The Yahoo! Buzz Marketing team was tasked with a creative, nontraditional marketing extension that would support the company’s 'It’s Y!ou' global advertising initiative. The supporting campaign had to allow people to connect with the Yahoo! brand, make it personally relevant and enable them to widely and easily share that self expression with others. To address this challenge, the team took one of Yahoo!’s most recognisable and beloved brand assets – its signature yodel – and gave it back to the people. Users were given the opportunity to personalise the yodel, which debuted in the company’s first ad campaign in 1996. The campaign, titled 'Yahoo! Yodel Studio,' generated a worldwide casting call that sought to attract not only the largest volume of yodels ever collected but also some of best quality yodelers, who had a chance to be featured on the world’s largest stage: the Yahoo! homepage.

Offline:On October 13, Yahoo! Yodel Studios were built in New York, London and Mumbai, giving yodelers the opportunity to perform in front of celebrity musicians, such as Randy Jackson, Jewel, LeAnn Rimes, Pixie Lott, Barry Fratelli, Shankar Mahadevan and Deepika Padukone. New York’s Times Square also turned Yahoo! purple, everything from the Yodel Studio to giant billboards and wrapped buses to a multi-level stage built atop the Hard Rock Café marquee, which housed musicians who provided the live backing tracks to support yodelers.OnlineBetween Oct. 13–Nov. 15, Yahoo!’s users worldwide were also able upload their yodel through a microsite (yodelstudio.yahoo.com). People could view, vote, share and comment on featured yodelers, as well as download mobile yodel ringtones. Yodelers could share recordings with friends through Yahoo!, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, and status updates were created as yodels were uploaded, commented on, shared, and reached certain viewing levels.

The Yodel Studio programme was Yahoo!’s first-ever simultaneous global event and social sharing experience. Offline, on Oct. 13, each offline location attracted thousands of people -- New York (10,000+), London (5,000), Mumbai (3,500) – who saw hundreds of people personalise their yodels. In addition, hundreds of thousands more saw Yahoo! branding throughout Times Square.Over 30 days, 21,000 yodels were uploaded, 50 of which went gold (1000+ views) and three of which went platinum. The site attracted 1.1M visitors, 6.5M views, 3.8M video views, 13,600 comments, and 11,707 votes. Over 128,000 yodel ringtones were downloaded, while people spent an average of 5 min, 17 sec on the microsite.On Twitter, Yodel Studio generated 1500+ tweets, 18,000 impressions through #yodel and over 1 million impressions through #yodelstudio. Nearly 300 original stories spawned 1,600 total stories across print, online news, broadcast and social media outlets, including People.com, Reuters and UsWeekly.