Yahoo has launched “30 Days of Change” for the month of Elul. Can a logo change the troubled company? Perhaps.
Is it a coincidence that the program was launched as Rosh Hodesh Elul occurred, a traditional time of reflection and change leading up to Rosh Hashana? Yahoo announced that it is changing its purple exclamation point logo. Each day of Elul, (or August), Yahoo will show a different logo design. And on September 5th – Tishrei – the actual new logo – will be officially launched. The new logo will reflect Yahoo’s new image of itself. Seems very Jewish doesn’t it? There are those who say that the word “ELUL” has a relationship to the word for “search” and it is a time for searching (search engines), reflection, and harvesting.
Kathy Savitt, a Cornell grad, daughter of Scarsdale NY, and CMO of Yahoo! said that, “Over the past year, there’s been a RENEWED sense of purpose and progress at Yahoo!, and we want everything we do to REFLECT THIS SPIRIT of innovation. While the company is rapidly evolving, our logo — the essence of our brand — should too.” Since the Summer 2012, Marissa Mayer (of the Lutheran Mayer’s not the Jewish ones) has been President and CEO of Yahoo! and has been working to return the firm to growth and viability.
Many rabbis, since the time of the Babylonian Talmud have written that the letters of ELUL are an acronym for “Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li” (“I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine”, Shir haShirim, 6:3). We were unable to reach Yahoo! to ask them whether they see their customers as their beloved and whether they will draw closer to them during this period.
