Leaked Yahoo memo hints at global strategy revamp

Digital media portal Yahoo! is planning some drastic changes to its global marketing units according to a new leaked internal memo, a tech site reported. ZDNet, which posted the contents of the leaked memo penned by chief marketing officer Elisa Steele, said Yahoo! plans to split its global marketing unit into two to cover more ground. “It is with this in mind that I recommended a marketing reorganization plan to align to these objectives, accelerate decision-making and simplify roles. The plan centers on decentralizing the current global team into (two) types of specific teams," it quoted Steele as saying in her memo. Steele said the first will focus on regional marketing, whose teams will report directly to the regional leaders in Americas, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and APAC (Asia Pacific). The second, Corporate Marketing, involves the strategic brand, communications and marketing services teams that will remain centralized and report into HQ. In her memo, Steele said it is critical for Yahoo! to grow faster and become more agile, making decisions to accelerate the Regions’ growth plans around the world. Marketing plays a crucial role in helping develop, support and execute these plans, she said. She noted that in the last 12 months, Global Marketing took home dozens of industry awards for marketing leadership in integrated consumer marketing, digital marketing and event marketing – including the acclaimed Cannes Lions, a Clio, a Webby and IAB Awards. “Now that we have this strong capability, it is time to leverage it even further. I believe we now need to bring marketing decisions, marketing talent and marketing budgets closer to the customer – and into the regions that depend on these critical plans. We need to further link our marketing strategies to revenue growth, sales objectives and overall accountability. Therefore, I want to put the marketing programs and tools we’ve developed right with the Sales and Audience teams responsible for the business outcomes," she said. She said she has presented this proposal to CFO and interim CEO Tim Morse agreed with her thinking. ZDNet said it is possible that the marketing plan will now focus more on promoting Yahoo’s original streaming content and media partnerships, such as deals with ABC News. “Although Yahoo continues to boast strong numbers about its digital media efforts, it’s still questionable how aware web users worldwide are about Yahoo’s products in this arena — especially as other parts of the company are stumbling (perhaps with the exception of Yahoo Mail)," it said. It noted Yahoo’s share in the search market continues to waver from month to month, and quarterly earnings have been rocky. Nevertheless, Yahoo still churned out positive earnings earlier this week for the third quarter of 2011, it added. The memo came a few weeks after another reported internal memo leaked out, showing Yahoo! was potentially looking for buyers. — TJD, GMA News