altar of branding. Wait…maybe the big plan is to add some poo and fling both at Google’s door? Ah. Now I see it. Two bags of flaming poo ARE better than one. Bravo -
They should get Eugene Hutz to be their spokesperson.
least they could do is give away free T-shirts.
did you say use Yahoo once in a while? Why? What is Yahoo?
If Yahoo wants usage they should split themselves into a whole lot of small products with own names. GIGI Search, KOKI Groups, etc.
There’s nothing wrong with Yahoo products, it’s just that there is too much under on brand diluting it to death !
I thought Yahoo! was red in the first place then purple…then red again…am I wrong?
Vikings fans bleed purple, Yahoo! just bleeds money.
yahoo just bleeds - period
The purple cow of Seth Godin got into Yahoo?
Yahoo want to become remarkable?
It will cost less than the pointless sitcoms of Bill and Jerry.
Will it bring emotion?
As without emotion it wll have no impact.
“Today the company has launched “Start Wearing Purple”, a campaign that is trying to capitalize on the color’s reported association with “innovation and imagination” (I always thought it was tied to royalty).”
And I always thought it was tied to homosexuality. You learn something new every day.
The problem with the purple bikes is that, no matter how fast you peddle, they never go over 20
Since they hiked their annual domain hosting price from $10-ish to over $30, for me they are as good as dead. They are trying to capitalize on less savvy customers who don’t want or can’t figure out how to move a domain.
Shady-deluxe!
Perhaps purple is their way of being bipartisan.
Seriously though, I don’t think the bike thing is such a bad idea. It integrates their products in a hip, green fashion.
Alright you geeks, here is some Gypsy wisdom for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_81l4DXlwM
Gogol Bordello
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_81l4DXlwM
We have one of the Y! Bikes here in our house. Hell it’s downstairs right now. I shot the day of delivery video of the bike in HD and you watch it here: http://www.viddyou.com/viddstream?videoid=40698
End of the video has me flipping through the manual that came with the bike as well. The coolest part of the bike is that it uses a Nexus 8 rear hub. Google it.
I also love the bikes idea. However if I had not read this post, I would not have known about it and I am constantly hitting major news sites and doing web based work most of the day.
It would have been great to see them take the idea a step further and get the word out via social media channels and its top users. That being said, I still think it has a chance of succeeding.
The Start Wearing Purple site is cute. The idea is cute. But will it work in their favor? Sadly, I don’t think so. It may catch some eyes, cause some to do a double-take, but make people actually use Yahoo? I don’t think so. So on their part, I think Yahoo just wasted a hat-full of money.
Although I really do like those shoes… and I would just love to have one of those bikes, though they’re not up for selling…
Two things:
1) Purple is actually going to be an “in” color this season. Don’t laugh! I know this because of a trend forecasting / insight project I’m working on. Ok…fine, laugh.
2) While “Start Wearing Purple” works for the ad, the actual song by Gogol Bordello is about an old lecherous man singing to a young woman, convincing her to be more his…um…you get it.
Its actually about a situation. Eugene and his girlfriend lived in an apartment building. Their neighbour was a little loony, and always wore purple. So when ever he and his girlfriend had an argument or things got out of hand, he would tell her to “start wearing purple” as in, shes crazy.
no purple
Totally agree. It just shows how inward looking Yahoo’s focus continues to be
Brilliant! At least until the folks in the ‘Lavender Mafia’ hear about this. I think there could be a pantone-turf-war a-brewin’.
CG
You know…the real reason behind them creating this new campaign is to help promote Texas Christian University…the college in which i’m attending. Because we always say that TCU students “bleed purple”…so I think Yahoo is showing their strong support for TCU
Or they could just like purple, who knows. I like my theory better though.
Purple is the new black?
I’ve never seen a purple cow,
I hope I never see one
But I can tell you anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one.
— Noel Coward
The promotional site simply shows how bad Yahoo engineering team is. The site is super slow, sluggish and froze firefox.
Yahoo is just bad. As bad as things made in China.
Better get something made in china than no doing at all .. Like you and your country, Mr.purpleisgay! Moron!
Rumor is that they are following this up with a special Investor-focused site that uses Prince’s “Purple Rain”. This kind of brand image flash-minisite-fluff drives me nuts. Another example PR escapist brainstorming overshadowing innovative product development. “…All your sanity and wits, they will all vanish I promise, it’s just a matter of time!…” Gogol Bordello may get the last laugh.
Yahoo executives just don’t get it.
Social networking means that when you go to a site you can find someone to talk to.
Take a look at Yahoo groups, Yahoo profiles, Yahoo 360, or Yahoo chat — bots, web cam girls, and SPAM.
You can even look at Yahoo’s suggestion boards — more SPAM.
MySpace has made it easy to report SPAM — just press a button. They get rid of it quickly. Try reporting SPAM to Yahoo and watch what happens — after a lot of back and forth, nothing. Yahoo just leaves it there — for years.
Order some big purple tricycles and red clown noses and give them to Yahoo executives. Then, at least watching them go around in circles would be entertaining.
Social networking is about people — not bots, web cam girls or SPAM.
What are Yahoo executives going to do about it — nothing. It has been a problem now for years.
But the bots and SPAM are the things creating all the page views for stupid brand advertisers to buy
Click schadenfreude?
pink slip preparatoin or purple people vote campaign?
Jason,
The statement saying to “convince you to use Yahoo! once in a while” speaks of your prejudice against Yahoo! as a whole. Being a reader of techcrunch, I’d like to read more ‘impartial’ and ‘factually correct’ articles from its writers.
I regularly notice that a small ‘pixel’ made by Google gets so much undue hype, while great efforts of Yahoo! go unnoticed. Still, you don’t miss even a single resignation at Yahoo!
I wonder if Google or someone else pays techcrunch to loath Yahoo! all the time. It was interesting to see the Yahoo! hiring advertisement on techcrunch sometime back when you were after its list of resigning VPs.
Regarding the Start Wearing Purple campaign, I think its a really cool initiative by Yahoo!, and I really like the cute sound effects in the site.
nerds!! ALL OF YA
Seriously, part of my soul died.
VertigoSFX is mistaken. It is not Texas Christian University that Google is promoting , it is Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. Go Pioneers!
—
from the Mother of a Perfect Purple Knight
Purple is the new … stupid.
Does it come in lime?
Blue and Red = Purple