College project: What can save yahoo and myspace ?

artificial_genius said:

That doesn't build a sustainable business. I don't think Furby is doing much of anything after their initial buzz wore off because the product had no value add.

You don't run a $20bil business (Yahoo) with marketing and no substance behind it.

Click to expand...

I don't agree with this either. Your original statement was that it's not marketing that makes sustainable success, it's creating a product that people would kill for. That is not what marketing is. Marketing generates the enthusiasm necessary for people to WANT to kill for it. Watch a woman when the newest pandora charm comes out, and stay out of her way or she will bull doze you down to get to it. Pandora can market like nobody's business. Those silver charms cost a couple of dollars to make and they are not all that.

Furby was a great example and pertains to this thread in a very appropriate way. Tiger Electronics put out Furby, and they are now part of Hasbro. They got Furby from a freelance designer who created the product. The company continues to thrive, not because they create products that people would kill for, but because they keep coming out with new products that they market in a superior manner.

I also disagree with this "And that 's the hard part, so I think your assignment is utterly off-base. Hopefully, you are not paying for that class." It was an excellent assignment given by the teacher. It makes the kids dig deep in their brains and think long and hard. That's marketing. Get creative enough to make people want the product. If you have to come on bhw for help with homework, the teacher has done his or her job.

redrubies said:

I don't agree with this either. Your original statement was that it's not marketing that makes sustainable success, it's creating a product that people would kill for. That is not what marketing is. Marketing generates the enthusiasm necessary for people to WANT to kill for it. Watch a woman when the newest pandora charm comes out, and stay out of her way or she will bull doze you down to get to it. Pandora can market like nobody's business. Those silver charms cost a couple of dollars to make and they are not all that.

Furby was a great example and pertains to this thread in a very appropriate way. Tiger Electronics put out Furby, and they are now part of Hasbro. They got Furby from a freelance designer who created the product. The company continues to thrive, not because they create products that people would kill for, but because they keep coming out with new products that they market in a superior manner.

Click to expand...

You are comparing unrelated industries. That is like saying that Ferrari should have the same business direction as Kraft Foods.

A toy company is in the business of building fads. A company like Yahoo is in the business of building platforms. Marketing has a component to it, but it is very small. Google does virtually no outbound marketing; it is all about the product and it works out well for them because of the nature of the industry they are in. While, on the other hand, Bing is doing a huge marketing push and they are still a very very distant second.

artificial_genius said:

You are comparing unrelated industries. That is like saying that Ferrari should have the same business direction as Kraft Foods.

A toy company is in the business of building fads. A company like Yahoo is in the business of building platforms. Marketing has a component to it, but it is very small. Google does virtually no outbound marketing; it is all about the product and it works out well for them because of the nature of the industry they are in. While, on the other hand, Bing is doing a huge marketing push and they are still a very very distant second.

Click to expand...

Sorry, but I still don't agree with you. A toy company is not in the business of building fads. They are a company adding new ideas to stay in the game with the competition, and every fresh idea is heavily marketed to children and their parents. Bing's marketing sucks. It always has. Google doesn't do marketing? You're kidding, right? Marketing is not just about putting out advertisements. Google gets themselves in the news on a daily basis, along with having minions like Matt Cutts to keep themselves in the public eye. I remember my marketing teacher saying something that has always stuck in my mind. He said when you make people see your product, service, or business name at every turn, it will stick in their subconscious mind and they will come to you. Blue Nile did this in a very aggressive manner. When they started out, they were everywhere, at every turn. Their marketing strategies made them who they are today.

redrubies said:

Sorry, but I still don't agree with you. A toy company is not in the business of building fads. They are a company adding new ideas to stay in the game with the competition, and every fresh idea is heavily marketed to children and their parents. Bing's marketing sucks. It always has. Google doesn't do marketing? You're kidding, right? Marketing is not just about putting out advertisements. Google gets themselves in the news on a daily basis, along with having minions like Matt Cutts to keep themselves in the public eye. I remember my marketing teacher saying something that has always stuck in my mind. He said when you make people see your product, service, or business name at every turn, it will stick in their subconscious mind and they will come to you. Blue Nile did this in a very aggressive manner. When they started out, they were everywhere, at every turn. Their marketing strategies made them who they are today.

Click to expand...

I think maybe 0.001% of Google users know who Matt Cutts is so that is really not a valid point.

Of course a toy company (especially one like Hasbro) is in the business of building fads. Do you think Neopets or Furby is some genius product? It is a marketing ploy to create a fad. It offers no substance whatsoever. Compare that to a search engine, an email provider, or an operating system and that is a completely different story. If, in the past 10 years, Yahoo came up with the great products and Google didn't, Yahoo would be the big company and Google wouldn't. Marketing has very little to do with that.

Again, I'm not saying that marketing is worthless. However, for certain industries it is a lot less important, and Yahoo is in one of those industries.

KINGCOS said:

I love how your getting members to complete your assignment, definately using Blackhat methods, good job

Click to expand...

I couldn't come up with an idea that can save yahoo and myspace. So i thought some members here would be able to help me

jazzc said:

It 's not marketing that makes sustainable success. First you need to be able to provide a service/product that users would kill for. And that 's the hard part, so I think your assignment is utterly off-base. Hopefully, you are not paying for that class.

Click to expand...

True ! I am really stuck with that hard part lol. Basically my professor wants our group to come up with a new idea or a service (which is really hard to think of) that can save yahoo and myspace.

jazzc said:

It 's not marketing that makes sustainable success. First you need to be able to provide a service/product that users would kill for. And that 's the hard part, so I think your assignment is utterly off-base. Hopefully, you are not paying for that class.

Click to expand...

OK, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been studying marketing for one semester and this is what I've been taught: the kind of service you offer, the need it fulfills, to come up with this -- that's part of marketing. It's marketing team and the role of marketing as a since to scan the market and look for needs that are unfulfilled, design a service/product, test the product and then create the whole marketing campaign.

I mean, come on -- do you think that these are nerds in Google who think up: "OK, I'll create Google Docs"? I know there is an urban legend that it was this freelancing-at-work that created both Gmail and Google Docs, but I don't believe it. Maybe the core idea, yeah, but those services wouldn't be ever offered if Google's marketing team didn't pick up the idea and said: "Hey, if we work on this project, if we design it correctly, it can be a real hit and we may be able to make thousands of dollars from it." And guess what: that's the same team that has designed the product itself. Programmers have just coded it, nothing more. They have not designed it, 'cause they are not the people who are hired to know what people want!

Marketing is more than "talking about the product." Much, much more.

So nope, this is definitely not an off-base assignment. I wish you good luck and hope you achieve success with it, since it's not an easy one.

You should ask spammers of what to do to save them and bring their life back......Just kidding
I think they are not adapting the new changes coming through and going on online nowadays.
Adapting the global change and moulding themselves makes them stronger and stronger.
See google it overtaked so many companies and bought so many companies under their hood which seems to have a bright future(example-youtube)new inventions(example-android application)
Guessing the future trends is must for all business organizations...............

Let's see here's the biggest one.

Yahoo let's people login/signup with a Google Account? Google doesn't offer Yahoo logins, they need to stand out. Yahoo is going to fail, it's very clear of that.

doorenour said:

OK, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've been studying marketing for one semester and this is what I've been taught: the kind of service you offer, the need it fulfills, to come up with this -- that's part of marketing. It's marketing team and the role of marketing as a since to scan the market and look for needs that are unfulfilled, design a service/product, test the product and then create the whole marketing campaign.

Click to expand...

Marketing has a wide range of definitions. The broadest one defines it as the managerial process that maximizes shareholder value - i.e. all profit is because of marketing

But let 's leave the absurdities and use the definitions provided by the American Marketing Association:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Click to expand...

and

Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information--information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.

Click to expand...

If you read it carefully, nowhere does it imply that marketing research actually takes the role of the strategist. It merely acts as the information gatherer, it does not decide on production.

As for marketing, notice the use of "offerings" - not products

Are you talking about yahoo search being saved? Or just Yahoo in general?

doorenour said:

OK, correct me if I'm wrong

Click to expand...

jazzc said:

As for marketing, notice the use of "offerings" - not products

Click to expand...

Thank you. I got carried away a little bit. But still I remember this particular thought (I'm just sharing what I've been taught and yes, I've paid for that classes, through taxes) -- it's the role of marketing team research what are the needs people have in this particular industry and then define what traits and functions the product for that particular niche/segment will work the best. It was nicely presented by an example from the market of mobile phones -- how the new model will look like and the functions it will have and how they're presented is designed by marketing team.

On the other hand, we could say that the product itself is mobile phone (itself, too) but Samsung Galaxy S II with all its functions etc. is simply an offering of a product. But that doesn't change the fact, that it's not an off-base assignment. (I know it might be that I don't communicate my thoughts clearly, but English's not my first language. I'm doing my best, though. )

Oh, and to those who argue that Google don't do marketing -- of course it does. Lots of it. It's just that marketing isn't a synonym of advertising. :]

Off-Topic
Now, this is a very ugly bug but somehow the forum script recognizes the emoticon you used in your post as either url, image or e-mail address and didn't allow me to post my post because of it. Took a while to figure that out... I transformed all of my colons to double dashes... :/

artificial_genius said:

I think maybe 0.001% of Google users know who Matt Cutts is so that is really not a valid point..

Click to expand...

I said that Google uses it's minions to help them market. People don't remember who said it, they just remember what was said.

"If, in the past 10 years, Yahoo came up with the great products and Google didn't, Yahoo would be the big company and Google wouldn't. Marketing has very little to do with that."

When Yahoo and MySpace make people think they can't live without something they are offering, they will thrive. They have not showed that yet. Take Kays jewelry for an example. The diamonds in their rings are low quality, yet they sell very well because "Every kiss begins with K" and the commercials are enough to melt a hardened heart. This was said by someone in another thread regarding jewelry. "For instance, if I buy a necklace for my girlfriend, it's because I want to give her a great experience. It's not necessarily the jewelry itself that I'm after. A site that shows me some awesome experiences to set up for her around the jewelry is 10x to get my money regardless of price than a site that just shows pictures of necklaces with some price tags." That is what marketing is all about.

doorenour said:

Oh, and to those who argue that Google don't do marketing -- of course it does. Lots of it. It's just that marketing isn't a synonym of advertising. :]

Click to expand...

I agree. They sure do market and lots of it. You speak English very well btw.

44proseries said:

Are you talking about yahoo search being saved? Or just Yahoo in general?

Click to expand...

I am talking about yahoo in general. Do you have any idea that yahoo can use to rise again ?

Gotta say redrubles, I disagree with the importance you place on textbook marketing when it comes to the internet.

In the context of the arguement at hand, comparing Kays Jewelry to the popularity of a website is flawed. It feels to me that you have a good understanding of marketing in general, but you do not have a firm understanding of what seperates the internet from anything and everything else. The spirit of the internet so it were.

I would argue the success of a website is driven by the quality of the service/site offered, not marketing. The only thing that could "save" Yahoo or Myspace is if they do something better than their competition.

jazzc said:

It 's not marketing that makes sustainable success. First you need to be able to provide a service/product that users would kill for. And that 's the hard part, so I think your assignment is utterly off-base. Hopefully, you are not paying for that class.

Click to expand...

Much of marketing is Sales, and much of Sales is bullshit. Bullshit only works for a brief period.

redrubies said:

I disagree. With amazing marketing, you can sell anyone anything. Marketing is not about making a product that people would kill for. Marketing is making people kill for a product they didn't even know they wanted. Furby anyone?

Click to expand...

How is your stock in Furby International doing? How about Pet Rock Industries?

Salesman say, if you really, really, really want it bad enough, then anything can happen. If you just really, really try. If you fail, it's because you didn't try hard enough. This was the bullshit I referred to earlier. You can't sell ice cubes to Eskimos.

IMO MySpace and Yahoo go together like pickles and chocolate. My underinformed impression of both is from the perspective of the guy that has to repair the computers of the people that use both. Both aim their marketing at the shallow end of the pond. Dumber people with more leisure time, younger, more persuaded by shiny, moving pictures and superficial content like movie stars and "how to drive him crazy in bed: Sex tips to improve your gay marriage". Predatory tool-bars, deceptive ads, high cpu usage geegaws and shiny spinning things that tell you what the temperature is in East Bumphuck. Has 12 different .exe files running simultaneously reporting your every mouse click and flatulent utterance.

The computer runs SLOW. Buttons here, objects there, process doing this, that and nothing at all and the overall message to the User IS:

FUCK YOU. This isn't your computer, this is OUR computer. And we'll do whatever the hell we want with your computer because you are young, stupid and have too much time on your hands.

Even stupid young people wake up and get wise. They move to Google as their Home Page. They get rid of that POS Yahoo Messenger that no one uses. They use Chrome because Internet Explorer is so fucked-up beyond all recognition that it takes 20 minutes for it to launch, and then all it does is "update" this and "update" that. They realize they don't want to hire the Plumber that ranks #1 on the Yahoo Search Engine, because that guy paid for his listing and is overpriced, crooked and does bad quality work.

Don't forget about the part where Yahoo! says FUCK YOU to it's Users, cause that's the whole point here. You only get to say FUCK YOU to someone a certain number of times before Mrs. Hernandez says FUCK YOU back. Yahoo's brand is polluted, but might be redeemed. MySpace's brand is soured forever. Look up the Wikipedia for MySpace and you'll find the definition for MySpace is a synonym for "FUCK YOU". Yahoo will not improve MySpace's brand, and MySpace will bring Yahoo down into the toilet with it. MySpace is gone & gone forever; they will have better chances of success by creating a new social media program called "FuckYouSpace".

B. Friendly said:

Much of marketing is Sales, and much of Sales is bullshit. Bullshit only works for a brief period.



How is your stock in Furby International doing? How about Pet Rock Industries?

Salesman say, if you really, really, really want it bad enough, then anything can happen. If you just really, really try. If you fail, it's because you didn't try hard enough. This was the bullshit I referred to earlier. You can't sell ice cubes to Eskimos.

IMO MySpace and Yahoo go together like pickles and chocolate. My underinformed impression of both is from the perspective of the guy that has to repair the computers of the people that use both. Both aim their marketing at the shallow end of the pond. Dumber people with more leisure time, younger, more persuaded by shiny, moving pictures and superficial content like movie stars and "how to drive him crazy in bed: Sex tips to improve your gay marriage". Predatory tool-bars, deceptive ads, high cpu usage geegaws and shiny spinning things that tell you what the temperature is in East Bumphuck. Has 12 different .exe files running simultaneously reporting your every mouse click and flatulent utterance.

The computer runs SLOW. Buttons here, objects there, process doing this, that and nothing at all and the overall message to the User IS:

FUCK YOU. This isn't your computer, this is OUR computer. And we'll do whatever the hell we want with your computer because you are young, stupid and have too much time on your hands.

Even stupid young people wake up and get wise. They move to Google as their Home Page. They get rid of that POS Yahoo Messenger that no one uses. They use Chrome because Internet Explorer is so fucked-up beyond all recognition that it takes 20 minutes for it to launch, and then all it does is "update" this and "update" that. They realize they don't want to hire the Plumber that ranks #1 on the Yahoo Search Engine, because that guy paid for his listing and is overpriced, crooked and does bad quality work.

Don't forget about the part where Yahoo! says FUCK YOU to it's Users, cause that's the whole point here. You only get to say FUCK YOU to someone a certain number of times before Mrs. Hernandez says FUCK YOU back. Yahoo's brand is polluted, but might be redeemed. MySpace's brand is soured forever. Look up the Wikipedia for MySpace and you'll find the definition for MySpace is a synonym for "FUCK YOU". Yahoo will not improve MySpace's brand, and MySpace will bring Yahoo down into the toilet with it. MySpace is gone & gone forever; they will have better chances of success by creating a new social media program called "FuckYouSpace".

Click to expand...

Lol so your conclusion is that they won't succeed no matter whatever product they might launch in the future (except fuckyouspace lol) ?

iamagoodp3rson said:

Lol so your conclusion is that they won't succeed no matter whatever product they might launch in the future (except fuckyouspace lol) ?

Click to expand...

I'd wonder about who put chocolate in the jar with the pickles, and why someone else is running around asking me if I'd like to try a taste-test, and asking me how pickles and chocolate might go together in a way that I might like. Maybe they could revamp the interfaces and clutter them up with even MORE Justin Bieber. They could do a 24/7 Justin Bieber RSS feed and call it "Bieber Nuggets". Maybe they could populate MySpace with porn stars, and make it into like IMDB for porn, with a social networking component. Porn fans could "like" their favorites, and porn stars could reward the fans that give the most social indicators with... well, you know. And the fans could all congregate on F-YouSpace and compare notes about which stars they like in which scenes and did you get the link from the guy that claims to have actually "done" Suzy Rottencrotch when she was in High School and all the porn social media fans could elect him to be President of the Rottencrotch Fetish Fan Club, and they could all network and connect and IM and chat and "share" images and "share" recipes" and decide at some point they need to forge a more substantive organization with a real sense of purpose instead of bidding on eBay for Rottencrotch panties that are probably cheap chinese knock-offs anyways, and help finally get this damn SOPA bill passed and be done with it because this P2P filesharing thing is starting to really cause a dip in profits.

And then Yahoo could do a reality show like "American Gypsies" only it's with Scientologists, and they could bring in the social media porn stars from the new "F-YouSpace" and match them up with the weirdo Scientologists and do a game show-style reality TV series where Scientologists try to convert porn stars and if they succeed they get to use a taser on Justin Bieber, but if they fail then the porn stars get to make an XXX movie with the Scientologists (who get screwed for free) and they also get to zap Bieber with the taser. Either way the little femme gets zapped, the scientologists get converts or the porn stars get laid, or even both, and we the yahoo-using, F-YouSpace loving public get to watch it all streaming live in 3D at 1.0 Gbs wearing red & blue spectacles.

Throw in a few internet commercials with circus midgets selling deodorant (called "shower in a can") for dirty people that think that covering the smell of rotten garbage with something that smells worse than garbage is the same thing as taking out the garbage, and you've got a blockbuster hit that everyone could watch, combining all the essential elements of american culture into one corporate partnership. Should make millions.

redrubies said:

I said that Google uses it's minions to help them market. People don't remember who said it, they just remember what was said.

"If, in the past 10 years, Yahoo came up with the great products and Google didn't, Yahoo would be the big company and Google wouldn't. Marketing has very little to do with that."

When Yahoo and MySpace make people think they can't live without something they are offering, they will thrive. They have not showed that yet. Take Kays jewelry for an example. The diamonds in their rings are low quality, yet they sell very well because "Every kiss begins with K" and the commercials are enough to melt a hardened heart. This was said by someone in another thread regarding jewelry. "For instance, if I buy a necklace for my girlfriend, it's because I want to give her a great experience. It's not necessarily the jewelry itself that I'm after. A site that shows me some awesome experiences to set up for her around the jewelry is 10x to get my money regardless of price than a site that just shows pictures of necklaces with some price tags." That is what marketing is all about.

Click to expand...

Once again you are comparing very different industries; you can not just do a blanket one size fits all approach to running a business. Luxury goods are very very different from software platforms. You would very quickly run a tech company in the ground if you got on board and started applying the business strategies that a luxury jewelry company uses (or that a fad based toy company uses). People buy jewelry/toys for very very different reasons than the reasons people use search engines.

You could be the greatest marketer in the world, get people to use your search engine, and then they don't find what they are looking for and they go right back to using what they were using before. For a search engine, it is all about the product.

iamagoodp3rson said:

Hi guys i am working on a project for my marketing class and i need help from you to create a marketing plan for yahoo and myspace. Since yahoo and myspace are almost dead i need to come up with a different method or service that can save them. For example Apple was almost dead and they came up with an ipod, iphone etc which turned out to be very successful. So is there anything that yahoo and myspace can do to become successful once again ? What can they do to become successful ? Please share some of your ideas and it will be really helpful for my project. Thank you so much.

Click to expand...

Yahoo has to merge with facbook. The two are a perfect match. Myspace had its day, but yahoo is far from done. I like yahoo just beacuse what yahoo news brings. They used to have real journalist that worked in thad department, its not as good as it used to be. If you yahoo really got better at reporting the news, unlike google that just syndicates it. Heres is a thought, yahoo produces good quality news, when you click on the news report the reporter gets paid. Better reporters, and better newsmaking creates more clicks and the independant reporter gets paid. They might have this, not sure.