Can Steve Ballmer Learn To Yodel?

By Karen Woon, February 8, 2008 — Does Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer yodel? It’s a fair question to ask as the software giant’s $44.6-billion play for Yahoo, the No. 2 search engine on the Internet, is rejected — for now.

Microsoft’s interest is easily understood. The company wants to move beyond software and into enhanced online services at a time when Yahoo! is struggling against the larger, richer Google for traffic and advertising revenues. Microsoft would bring enormous financial muscle in the battle for eyeballs and ads.

Still, it’s jarring to consider Microsoft, once dubbed the Evil Empire for its bare-knuckle efforts to crush rivals, as the owner of Yahoo!. If Microsoft is Mars, Yahoo! is Venus. The buttoned-down folks from Redmond, Wash. face a difficult challenge in managing a brand so alien from their own.

An Internet original that went public in 1996, Yahoo! has always had a sense of humor about itself. Fun – along with Excellence, Innovation, Customer Fixation, Teamwork and Community – is part of six stated corporate values. “We applaud irreverence and don’t take ourselves too seriously,” it reads, in part. “We celebrate achievement. We yodel.”

Playfulness is as much a part of the Yahoo! brand as the company’s array of easy-to-use online products. The company cultivates a feisty, freewheeling image, though detractors say the creative sparks don’t flare as brightly as the company has achieved mainstream acceptance . Nonetheless, Yahoo! has been a powerful symbol of the new breed of brands and businesses with roots in the Web.

Playfulness is the last word you’d associate with Microsoft. Some pundits say the company has evolved into the Procter & Gamble of computing with an image rooted in Establishment sensibilities. Apple routinely scores easy points off Microsoft with its TV ads depicting the Mac as a comfortably-attired young hipster while the PC representative is a nerd in a coat and tie.

Yahoo may have rejected Microsoft’s opening salvo, but the software behemoth may well choose to pursue a hostile takeover that will succeed. Yahoo will have the financial backing necessary to compete more robustly with Google. But Yahoo won’t be the same brand. And it sure won’t yodel.