Yahoo — Alex McKinley

We let you order your feed like it’s food.

Background: You still know what Yahoo is, but there’s an entire generation that doesn’t.The Ask:Create a brand activation that helps Yahoo become relevant to Gen Z and Alpha.
Insight:
The internet’s users have lost the right to click.Strategy:
Yahoo is the portal to a better internet.

Logging In:
Researched Yahoo history and place in modern internet, including offerings, features, and marketing over time.
Social listening to observe sentiment towards modern internet.
Surveyed Gen Z to gauge use of Yahoo and sentiment on modern internet.
Gen Alpha focus group to gauge Yahoo awareness and sentiment on modern internet.

Checking the Homepage:

The way we use the internet has changed.

We don’t hop on, check a couple things out, and then go offline any more.
The landscape of the internet has changed so much that Yahoo’s classic web portal format is jarring to today’s audiences.

Of the Gen Z and Gen Alpha we spoke to, most of them didn’t use Yahoo in any capacity. For Yahoo to survive, it needs to become to relevant to the next generation.

The modern internet has captivated everyone, sinking hours every day into their screens and putting themselves in the hands of their algorithms. Growing up in the digital age, this resonates with Gen Z/Alpha even stronger.
Each platform’s algorithm shows you whatever it takes to keep you there as long as possible and profit off of you. Growing up in the digital age, this is something that Gen Z and Alpha are painfully aware of.
They feel that their experience on the internet has declined. When looking at their most common complaints, things that form or are pushed by algorithms are to blame, leaving digital natives in a state of “scroll to survive”.

The youth feel like they are being used for their time, attention, and money. They feel like the modern internet has stolen the power of choice.
The internet’s users have lost the right to click.
Yahoo’s interface creates a unique opportunity to provide a refreshing internet experience to digital natives. It doesn’t have to be a web portal to the past.
Yahoo is the portal to a better internet.

Introducing Yahoo Feed. Ordering your new internet is as easy as getting fries. Literally.

We’re empowering Gen Z and Gen Alpha to break free from the algorithm by giving them an immersive experience that enables portioning the categories of their Yahoo feed as they would a meal. Showing them their portal to a better internet.

Entering the Portal.

Yahoo Feed opens the portal to a better internet at Lollapalooza. As festivalgoers enter the activation, they’re faced with a choice: build their own meal, or let the algorithm decide.

If they leave it up to the algorithm, they’ll quickly see the downside. But through the Yahoo Feed portal, they get one more shot to see what a better internet and meal could look like.

At the kiosks, guests pick not only their meal, but their ideal Yahoo homepage, so they can consume the content (and food) they actually care about.

And when the festival ends, the personalization doesn’t. Yahoo users can update their preferences as their tastes change, because Yahoo is there to evolve with them.

Why Lollapalooza?

Lollapalooza is one of the largest music festivals in the country, with over 400,000 attendees and 170 musical performances spanning across all genres of music. It also sports the youngest demographics out of all major festivals, with the majority of their audience aged 18-24.

By activating here, Yahoo meets with the youth in a place where every attendee has different tastes, perfect for encouraging people to build their feed around unique interests.

Additionally, as Gen Z did to Millennials, Gen Alpha currently looks up to Gen Z as the cool young adults that dominate culture. So when we capture Gen Z, we know Gen Alpha will follow behind them.

Team: Max King (ST), Elio Conroy (AD), Mia Kasper (AD), Claire Casalaspi (CW)

What would your Yahoo Feed look like?
Let’s talk.

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