For Yahoo, it’s not who’s standing at the top, but what the brand stands for that will determine success.
Terry Semel’s departure as CEO of Yahoo didn’t surprise me, just as it didn’t surprise anyone on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, or any number of blogging technorati. The company’s profits have been slipping for awhile now, in good part as a result of its slipping efforts to narrow Google’s lead as a search engine. Replacing Mr. Semel with Jerry Yang, one of Yahoo’s co-founders, offers some hope that passion can be restored to the brand. After all, who better than the inventor of the brand to recharge its status? But, from a pure brand POV, it’s going to take a lot more than just a change at the top to restore Yahoo’s place as a leading brand in the online world. For this, Yahoo is going to have to figure out what it wants to stand for –not who is standing at its helm. In other words, it needs to identity a single, simple something that consumers can understand and that they associate with the Yahoo brand –and the Yahoo brand only.
In BrandSimple, I write about how the best brands in the world have always been built on simple, relevantly different ideas that drive everything they do and that set them apart from the competition. As a brand, especially a brand trying to make it in a digitally- accelerated universe, you simply can’t succeed by being a little bit good at everything. Right now, Yahoo’s a little bit good at search, a little bit good at content, at attracting advertisers, at email, at convenience. As of this week, they’re even a little bit good at providing coverage of college athletics, as indicated by the purchase of Rivals.com. It’s a little bit too late for this. To succeed, the company is going to have to establish one thing to be really, really good at – better than any other brand - and ensure we care. Unfortunately, I don’t think the answer is in going back to the future. Mr. Yang and his team may have the best of intentions and I wish them luck. But, from a pure brander’s POV, my prediction is that they company will be sold to a brand that knows what it stands for and why buying Yahoo will add to its standing.