….again…..which is obviously what Yahoo! would love to do…I wouldn’t be spending all my money on TV, outdoor, etc. trying to remind the consumer that Yahoo! is “Y!ou” and that it’s “personal”. I’d get in between my target customer and the Internet- in a GOOD way- by removing barriers to Internet access. I wouldn’t pick up baggage fees at two airports (last post) – I’m Yahoo! and I have enough baggage. I’d pick up the fee for Internet access anywhere I could get away with it, certainly ANYWHERE I could thus own the home page.

Internet access is one of those things that, like water, is perceived by users as a service that should just flow. No-one wants to think anymore about how they access the Internet. They just do. Yahoo! could take ownership of getting the user directly and easily to the Web wherever there are still barriers. What could be more “personal” than that?

This holiday season we were treated (literally) to a number of warm and fuzzy gestures by large Internet corporations, including Google footing the bill for wi-fi in fifty-plus airports around the country and on all Virgin America wi-fi flights, and Yahoo! picking up baggage fees at , um, two airports (see what Ad Age thinks of this on top of their justified disdain for the new Yahoo! campaign overall).

This whole “random acts of kindness” thing is a great idea and goes to the heart of what we still call emotional branding. I was a recipient of the Google largesse and it did give me a nice brand feeling (more because I didn’t have to fuss with logging in to GoGo than saving the $12.95, but still).
There is also a lot to be said for the tie-in of “free” Internet to the large Net providers/portals/whateveryouwanttocallthem. After all, everyone feels that Internet “should” be free. Why shouldn’t Google, Yahoo, AOL (hi guys, what’s up?), etc., provide that freedom?

The Yahoo! program is a truly bad example of this, unless it’s really not a consumer campaign at all. As a strange kind of B2B strategy, hitting San Jose and San Francisco airports might make some sense. These are hardly the geographical areas where Yahoo! really needs and should wish to build consumer awareness and goodwill. Yahoo! will never be cool again- Google is barely cool- so why not go be Santa all over the country?