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Brand Evolution
YAHOO!
Here is a piece of trivia that might interest you. Since I am one of the
many users of www.yahoo.com, this bit
is about Yahoo! itself. There seems to be some ambiguity as far as the
origin of the name of this site is concerned. On one hand, Yahoo has an
Indian connection as a 'cry of joy' (immortalized by Shammi Kapoor in a
Bollywood song). The Yahoos were also a tribe in the famous novel
"Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift. However, the name Yahoo
is actually an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious
Oracle". In fact the CEO of Yahoo, Jerry Yang is widely referred to
as the 'Chief Yahooligan' in his organization. Yahoo started way back in
1994 (ancient in web terms). Its two founders, David Filo and Jerry Yang,
were graduate students at Stanford University. They started a site,
Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web, in February 1994. It quickly grew,
PhDs were put aside, and the site became Yahoo (or more accurately,
Yahoo!).
Bookmark
Talking of new-age marketing strategies, here is how a modern Publishing
House recently advertised itself... "Announcing the new
Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device, otherwise known as the BOOK.
It's a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric
circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so
easy to use, even a child can operate it. Just lift its cover. Compact and
portable, it can be used anywhere-even sitting in an armchair by the
fire-yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM
disk. Here's how it works: each BOOK is constructed of sequentially
numbered sheets of paper (recyclable), each capable of holding thousands
of bits of information. These pages are locked together with a custom-fit
device called a binder which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence.
By using both sides of each sheet, manufacturers are able to cut costs in
half. Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly
into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet. The
BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. The
"Browse" feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and
move forward or backward as you wish. Most come with an "Index"
feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information
for instant retrieval. An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows
you to open the BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous
session-even if the BOOK has been closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design
standards; thus a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various
manufacturers. Portable, durable and affordable, the BOOK is the
entertainment wave of the future, and many new titles are expected soon,
due to the surge in popularity of its programming tool, the Portable
Erasable Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language (PENCIL) stylus."
Wrigley's
This is about the Wrigley’s chewing gum. William Wrigley started out as
a Detergent salesman who used to offer customers a tin of baking powder as
a premium with every can of detergent. When he found they were more
interested in the premium than the detergent, he went into the baking
powder business. He then started offering customers a piece of chewing gum
as a premium with every can of baking powder. Strangely enough, the
customers were again more interested in the premium than the baking
powder. Thus he went into the chewing gum business & this was the
start of Wrigley’s, as we know it. I hope you enjoyed the story.
AVIS
In the US Car Rental scene, Hertz was No. 1 while Avis was a distant
second. DDB (“Soft–Sell Advertising” Guru, Doyle Dane Bernbach)
came up with the masterstroke of a punch line for the Avis
promotion campaign that said, "When you’re Only No. 2, You Try
Harder." He saturated the media with this slogan, and within two
years, the distant second-place car rental firm’s market share increased
28 percent.