Alliance Blog Reviews

In a word: branding. As a brand, both through their own efforts and through sheer luck, Google has been able to position itself as the #1 online brand in the US according to Forrester Research . Others among the top ten, including Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, have generated some of the same emotional responses from their fans. The top ten brands (note that respondents selected two from a list): Since 2007, MySpace suffered a precipitous fall in brand favoritism. Yahoo and eBay also suffered. Amazon saw sufficient growth to move from distant third to nearly tied for second; Google grew significantly in its #1 spot. Facebook and YouTube (and what the crap, Sony?) joined the list. Interestingly, both Microsoft and Apple saw small growth over that time. So what qualities made these online brands stand out in respondents’ minds? Forrester points out that we might expect attributes like prestige, popularity, speed and “the social.” And we’d be wrong. Interestingly, some of the same characteristics that associate well with offline brands: trustworthiness, helpfulness and relevance to the consumer were the top-named attributes of these brands. (In case you’re wondering, Amazon was voted most trustworthy, Google most helpful and Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, eBay and Microsoft most relevant.) There is one point that the report makes that I don’t know if I buy: Yahoo! gets it right with “Y!ou” re-positioning. Yahoo!’s brand revitalization strategy is right on target, taking rivals on directly and clarifying its fuzzy image. Its core focus is on “relevance,” a top-tier attribute that currently doesn’t have a clear online leader. Yahoo! rivals Facebook and Microsoft show some traction here, but relevance is a relative weakness for Google. Yahoo!’s new $100-million advertising effort also highlights “fun,” another critical attribute where Google comes up short. To drive its global revitalization, Yahoo!’s new CMO brought in Landor Associates and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to work with its main agency, Ogilvy & Mather. It launched its campaign with big TV and outdoor buys to “root the brand position.” It is following this with multichannel messaging — including explainers on its own site — around product proof points. I agree that Yahoo’s image had grown fuzzy and that taking on its rivals directly would be helpful, but are we thinking about the same campaign? Has there been more to the campaign than that one cringe-worthy commercial? (Because seriously, I wince every time I come across it on a Yahoo property.) It didn’t say “fun” to me (well, I guess it did, just not that “fun” had anything to do with online) and it definitely didn’t clarify their brand image. (How is emphasizing that “we’re as diverse as every single human on the earth—I mean, we’re just like you!” clarifying anything?) I guess we’ll have to see the “explainers” and “product proof points” to see if the rest of the campaign is effective. But so far, I’m not buying it—especially not when Yahoo’s brand has taken a hit in not only this survey, but others that correlate directly with the campaign timeline . What do you think? How have these brands acquired these attributes? Is Yahoo repositioning itself to take on more favorable attributes?

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Why People Love Google

In an admittedly slow news day it is noteworthy to tell you that earlier in the week Google made a strategic hire if for no other reason than the hire was just at Microsoft less than two weeks ago. Don Dodge was Microsoft’s “Ambassador to Start Ups” according to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. We say ‘was’ because Dodge was laid off by Microsoft earlier this month. Check out Arrington’s interview with Dodge here . I honestly didn’t think that people at this level or with this title got ‘laid off’. I thought that was reserved for the rank and file folks and the sales team. Guess you learn something new every day, right? Back to the story. Dodge didn’t need to spend much time figuring out what to do next because Google saw the opportunity and swooped in. You gotta figure that there was no real ‘job opening’ available but when you sit on a pile of cash and you see a ‘name brand’ available why not make a spot for them? TechCrunch continues He’ll be working for another ex-Microsofter, Vic Gundotra. Gundotra worked 15 years at Microsoft as General Manager of Microsoft’s developer outreach efforts. He joined Google in 2007 as VP Engineering, responsible for mobile applications and developer evangelism. Well, for you young folks out there here’s a lesson in making sure you are building a strong reputation and personal brand. In this world, those who can do that won’t be unemployed for long. At least, it’s a nice theory. Anyway, hope you don’t have to figure out what’s next today!

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Microsoft to Google in Less Than Two Weeks