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Yahoo! CEO – Getting a Rollout Right

 

The brand was languishing. The public dismissed it as outdated, uninspired, and a little stale. So in a bold move, a new public face was anointed — young, appealing, and energetic. It's a script we've heard before, whether it's yesterday's much-lauded announcement that Google executive Marissa Mayer will become Yahoo's new CEO or John McCain's ultimately disastrous choice to pick Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate.

So is Mayer's appointment a savvy move, or the last way-station on the road to irrelevance for Yahoo? As a marketing strategist who's worked on turnarounds for both businesses and elected officials, I think it's the former.

The richest opportunities for this kind of game-changing appointment are when your company's public perception needs to be revitalized (as in Yahoo's case), or when you've exhausted your current strategic options. Given the risks involved, you don't want to throw a Hail Mary pass when it's not strictly necessary — so firms should only go for a "game changer" when their branding situation is so dire, the only option is to create news that changes the conversation. Of course, McCain's selection of Palin also changed the conversation; but what initially looked like an inspired decision quickly led to recriminations as Palin revealed herself to be unprepared for the national stage (witness her infamous Katie Couric interview). If the game-changer doesn't have the chops for the job, these sorts of announcements can backfire.

But in this case, given Mayer's engineering expertise and her long tenure overseeing some of Google's most prominent initiatives, from Gmail to Google News, it seems highly probable that she possesses the requisite skills for the job. (In too many game-changing moves, that basic requirement is often neglected.) For Yahoo, her appointment could be their version of Bill Gates' famous realization in 1995 that Microsoft had missed the boat on the Internet and, from that moment forward, would make it their primary strategic focus. Even if you've been lagging, you can capture momentum by committing to go "all in." Indeed, Gates' Internet play, including the bundling of Internet Explorer with its operating system, was so successful the Justice Department freaked out about antitrust violations...

(For full article text, please see The Harvard Business Review)