ADVERTISING

YAHOO MAIL DIGITAL AD CAMPAIGN
GROUP CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Does Yahoo Mail still exist? Yep, and it’s actually the most innovative personal inbox out there. But of course, no one under the age of my Uncle Jon and Aunt Nancy in Fort Collins, CO knew this. The brand struggled to add new users, so they briefed us to create a digital campaign that would create awareness, reveal new features and convert people to Yahoo Mail while embodying the endearing, enduring quirk of the Yahoo brand.

The insight: we manage many of life’s little details through email, but keeping up with them takes time and effort we don’t have to spare. The promise of Yahoo Mail’s new features—consolidated package tracking, bulk unsubscribe and attachment view, among others—was to help us spend less time digging through our inboxes and more time digging whatever we dig. The concept: defeat life’s big little annoyances … stolen packages, lost permission slips: the small but fierce enemies of our time.

The campaign spanned digital channels from commercials on OTT to search engine marketing to social content with notable influencers. We worked closely with our media team and creators to adapt the concept to each channel’s strengths.

For awareness spots, we hired SNL digital shorts director Adriana Robles to bring to life our scripts featuring porch pirates, regrettable late-night purchases (air fryer??!!) and spam emails incarnate. Watching the team art direct the air fryer puppet was a particular career high.

On TikTok, Instagram and Youtube, we worked with Corporate Natalie and other creators highly followed by our target audience to bring to life those moments when your email saves you and created complementary paid social and display ads.

Results: Paid media drove 777M impressions, 12M clicks, and 1.3M installs with +15% return on investment. The app has been installed a total of 9 million times since campaign launch. The campaign resulted in a +3.7% lift in unaided brand awareness and an initial +3.2% lift in consideration intent. On Meta, we’re seeing 2.8% lift in consideration intent for the overall audience campaign-to-date. The campaign has been honored in several award shows since.

Notably, we had women lead this project across copywriting, design, production and product marketing. Adriana Robles brought along her women-led team of producers and editors. Diversity and inclusion were chief among our team's considerations, from scripting to casting. Having women lead the conversation was key to ensuring our one-night air fryer fling was hilariously spot on while avoiding cringe tropes and brought us acclaim from organizations like TITAN.

Group Creative Directors: Lee Piper, Emmy Morton
CDs: Laura Swiatkowski, Patty Clark
CWs: Caroline Bailey, Lauren Hoffman, Ree Nguyen, Sharon Beyzer
ADs: Matt Tynan, Kristine Reano-Hager, Mike Gong, Tiffany Thomas, Monica Griffin
Producers: Lillie Mack, Cary Cody, Lori Larsen, Libby Luna
Animation Design: Collin Breit, Benny Baruch, Greg Madrigal, Chino Pisces
VP, Head of Creative: Jim Bosiljevac