With a new logo set for launch at the end of the month, Yahoo is treating its visitors to a range of variations in the 30 days leading up to the final version’s big reveal. By changing its public face, Yahoo is aiming to reflect the changing nature of its business, which has taken many bold steps under the direction of Marissa Mayer to revive its fortunes following stiff competition from Google and Facebook. “Over the past year, there’s been a renewed sense of purpose and progress at Yahoo,” said chief marketing officer Kathy Savitt, “and we want everything we do to reflect this spirit of innovation. While the company is rapidly evolving, our logo — the essence of our brand — should too.”

It is interesting that senior management clearly believes that the firm’s image is attached to its business performance. For example, the old Yahoo logo is an echo of the company’s past phases, which saw the firm slump from one of the founding search engines to an afterthought. But over the past 12 months, Yahoo has made extensive changes, both internally and externally – all accompanied by a heavy marketing drive. As Savitt explains, “We’ve partnered with great artists including Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, John Legend, and Imagine Dragons to take Yahoo ‘On The Road’. And of course, we are excited to come together with tumblr, and by extension, its incredible community of creators”.

However, as impactful as brand management can be, it is still the quality of the underlying products and services that will ultimately determine whether Yahoo will be successful in reaching out to new visitors and advertisers. Coca Cola’s disastrous UK launch of its bottled-water brand Dasani in the mid-1990s reveals a multitude of mistakes that Yahoo execs will need to take heed of.

Given Coca Cola’s experienced and sophisticated marketing operation and Dasani’s US success, its expansion across the Atlantic was predicted to go off without a hitch. But while Dasani was marketed as a “purified mineral water”, the British press was tipped off that the product’s source was, in fact, the humble tap. The media lapped up the story, and Dasani was ridiculed on front pages across the country, with comparisons even drawn to Peckham Spring – a bottled water brand made through exactly the same process in sitcom Only Fools And Horses. Rather than admit defeat, Coca Cola persisted with the drink, claiming that it was misunderstood and produced in a highly sophisticated process to create the purest drinking water. But when a bad batch of minerals contaminated its water production with a potentially carcinogenic bromate, Coca Cola caved in – and within five weeks of its launch in the UK, Dasani was finished.

Yahoo must also make sure that its new logo design cannot be made fun of, as was the case with Carlsberg-Tetley’s attempt of designing an “alcopop”, the extraordinarily named Thickhead. Despite making an effort to explain that the product was meant for the “elusive youth market” between 18 and 30 years of age, the company couldn’t disguise the product’s childish appearance. Journalists published various stories chastising Carlsberg-Tetley’s “cynical marketing men” who were helping to sustain a “yob culture”. In the end, the drinks maker was forced to recall its entire Thickhead stock for re-labelling – at a cost of more than £100,000.

At least Yahoo’s labels will all be digital…

Yahoo logo image courtesy of Eric Broder Van Dyke / Shutterstock.com