Yahoo to kick off new branding campaign

SAN FRANCISCO, USA: Yahoo Inc said it would kick off a $100 million branding campaign next week in its most significant action under CEO Carol Bartz to define how the company sees itself on the Internet landscape.

The global campaign, "It's You," comes a few months after Yahoo said it would outsource its search technology to Microsoft Corp.

Bartz believed the deal with Microsoft remains on track to close in early 2010 during a news briefing in New York on Tuesday to introduce the new marketing campaign.

Bartz declined to comment on recent reports that Yahoo is seeking to sell certain businesses such as Zimbra, a provider of business email and calendar services that Yahoo acquired for about $350 million in 2007.

"Most of our assets are very core to the company. Those that aren't, where it makes sense we will sell and where it makes sense we will shut down," Bartz said.

Yahoo's collection of websites were the second most visited Internet properties in the United States in August, behind Google Inc, according to comScore. The company is also facing increasing competition from a new crop of social networking websites such as Facebook, which recently announced it reached 300 million users.

Yahoo said the branding was meant to highlight its strength in blending Internet technology and communications services with a vast selection of news and entertainment content.

Yahoo said on Tuesday it would launch the campaign in the United States next week, in the United Kingdom and India in October and other countries next year. It said the campaign will extend across all media, including television, radio, print and the Internet.