EMBA Etude de Cas Yahoo Module 2 PDF

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CASE: HR-25 B
DATE: 02/07/06
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INTERNAL BRANDING AT YAHOO!:
CRAFTING THE EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION
When I got to Yahoo! I was absolutely amazed at this whole branding feeling. There was purple
and yellow everywhere, we had a beautiful campus, everything was branded: our cafeteria (‘Eat
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at Url’s’), stars on every cube. On any given week you can have your hair cut, your teeth cleaned,
your car washed, your dry cleaning picked up and delivered at your cube. There’s a company
store. If you forget to bring your spouse a birthday card or something, they sell them there. There
are flowers, you name it. So I asked somebody: How did this all come about, what’s the brand,
what’s the promise, why do we have this? And nobody knew.
—Libby Sartain, Chief People Officer, Yahoo! Inc.
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On a late spring day in 2004, Libby Sartain, chief people officer at Yahoo!, reflected on her
recent achievements. In 2001, Sartain had arrived at Yahoo! to find a demoralized Internet
company without a well-defined culture, a coordinated method to communicate with employees,
or developed processes, policies and procedures. Almost three years had passed since her
arrival, and the company was definitely not the same. Since 2001 the organization had
faced⎯and overcome⎯some crucial challenges and, for the moment at least, it seemed the
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worst was over. Daily page views were up to 2.4 billion (versus 65 million in 1997). Yahoo!
Web sites reached over 274 million unique users in over 25 countries and in 13 languages. And
with six major acquisitions since Terry Semel’s arrival as CEO (including high-profile deals with
HotJobs, Inktomi, and Overture), the company now employed more than 4,000 people at its
Sunnyvale, California headquarters, and 2,000 more overseas.
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Sartain had been working hard at launching an internal branding campaign at Yahoo! and
transforming the company from its start-up culture to a more traditional organization. She could
justifiably take pride in the company’s accomplishments. However, some questions still
remained unanswered: Had the company culture really been transformed for the long term? Was
the internal branding campaign truly successful?
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Tim Perlstein, MBA 2004, and Aneesha Capur prepared this case under the supervision of Professor Charles
O’Reilly as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an
administrative situation.
Copyright © 2006 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. To order
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Internal Branding at Yahoo! HR-25 B p. 2
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FLASHBACK: 2001
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In Sartain’s first year at Yahoo!, the company was sent reeling by the collapse of the “dot-com
bubble.” Sky-high public valuations of Internet companies like Yahoo! plummeted. Confidence
in the tech sector evaporated, and with it, much of Yahoo!’s revenue. For the first time in its
history as a public company, Yahoo! was forced to lay off a substantial part of its workforce.
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The first round occurred in April, when about 12 percent of employees were let go. The second
round happened in December (four months after Sartain’s arrival) when an additional 10 percent
was cut. According to recruiter Ken Perluss, “The first layoff in April was purely an economic
situation. We’d overextended. In December, it was not as much of an economic situation as us
making a decision about where we were going to invest our resources and what we were going to
stop doing.”
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Predictably, morale at Yahoo! was shaken. This formerly high-flying startup and darling of the
dot-com boom had hit its first patch of serious turbulence. Employees who had signed on to a
culture based on the “3Fs”⎯Fast, Fun, and Focused−⎯now had to contend with staff reductions,
a suddenly bleak labor market, diminishing stock options, and an uncertain corporate future (at
the time, many analysts believed Yahoo!’s best hope for survival was a merger with an
established traditional media company, along the lines of an AOL/TimeWarner combination).
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Compounding matters was the company’s stock price, which had plummeted from over $100 in
December 1999 to below $10 by March 2001 (see Exhibit 1). As in many Internet startups, the
vast majority of the company’s employees held stock options⎯most of which were now
underwater.
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The final factor contributing to the company’s trouble was uncertainty at the senior executive
level. Many of the company’s top officers departed during the turmoil, leaving CEO Terry
Semel with an incomplete executive team. Moreover, he had yet to articulate his vision and
strategy for the company, and the economic landscape was deteriorating.
Thrown unexpectedly into this turbulent environment, Sartain quickly established her key
priorities: first, to rationalize the firm’s organizational structure in line with Semel’s strategy for
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Yahoo! and to fill vacancies at the senior management level in order to build a strong, well-
rounded executive team; second, to identify the key attributes of the company’s culture in order
to create a meaningful employee value proposition that would be aligned with Semel’s and the
new executive team’s strategy and vision; third, to successfully implement structures, processes,
and metrics needed to overcome the company’s challenges and support its organizational
evolution; fourth, to launch a full-fledged internal branding campaign that would tie together all
these changes while communicating the unifying themes behind them in order to support the
company’s strategy and fully align the internal organization with its external brand.
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SEMEL’S STRATEGY
The first thing Sartain needed to understand to proceed with her priorities was what Semel’s new
strategy would be for the company. Fortunately, his vision was not long in coming. Newly
installed as chairman and CEO (he arrived in May 2001, just three months before Sartain), Semel
focused his efforts on finding a way to stop the hemorrhaging of online advertising revenue⎯
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the company’s lifeblood.
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Until the dot-com crash, 90 percent of Yahoo!’s revenues came from display advertising (the
sale of advertising space on its Web sites, in units, such as Web banners). Most of this revenue
came from other Internet startups that spent heavily on advertising during the boom years. In the
wake of the bursting dot-com bubble, however, many of these startups went out of business, and
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those that remained hoarded cash. When the advertising market failed to recover quickly,
Yahoo!’s only significant revenue stream dried up, sending the company into crisis.
Semel immediately identified the risk of relying solely on ad revenue from startup companies.
To shore up revenues, Yahoo! began courting larger, more established advertisers such as
consumer packaged goods companies, car manufacturers, and movie studios. These more
conservative companies had been slow to fully embrace the Internet. Semel, however, believed
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they could be won over, and that building relationships with cash-flush, well-established
advertisers would stabilize Yahoo!’s revenue base.
Semel’s next challenge was to diversify Yahoo!’s revenue stream to mitigate its vulnerability to
a volatile online advertising market. He reportedly researched hundreds of potential online
business opportunities before focusing on two areas: premium services and text-based,
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contextual search advertising.
Premium services denoted content or enhanced product features (such as more e-mail storage
space) for which users would be charged a fee. The opportunity, however, was easier to identify
than to implement. Since Yahoo! already offered most online services for free, the company
would have to balance rolling out compelling new fee-based services and satisfying customer
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expectations which generally assumed that everything on the Internet should be free. The key
challenge would be identifying content and features that customers would be willing to pay for,
and pricing them appropriately.
Text-based, contextual search advertising was a concept that had been largely pioneered by
Yahoo!’s rival Google. The concept was simple: when a user ran a search, related paid links
would appear alongside results generated organically by the search engine. This service was
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becoming increasingly popular with advertisers since it allowed them to buy ads on a “pay per
performance” basis. Also, since the ads appeared on pages that were relevant to the user’s
search, advertisers were able to achieve higher click-thru rates than traditional online display
advertising generated.
In 2001, however, Yahoo! lacked the technology to independently offer contextual search-based
advertising. Its search technology was licensed from Google, its chief rival. Offering this
service on its own would require a significant technology upgrade⎯and a severance of Yahoo!’s
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relationship with Google. Under Semel, Yahoo! laid the groundwork for this move by acquiring
Inktomi and Overture in 2003. Inktomi was a well-regarded software company specializing in
search. Overture had its own search technology, and also competed directly with Google to
provide contextual advertising. Technologies acquired from these companies would form the
core of Yahoo’s new search product, and ultimately enable it to end its licensing agreement with
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Google.
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Together, display advertising, search advertising, and premium services would form the three
pillars of Yahoo!’s revenue model and competitive strategy. More broadly, Semel and his team
wanted Yahoo! to be “the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses.”
To support this strategy, Sartain knew, further internal changes would be required.
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NEW ARCHITECTURE, NEW BLOOD
A senior executive team, including Semel and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, worked to
rationalize Yahoo!’s highly fragmented organizational structure. Some 40 to 50 independent
business lines were consolidated into five or six key “verticals.” These verticals were divided
roughly by product type, and included Media and Content (music, news, finance, autos, etc.),
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Consumer Services (wireless, Internet access partnerships such as SBC/Yahoo!),
Communications (e-mail, instant messaging, groups, etc.), and Search. The reason for the
restructuring was to increase coordination between businesses, and to increase the level of
accountability of business line managers and senior executives.
As head of Human Resources, Sartain was instrumental in filling key executive openings. Three
roles were critical for her HR mission and the company’s future: the chief operating officer
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(COO), chief communications officer (CCO), and chief marketing officer (CMO). By 2002,
Sartain’s efforts to fill these vacancies began to pay off. In March of that year, Chris Castro was
hired from the Walt Disney Company to serve as CCO. For the COO position, Yahoo! recruited
Dan Rosensweig, president of CNET networks, who joined in April 2002. And in June 2003,
Yahoo! chose an executive from the world of “traditional” consumer products to serve as chief
marketing officer: Cammie Dunaway, VP and general manager of kids and teen brands at the
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Pepsi-owned Frito-Lay Company. (See Exhibit 2 for full executive bios.) Sartain knew these
new hires would be key allies in facilitating her efforts to improve the company’s internal
organization. More importantly, the newly formed executive team would build out the new
strategy for the company and play a critical role in realizing Semel’s vision.
Changes in HR
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Concurrent with these organization-wide changes, Sartain was taking steps to restructure
Yahoo!’s HR department and institute a system based on her 13 years of experience at Southwest
Airlines, during the last six of which Sartain was VP of People (from 1995 to 2001). This
system featured three key departments. The first, Global Rewards, managed compensation and
benefits and was responsible for HR information systems. This department was small and relied
heavily on a suite of automated tools. The second department, Talent Acquisition and
Development, managed recruitment, performance review, and internal development (still a
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relatively novel concept at Yahoo!). Sartain’s third division consisted of HR “generalists,” who
worked directly with internal clients to understand their business needs and resolve any “people-
related” issues. To deliver HR services, these generalists relied heavily on the tools and systems
developed by the other two HR groups, and fostered a new sense of partnership in the interaction
between HR and the business units.
Leading this system was a team of HR managers that included both new hires as well as
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seasoned Yahoo! veterans. Lorree Farrar served as vice president for Global Rewards, and
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Barbara Oshima joined in 2002 as global benefits manager. Carol Mahoney led Talent
Acquisition, and reported to Cheryl Van, who also supervised Learning and Development.
Pranesh Anthapur, VP of HR Strategic Partnership, a veteran of Yahoo! who joined in 1999, had
global responsibility for the HR generalists.
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INTERNAL BRANDING: LAYING THE FOUNDATION
Sartain recognized that structural changes alone would not be enough to secure the company’s
success. Throughout the ongoing reorganization, Yahoo!’s morale remained low. Its stock price
did not recover, and there was still no telling how the organization as a whole would respond to
Semel’s new direction.
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The organizational culture, prominent from the beginning, would inevitably play an important
role. Yahoo!’s distinctive culture had evolved during the gung-ho days of the dot-com boom,
when massive growth was the norm, and creativity, irreverence, and an egalitarian spirit were
nurtured. Now that the organization was transitioning from a cheeky startup to a stable
company, the culture would need to evolve.
At Southwest, Sartain had built her career around the idea of culture as competitive advantage.
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She had been instrumental in creating one of the strongest, most distinctive corporate cultures in
American business⎯one widely heralded as a key component of the airline’s success. Sartain
had aligned Southwest’s external branding with the slogan created by her HR department⎯
“Freedom Begins with Me”⎯which became a rallying cry for employees, and deliberately
echoed the themes of individuality, independence, and initiative portrayed in the airline’s
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advertising.
Sartain continued to align internal practices with external messaging throughout her time at
Southwest, and towards the end of her tenure she began referring to such practices as “internal
branding.” The phrase, rather than implying a specific set of practices, conveyed the idea that a
company’s internal and external messaging should be harmonized to better support corporate
strategy. Sartain believed so strongly in this idea that she eventually came to describe internal
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branding as HR’s “special sauce.” Not surprisingly, this would become a guiding principle of
her work at Yahoo!, as well. But would the same things that worked at an airline work at an
Internet media company? What could be done the same, and what had to be done differently?
To Sartain, there was only one way to find out.
Culture & Values

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With the HR organizational structure created and key executive hires behind her, Sartain’s next
priority was to assess the overall state of Yahoo!’s company culture. Accordingly, to take the
pulse of the organization⎯in effect, to determine her starting point⎯Sartain enlisted Emerge
International, a consulting firm, to deploy an employee questionnaire called the Cultural Health
Index.
Results of the survey provided some interesting insights. Employees generally regarded their
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working relationships as healthy. According to Sartain, “90 percent of our employees had very
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healthy relationships with their co-workers and their supervisors, so that’s fabulous because
that’s something hard to turn around if it’s broken.” She added, “The company that administered
the index said ‘We’ve never seen anything like this… you are doing something right here.’”
The company was also given high marks for encouraging creativity, innovation, and teamwork.
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However, only 50 percent of respondents felt that work was well coordinated within their unit.
There was concern that the company’s growth had outstripped its infrastructure, and many
employees expressed mystification over the company’s decision-making processes. Many
considered formal policies and processes to be a hindrance, rather than a help, in their day-to-day
jobs.
“What Sucks?”
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Armed with better information about the state of corporate culture, Sartain was ready to tackle
the issue of company values – a concern that had been a hallmark of her time at Southwest.
Identifying core corporate values, Sartain believed, would be key to helping Yahoo! regain its
balance in these challenging times. Before the company could foster a uniform culture, Sartain
reasoned, it needed to know what it stood for.
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In fact, others had already begun to pose similar questions. Sartain recalled:
The media asked; employees asked at all-hands meetings. One of the most
common questions was ‘What does Yahoo! want to be when they grow up?’
That’s exactly how they would ask it. So Terry [Semel] said we really should
come up with an answer. We embarked on a project to define our mission, vision
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and values. But before we could even start our COO [Rosensweig] wrote either
an IM or an e-mail in the middle of the night and just wrote down the mission and
that was it, it got published… and it just stuck.
The mission was “to become the most essential Internet service for businesses and consumers.”
However, having a mission did not immediately pinpoint company values. According to Sartain:
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We worked on that probably close to a year, and what was hard about it was,
again, nobody wanted to sit down and talk about their values when they were
busy trying to make numbers and profits… . One day, [co-founder] David Filo
said, ‘Why do we have to sit around and talk about these values; why can’t we
talk about what sucks?’
“What sucks,” as it turned out, would be another idea that “just stuck.” Sartain was well aware
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that company co-founders Yang and Filo were widely acknowledged to embody the “spirit” of
the organization. With that in mind, Sartain decided that “what sucks” was as good a place as
any to start talking about values.
In a series of discussions with employees across the organization, the company began compiling
an eclectic list of “What sucks at Yahoo!” and found that employees preferred to speak of values
in these terms. The list ultimately included more than 50 items, and was published (in slightly
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tamer form) on the Yahoo! website as a list of “Things We Don’t Value.” The list included
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broken links, decaf, bad grammar, early meetings, arrogance, yesterday’s news, and “all work,
no fooz” (see Exhibit 3).
The exercise helped the company to overcome organizational resistance to the idea of corporate
values. A list of “What We Value at Yahoo!” (see Exhibit 4) was published on the company
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Web site as a corollary to “what sucks.” Finally, the foundation for Sartain’s internal branding
efforts was beginning to take shape. And, as she had anticipated, the organization was finding its
bearings.
The Employee Value Proposition
After assessing the company’s cultural health and gaining new insight into its values, Sartain’s
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challenge was to determine how to evolve the organization’s culture so that it embodied the key
values that had been identified. As head of HR, how could she enable this transformation?
Sartain employed another concept that had crystallized during her tenure at Southwest⎯that of a
company’s “employee value proposition.” Over the course of her career, Sartain had come to
believe that many companies were taking their employee relationships for granted. She said:
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We have to create a new definition of loyalty and trust. Constantly re-recruiting
our people, adhering to our values, honest communication, execution of our
strategies and delivering results, that’s what will rebuild the trust… . We’re not
asking people to come work for us for the rest of their lives⎯those days are over.
But we’re asking them to come work for us and while they’re here, trust us and
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feel good about it. And as long as it’s working for you and working for us, let’s
do something great together.
For Sartain, this mutual agreement was the essence of a company’s employee value proposition:
a clear, honest statement of what employees could and should expect from the organization, in
exchange for their effort and loyalty.
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Armed with her recently identified corporate values, Sartain was ready to stake out a unique
employee value proposition at Yahoo!. She said, “We really want to have a lot of key messages
for employees about what the employee experience is, how it’s differentiated. We want to have
those same messages for leaders about their important role in delivering that differentiated
experience.” Sartain believed this differentiation was a prerequisite for building a distinctive
internal brand identity.
In assessing the company’s value proposition, employees considered multiple factors:

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compensation, company culture and the opportunity to work on a well-known product in a

cutting-edge industry were all part of the equation. But in Sartain’s view, the company still had
to understand how employees weighted different components of the value proposition relative to
one another. How, for example, did health insurance stack up against stock options? Free coffee
vs. on-site dry cleaning? Sartain’s challenge was to better understand these variables, and find
an effective way to market the total package throughout the organization.
Talent Acquisition
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In Sartain’s view, the company’s first opportunity to present its employee value proposition was
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during the recruitment process⎯most people’s first in-depth experience with Yahoo! as an
organization. By clearly communicating values and expectations, HR could help the
organization screen for fit (not necessarily a new idea at Yahoo!), and set the tone for a
candidate’s future interaction with the company as an employee.
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Under Sartain, the recruitment function was undergoing a transformation. Prior to her arrival,
the process was arbitrary⎯a candidate’s experience could vary widely depending on the
department or group doing the hiring. Managers were rarely provided with formal guidelines for
hiring, and not all were skilled at interviewing and recruiting. There were reports of candidates
left waiting for hours in company reception areas because managers had forgotten that they had
scheduled an interview. Sartain changed this, both by changing the way her own department
operated, and by providing detailed guidelines for managers on how to recruit successfully. Her
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aim was to provide a consistent recruitment experience for all candidates⎯one that provided a
clear (and positive) impression of Yahoo!’s employee value proposition.
It was clear that Yahoo!’s hiring needs were not the same as they had been during the boom
years. The labor market had changed dramatically since the beginning of 2001. The Bay Area’s
high tech sector swung from being one of the country’s tightest labor markets to one of the
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softest. Thanks in part to Resumix, Yahoo!’s online resume submission and recruitment tool, the
company was receiving between 8,000 and 10,000 unsolicited resumes a day. But the company
was no longer focused on bringing in enough bodies to sustain its meteoric growth. In order to
execute Semel’s new strategy successfully⎯with its focus on preserving revenue and controlling
costs⎯the company needed to find the right candidates. Now it was not quantity, but quality,
that mattered.
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One example of this shift concerned the people who developed new products and services for
Yahoo!’s Web sites. Traditionally, these employees, known as producers, had a background in
programming and Web site design. Over time, however, managers believed that products should
be developed and managed by people who specialized in the business side of Web services and
possessed the leadership skills needed to manage the increasingly complex production process.
In the tech industry, such people were referred to as product managers, and Yahoo!’s recruitment
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efforts shifted toward identifying candidates with this particular skill set. Technical skills would
still be valued, but producers would no longer drive the product development process.
Keeping in mind these evolving requirements, Sartain’s goal was to turn Yahoo!’s recruitment
process into a “talent machine”⎯a finely tuned operation that continually supplied top-tier
candidates to support the company’s strategy. As always, “fit” would play an important role in
determining an employee’s success within the organization, and a clear employee value
proposition would help recruiters and managers screen out candidates for whom fit was a
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problem. The converse was also true. Sartain believed that the soft high tech labor market was
temporary, and it would not be long before Yahoo! would once again be forced to compete
fiercely for top-tier talent. A highly differentiated employee value proposition would provide the
company with an edge in attracting and retaining top-tier candidates⎯provided such candidates
found the overall value compelling. Over time, Sartain hoped it would also reduce average
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recruitment costs and employee turnover.
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Compensation
Almost by definition, compensation was a key part of any company’s employee value
proposition. Sartain’s Global Rewards Group was responsible for establishing Yahoo!’s
compensation policies, and the team led by Lorree Farrar quickly identified discrepancies
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between company policy and reality.
In general, base pay at Yahoo! was intended to be set around the 50-60th percentile of current
market rates. Yahoo! preferred to position itself as an employer of choice; therefore employees
were expected to provide their labor at a discount. However, the actual figure was closer to the
80th percentile.
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Though official policy was to offer incentive compensation at above-market rates, in reality,
bonus pay was largely unknown at Yahoo! (with the exception of certain sales divisions).
Instead, the company’s long-standing practice was to provide almost all of its employees with
stock options. The actual proportion of option holders was somewhat uncertain, but universally
acknowledged to be high. Oshima estimated that 95 percent of employees held options. Such
grants had long been considered a staple of the Yahoo! culture (as it was at many companies
founded during the Internet boom), and was regarded favorably. Many employees praised
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Yahoo!’s “culture of ownership,” and considered options to be a powerful motivational tool.
On the other hand, some managers had begun to have second thoughts about the company’s
liberal use of stock options. Given the drop in Yahoo!’s stock price, many outstanding options
were underwater, thus limiting their motivational potential. Some managers said that underwater
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options had a negative effect on motivation since they showed how far the company’s price had
fallen. In addition, several executives and board members questioned the value of issuing
options to employees whose roles offered little chance to directly affect the company’s share
price.
In order to partially offset the effects of underwater options, and to create additional motivational
tools, the executive team, facilitated by HR, proposed moving toward a compensation structure
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more weighted towards cash-based incentive pay. At the time, no Yahoo! employees had any
kind of bonus plan, and many in the organization were uncertain about how such a system could
or should be implemented. One concern was the implied cultural shift from an “egalitarian”
society to that of a “meritocracy”. If certain employees were singled out for exceptional
performance, what message did that send to those who were not? Stock options, on the other
hand, were more nondiscriminating. All option holders either benefited together or suffered
together⎯and this had been long-standing company practice.
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Other Benefits
In addition to obvious drivers of value such as salary and stock options, Sartain and her team
sought to promote awareness of⎯and an appreciation for⎯other, less obvious perks of
employment. These were numerous and varied, including:
• A beautiful campus-like environment (especially at the company’s Sunnyvale
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headquarters).
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• Brash purple and bold décor.
• Conference rooms with whimsical pop cultural names like “Phish Food” and “Chutes and
Ladders.”
• An egalitarian environment in which every employee, including Semel, Yang, and Filo,
occupied a cubicle rather than a private office.
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• Amenities such as on-site car washes, dental clinics, a subsidized cafeteria, gymnasiums,
basketball courts, and dry cleaning services.
• Free coffee bars in every Yahoo! Building.
• Easy access to multiple foosball tables (a tribute to the company’s roots as a fun Internet
startup).
• The cachet of an iconic Internet brand.
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• An atmosphere of teamwork, creativity, and “fun.”
• The chance to work on products that were viewed and used by millions of people every
day.
HR staffers often cited the last point as a key factor in attracting top talent to Yahoo!. Another
justification for these perks, less frequently discussed outside the HR department, was the degree
to which these amenities boosted productivity by enticing employees to spend more time at the
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office. Indeed, many Yahoo! employees took pride in working long hours, and it was widely
agreed that the company culture encouraged such dedication.
Policies and Processes
Concurrent with her focus on employee value, Sartain had other, more practical, concerns to
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address. The Cultural Health Index indicated a dire need for more and better information about
company processes and policies, at all levels of the organization. Employees were frustrated by
what they perceived as organizational obstacles to the daily tasks they were asked to accomplish.
Until such concerns were adequately addressed, they would hinder the success of any internal
branding campaign. Conversely, a well-executed program to rectify these shortcomings would
provide valuable support for such an effort.
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Here Come the Guides

The traditional HR response to these practical concerns was to create a comprehensive policy
manual. Sartain joked, “It was every HR person’s dream. We had to write a policy manual.
You know, we live for that!” But based on her understanding of Yahoo!’s culture, she believed
the organization would have either a negative reaction or no response at all to something so
prosaic. Nevertheless, the need for clarification was real.
According to Sartain:
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Everybody was like, ‘Okay, we'll just write a policy manual,’ and I said ‘No, we
won’t write a policy manual, let’s think of what we’re really doing here.’ So…
we said what is Yahoo!… if we were branding Yahoo!, how would we brand it?
And we finally came out with Yahoo! as a guide, which interestingly was one of
the concepts that was coming out when we later did our branding. So we came up
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with a Guide To Working At Yahoo!. It’s not a book, it’s not a handbook, it’s not
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a policy manual, but it is an online interactive guide. And when we did all of our
presentations, we did it as if it was a Yahoo! map, so it had the same kind of
graphics. So it looked consistent with our product branding.
The Guide To Working At Yahoo! was followed by a Guide to Paying at Yahoo!, a Guide to
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Recognition and Rewards at Yahoo!, a Guide to Hiring at Yahoo!, and a Guide to Ethical
Business Conduct at Yahoo! Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated addition to the series, a Guide
to Getting Stuff Done at Yahoo!, served as a roadmap to Yahoo!’s new organizational structure,
and was intended to dispel some of the confusion surrounding the organization’s decision-
making processes. (See Exhibit 5 for an example of a Guide and Exhibit 6 for product branding
on the external customer site.)
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Career Development
From 1995 through 2001, Yahoo! had little time to focus on training and development. The
company’s growth was too rapid, creating more vacancies than could be filled through internal
promotions and redeployments. The infrastructure to support internal career changes was
essentially nonexistent. Having been hired to fill a particular role, employees rarely had the
option to prepare for other challenges. As a result, external hiring became the default practice.
The combination of rapid growth and lack of training contributed to the complaints about opaque
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company policies and processes.
In response, Sartain placed a renewed emphasis on Learning and Development. The team had
several mandates: to boost the skills of Yahoo!’s workforce; improve the company’s managerial
talent; and give all employees a greater sense of mobility within the company. Sartain explained:
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“The way we’re starting is, we’re offering a personal-growth course for employees to show them
how to pursue their career development. When they take the course, their manager is asked to
take a corresponding course on how to mentor growth. So that will be the first step and then
we’ll build layers upon that, and eventually, I’d like to have mentoring and developing part of
the performance criteria.”
Sartain also saw Learning and Development as a potentially important component of Yahoo!’s
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employee value proposition. The idea of a company where a career could grow and evolve over
time was compelling⎯especially during an economic downturn that had left many candidates
yearning for a greater sense of security. Development opportunities would also help reduce costs
over time.
Reviews & Recognition

Like career development, regular performance reviews had been the exception rather than the
norm at Yahoo!. In a company preoccupied by growth, systematic feedback had fallen by the
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wayside. In addition, since there had been little formal career development and few employees
received any kind of incentive compensation, reviews did not have any practical consequences.
Sartain considered all this to be an oversight reflective of the startup Yahoo! culture. How could
talent be developed internally if it was never assessed? If the company was to move toward a
meritocratic culture based on incentive compensation, regular performance reviews were
necessary. Employees and managers would need guidance, and the rules and procedures would
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need to be carefully defined. These were outlined in Sartain’s Guide to Working at Yahoo!.
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In addition to formal reviews, Sartain worked with the senior executive team and her HR staff to
devise other mechanisms to motivate employees and recognize outstanding performance. This,
she believed, would further improve retention rates for high-potential employees. She explained:
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At Yahoo!, there really weren’t any formal reward programs when we got there.
So we immediately created a superstar award to reward innovation and adherence
to our new business strategy… . We also introduced a budget for leaders so that
you could give spot rewards to people, and we came up with lots of ideas to get
this rewarding in⎯because one of the things I’ve found in Silicon Valley
companies and in growing companies is it seems like it’s all about money, and at
some point money really isn’t as meaningful.
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The superstar program took its name from the fact that all Yahoo! employees had gold stars
hanging in their cubes with their names and years of arrival at Yahoo! (e.g., “Class of 2000”).
The informal, nonmonetary rewards budget was well received. Sartain offered the following
anecdote:
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There is a young person that works with us in our communications effort and she
did not have a DVD player… . Someone found out she was renting all these
videos and was trying to go through them to find little snips on a video that she
was making for us, and she actually did the Yahoo! yodel event. So we wanted to
do something special for her, and her boss first said, ‘Oh, I’m going to give her a
dinner for two in San Francisco.’ Okay. This is a 27-year-old who doesn’t have a
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significant other. She didn’t really want a dinner for two in San Francisco.
Luckily the boss had been to our training and then said, ‘Well, yeah, that isn’t the
right gift for this person, but she needs a DVD player’⎯so she gave her the latest,
greatest, state-of-the-art DVD player. This young woman was running through
the halls going, ‘I can’t believe my boss gave me a DVD player!’… I mean you
could have given her, you know, enough money to buy 10 DVD players, and she
wouldn’t have been half as excited as she was getting the one DVD player.
No
Yahoo! Backyard
Perhaps the most critical component of Sartain’s recommended logistical changes was the
creation of Yahoo! Backyard, the company’s Intranet system. Ironically, before Sartain’s arrival
the world’s best-known digital information portal had no digital portal of its own. This made it
difficult to share information across the company, and contributed to the increasing
fragmentation of Yahoo!’s business units. Sartain recognized that a centralized system for
internal communications would be necessary to build a consistent corporate culture. Yahoo!
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Backyard was the team’s solution (see Exhibit 7).
Deployed in 2003, Backyard was based on the simple, intuitive interface of Yahoo!’s public Web
sites. Finally, everyone in the company had access to the same news and information, regardless
of their physical location. Answers to questions could be distributed quickly, problems
addressed rapidly, and successes celebrated communally. The site had other practical uses as
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well: it hosted a complete employee directory with pictures, the company’s Guides to internal
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processes, and information on other HR functions such as recruitment and compensation. These
useful features guaranteed that the site would be used frequently⎯usually daily⎯by every
company employee, making it easy to share the latest news.
Workplace Wackiness
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Sartain recognized the importance of group rituals as well as the central role of wacky fun in
Yahoo!’s culture and was happy to be a participant. For example, she recalled, “We played an
April fools’ joke where we sent out an e-mail from Juan Valdez saying that we’d started
charging for coffee. The e-mail said that the caffeinated coffee was cheaper than decaf because
we want you to be productive. And then we had a picture of Juan with his donkey on Backyard.
People looked up Juan Valdez ’cause it was just from J. Valdez at Yahoo!. Everybody thought
that was really cool. So, now we have to figure out how we’re going to do another April fools’
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joke next year.”
The fun factor was also on Sartain’s mind when she joined a thousand or so fellow Yahoos on
the Sunnyvale campus for a group yodel in 2003 (see Exhibit 8). Taylor Marie Ware, a nine-
year-old from Tennessee who had recently won Yahoo!’s Favorite Amateur Yodeler contest,
also took part in the group yodel at Sunnyvale. The event was covered by CNN, and entered into
the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest group yodel in history. Sartain reflected, “It
op
was seen all over the world, the buzz was created, but the energy level was so great, and to see
these engineers… they usually don’t stand in rooms and yodel for an hour, so it was really
great… and those are the kind of celebrations that build the culture.”
INTERNAL BRANDING TAKES OFF

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With so many structural and procedural changes to implement, Sartain and her team were kept
busy over the first three years of her tenure. But she never lost sight of her larger goal: to launch
a full-fledged internal branding campaign that would tie together all these changes while
communicating the unifying themes behind them in order to support the company’s strategy and
fully align the internal organization with its external brand. However, there was a catch:
Yahoo!’s external brand had not yet been defined.
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It was not until the CMO, Cammie Dunaway, joined in 2003 that the final piece of the puzzle fell
into place. With Dunaway onboard, Sartain had a partner who would clarify Yahoo!’s brand
positioning and help communicate that brand throughout the organization. Armed with three
years’ worth of insights into Yahoo!’s strategy, culture, processes and potential, Sartain set out to
accelerate her internal branding plan to full throttle.
Partnership with Marketing

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Sartain was instrumental in selecting Dunaway as CMO. She had played a key role in all of
Yahoo!’s recent key executive hires, and had been explicit in her desire to find candidates who
were as excited about building brands internally, as well as externally. Recalling her meetings
with Dunaway, Rosensweig, and Castro, Sartain recalled, “Each one of them understood the
power of the brand, they understood the concept of the brand, and during the interview I talked
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to them about the need for internal branding and they were interested in working on that.”
os
The partnership between marketing and HR was planned from the start, and its benefits proved
twofold. Sartain said, “Since I was able to help hire our new chief marketing officer, I was able
to find someone who was really interested in this subject and so now HR is involved with the
marketing team in picking the whole brand of the company. So it’s not going to be like an
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external brand and an internal brand, but the brand will work in both places.”
Dunaway brought discipline, rigor and enthusiasm to the endeavor. Looking back, she recalled:
I probably wasn’t here two weeks before Libby was in my office saying, ‘Okay!
You’re here! Chris Castro and I are so excited! We have got to get going on this
internal brand piece.’… They had started brainstorming some ideas and working
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on it, and working on things like the corporate values over the course of last year.
And so I said, ‘Absolutely! I believe in this! But I think that before we run off
down the executional path, we really need to take a step back and make sure that
we really understand the brand DNA, what’s made us great in the past and what’s
the environment out there that we need to be aware of as we think about where the
brand needs to go in the future. So, let us do a deep dive on Yahoo! positioning,
knowing that our employees will be a key constituent that’ll be a key source of
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input to the whole positioning project. But let us take some time to really reflect
on the outer brand.’
The internal branding partnership included Murray Gaylord, Yahoo!’s vice president of Brand
Marketing. Soho Square, Yahoo!’s new advertising agency, which had been created specifically
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to service the Yahoo! account by its parent company, WPP, was also actively involved. All
parties coordinated their efforts to ensure consistency across all brand messaging.
“Life Engine”
As Sartain, Dunaway, and their colleagues explored Yahoo!’s brand potential, both inside and
out, they came to agree on several key insights that would form the basis for the brand’s new
No
“DNA”. One was a sense of aspiration. Sartain explained, “Yahoo! is something bigger, and
that to me is going to be the real powerful key internally and externally, because people really do
look for meaning. And if they’re working at Yahoo! they really are going to be part of being
something bigger than themselves.”
Another key attribute was Yahoo!’s function as a “guide”⎯a metaphor Sartain had already hit
upon in her series of online information modules. According to Sartain, “Yahoo!’s sort of a
compass... it helps you find your way here… and it also helps you find what you need. When
Do
you’re driven to accomplish it helps you be more creative. And that’s a way to feed your brain
and fuel your soul with whatever’s out there.”
Embracing these concepts, the team agreed upon “Life Engine” as their unifying brand concept.
The simple phrase was meant to convey empowerment and direction, and emphasize that
Yahoo!’s relevance extended beyond the bounds of the online world into the real one. Sartain
explained, “After brainstorming all day we figured out that ‘Life Engine’ works internally and
t
externally; we really don’t need a separate brand, but how Yahoo! is your life engine would
os
differ whether you are an external customer or an internal customer.” To external users, “Life
Engine” would suggest all the ways in which Yahoo! functioned as a kind of universal guide. To
employees, it would encompass that meaning, plus all the ways in which working at Yahoo!
“powered” all other facets of their lives, from life insurance to free caffe lattes.
rP
TV spots for the “Life Engine” ad campaign featured unusual pairings of Yahoo! users, some
famous, others not. One ad showcased a deaf woman, who explained in sign language how she
used Yahoo! to connect with the world. Another featured political humorists Ben Stein and Al
Franken deadpanning their opinions on what Republicans were most likely to search for on
Yahoo! (Stein: “Volunteer work…”; Franken: “Yachts.”). All spots ended with the tagline:
“Yahoo!: It’s a Life Engine.” (see Exhibit 9).
yo
Internally, “Life Engine” messaging was supported in a number of ways. Oversize posters based
on the external ads were prominently displayed in halls and on cubicle walls (see Exhibit 10).
Every employee was given a customized license plate frame that read: “Yahoo!: My _____
Engine”, allowing employees to fill in a personalized 20-letter description. Similarly, on
“Analyst Day,” when Wall Street researchers descended on the Yahoo! campus, they too were
given nametags with the same text. Dunaway recalled several analysts filling in the blanks to
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create phrases like “My Growth Engine”⎯surely a positive sign from the investment
community. Sartain’s plate read: “My Fun Place to Work Engine” (see Exhibit 11).
The presentation of HR materials would also be transformed to match the new campaign.
According to Sartain, “To make it come to life, we are repackaging our entire benefits program,
and we’re going to have to come up with some ‘engine’ about how that works. But we’re going
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to package benefits with the amenities that we have also on campus, and then also with the
partners and products that we have” (see Exhibit 12).
In addition, the company also ran a high-profile contest inviting employees to write brief
descriptions of how Yahoo! served as their life engine. The writer of the most compelling
testimony would be awarded a brand-new Harley Davidson motorcycle⎯an extremely literal
symbol of the “life engine” concept. The contest was promoted dramatically at a company
No
gathering at Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale headquarters. As hundreds of startled Yahoos looked on, a

helmeted, leather-clad biker rode into the meeting on the Harley, engine blaring. When the
motor cut, the helmet came off to reveal the CFO Susan Decker⎯clad in a special shirt designed
to simulate a motley collection of biker tattoos (see Exhibit 13).
The write-in response to the contest exceeded expectations. Some employees wrote about their
work lives; others shared personal, often poignant stories about how Yahoo! had served as their
own “life engine” (see Exhibit 14). Reading the responses, Sartain and Dunaway felt their
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efforts had been successful.
PUTTING THE ENGINE IN HIGH GEAR…
Sartain looked back on the past three years with a sense of accomplishment. The internal
branding campaign was still a work in progress, but she was pleased with its development. The
company was responding well, and all indications suggested that the culture was evolving.
t
Semel’s three-part competitive strategy seemed to be paying off: Yahoo!’s stock price had more
os
than tripled since the start of 2002, and 2003 net income was nearly $238 million, versus a loss
of nearly $93 million for 2001.
Internally, though, several questions lingered. The debate over compensation and stock options
still remained unresolved. Would incentive pay ever be fully embraced at Yahoo!? How would
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the company balance the competing demands of egalitarianism and meritocracy? Would moving
away from the principle of universal ownership cause long-term damage?
More broadly, there were some who wondered whether a company’s culture could ever really be
changed in anything more than a superficial way, especially through the efforts of an HR team.
If that was the case, should it even be attempted, or were the potential costs too great? The long-
term success of Semel’s⎯and Sartain’s⎯strategy was still undetermined. And there were those
yo
in the organization who wondered whether, in a company where so few employees had direct
contact with customers, internal branding was really worth the effort. How important were the
notions of internal branding and company culture if the company faced another downturn?
Would it be better to focus company resources and employee attention elsewhere?
Sartain never claimed to have all the answers. But she believed strongly in the merits of her
op
approach, and looked forward to continuing her quest to resolve important employee-related
issues at Yahoo! and strengthen the company’s unique internal brand.
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No
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Exhibit 1
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Chart of Yahoo!’s Stock Price
os
April 1996 – April 2005
120
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100
80
yo
60
40
20
op
0
July-96
October-96
January-97
July-97
October-97
January-98
July-98
October-98
January-99
July-99
October-99
January-00
July-00
October-00
January-01
July-01
October-01
January-02
July-02
October-02
January-03
July-03
October-03
January-04
July-04
October-04
January-05
April-96
April-97
April-98
April-99
April-00
April-01
April-02
April-03
April-04
April-05
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Source: Company Web site.

No
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Exhibit 2
t
Select Executive Bios
os
Chris Castro
Chief Communications Officer
Senior Vice President
Christine Castro joined Yahoo! in March of 2002. An executive with more than 15 years
rP
of experience in corporate communications and public relations, Castro previously was vice
president for corporate communications at The Walt Disney Company. Castro was responsible
for leading Yahoo!'s worldwide communications efforts, including public and media relations;
corporate reputation management; corporate, financial and employee communications; and crisis
and issues management. Castro reported to Yahoo! Inc. chairman and chief executive officer
Terry Semel.
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In her role as vice president for corporate communications at The Walt Disney Company,
Castro managed corporate communications issues and initiatives including mergers and
acquisitions, financial reporting, legislative and regulatory issues, branding and executive
communications. Castro joined Disney in 1999 as director of corporate communications.
Prior to her experience at Disney, Castro was director of corporate communications for
SunAmerica Inc., a Los Angeles-based financial services and investment company. While at
SunAmerica, she managed media relations activities, as well as employee communications and
op
speechwriting for the company's top executives. Prior to joining SunAmerica in 1995, Castro
spent four years at Rockwell International as manager of employee communications programs.
At Rockwell, she handled corporate-level employee communications and media relations. Castro
has also worked as a reporter and editor.
Castro received a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and a Master of Arts degree in
communications management from the University of Southern California. She was a member of
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the board of directors for the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute.
Cammie Dunaway
Chief Marketing Officer
Cammie Dunaway joined Yahoo! in June 2003 as chief marketing officer, responsible for
leading Yahoo!'s worldwide branding efforts and driving the company's product marketing
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initiatives. A seasoned executive with nearly 20 years of marketing experience, Dunaway

oversaw all of Yahoo!'s consumer, enterprise and partnership marketing initiatives, from product
planning and positioning to execution of customer acquisition and retention strategies for
Yahoo!'s premium and subscription services.
Prior to joining the company, Dunaway spent 13 years at Frito-Lay Company,
supervising such prominent brands as Doritos, Cheetos, Lays, Ruffles and Rold Gold Pretzels.
As vice president and general manager of kids and teen brands at Frito-Lay Company, Dunaway
managed volume and profit growth on a $3.5 billion portfolio and leveraged the Internet to reach
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this enigmatic demographic. She rebuilt Doritos.com and redirected the brand's Super Bowl
media funds toward interactive marketing to fuel increased sales.
Dunaway received a BS in business administration from the University of Richmond and
an MBA from Harvard Business School. She was named as one of the 100 Top Marketers by
Advertising Age magazine and oversaw the Doritos "Bold and Daring" advertising campaign,
which was named the top campaign for 2001 by the American Advertising Association.
t
Dan Rosensweig
os
Chief Operating Officer
Daniel Rosensweig was appointed chief operating officer of Yahoo! in April 2002.
Reporting to Chairman and CEO Terry Semel, Rosensweig oversaw the operations of Yahoo!
worldwide. Functions that reported to him include product development, marketing, international
operations, and North American operations, which encompassed the Company's six business
rP
units and advertising sales.
Prior to joining Yahoo!, Rosensweig was president of CNET Networks, a position he
took on following the merger of ZDNet and CNET in 2000. In this capacity, Rosensweig was
responsible for many of the operations globally, and played a critical role in overseeing the
successful integration of the two companies. During his tenure, Rosensweig was also a key
participant in company-wide efforts to develop and introduce innovative new Internet advertising
formats, such as interactive messaging units.
yo
Before joining CNET Networks, Rosensweig was an 18-year veteran of Ziff-Davis,
where he served in many capacities, including president and chief executive officer of ZDNet,
Inc. from 1997 to 2000. Rosensweig built ZDNet as a standalone company from Ziff-Davis,
successfully took the company public, grew the business to become both profitable and among
the top 20 most visited networks on the Internet, and finally merged with CNET. Rosensweig
was president of Ziff-Davis Internet Publishing Group from 1996 to 1997, where he oversaw
magazine titles such as Inter@ctive Week and Yahoo! Internet Life. Rosensweig was vice-
op
president and publisher of PC Magazine from 1994 to 1996, and associate publisher from 1992
to 1994. Under his tenure, PC Magazine became the leading computer magazine in both
audience reach and revenue. Rosensweig also held various other positions at Ziff-Davis in
advertising sales, classified ad sales, and circulation. Rosensweig received a Bachelor of Arts
degree in political science from Hobart College, Geneva, New York.
tC
Libby Sartain
Senior Vice President, Human Resources and Chief People Officer
With more than 25 years of experience in human resource management, Libby Sartain
was responsible for leading Yahoo! Inc.'s global human resources efforts and managing and
developing the human resources team. She also focused on attracting, retaining, and developing
Yahoo!'s employees who promote and strengthen the company culture, as well as represent the
No
powerful Yahoo! brand.

Prior to joining Yahoo! in August 2001, Sartain was vice president of people at
Southwest Airlines. An employee of Southwest Airlines since 1988, Sartain managed a staff of
300 and led all human resources functions at the airline, including employment, training, benefits
and compensation. She also played a key role in developing an employment brand strategy,
which helped double employee growth in six years.
Sartain also served as chairman of the Society for Human Resource Management and was
named fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources. Sartain received a BA. degree in
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business administration at Southern Methodist University and an MBA from the University of
North Texas.
Terry Semel
t
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer
os
Terry Semel joined Yahoo!Inc. as chairman and chief executive officer in May 2001. He
led a successful transition of the company by identifying and pursuing new opportunities within
Yahoo!'s two core businesses, marketing services and consumer services. He also assembled a
talented executive team that oversaw the continued growth of Yahoo!'s global user base, a
turnaround in Yahoo!'s marketing services offerings, and introduced new revenue opportunities,
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including sponsored search, listings and services bundled with high-speed Internet access.
Previously, Semel spent 24 years at Warner Bros., and was most noted for his role as
chairman and co-chief executive officer where he and Robert Daly helped build Warner Bros.
into one of the world's largest and most creative media and entertainment enterprises. Like
Yahoo!, Warner Bros. reached billions of worldwide consumers through its vast stable of
properties. Semel was credited with building Warner Bros. from a single revenue source
generating less than $1 billion to nearly $11 billion total revenues from multiple, diverse
yo
businesses in 50 countries. Prior to Warner Bros., Semel managed Walt Disney's Theatrical
Distribution division, and CBS' Theatrical Distribution division.
During this time, Semel was on the board of directors of Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation,
Revlon, Inc. and the Guggenheim Museum.
Source: Company Web site (as of July 2005).

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No
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Exhibit 3
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Things We Don’t Value at Yahoo!
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What We Don’t Value…
Bureaucracy Entitlement
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Broken links Too big for your britches
Ho-hum All work, no fooz
Decaf ALL CAPS
Losing Closed doors
Good enough Same ol' same ol'
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Boring Vaporware
Arrogance 20/20 hindsight
A stick in the eye Fads
Discrimination Swashbuckling
Status quo Early meetings
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A cog in the wheel Missing the boat
Formality Behind the curve
Bugs Head in the sand
Irrelevance Following
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Sloth Bad apples

CD-ROMs in the mail High horses
Pop-ups Impossible
Quick fix One size fits all
Passing the buck Playing catchup
Shoes worn at all times Yesterday's news
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Micromanaging All bark

90% Spam
Additives & preservatives Shoulda Coulda Woulda
Hurry up & wait Typos
Bad grammar Rear view mirror
Monday morning quarterback Punching the clock
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Exhibit 4
t
What We Value at Yahoo!
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We Value…
Our mission is to be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses.
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How we pursue that mission is influenced by a set of core values - the standards that guide
interactions with fellow Yahoos, the principles that direct how we service our customers, the
ideals that drive what we do and how we do it. Many of our values were put into practice by two
guys in a trailer some time ago; others reflect ambitions as our company grows. All of them are
what we strive to achieve every day.
Excellence: Teamwork:
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We are committed to winning with integrity. We We treat one another with respect and
know leadership is hard won and should never be communicate openly. We foster collaboration while
taken for granted. We aspire to flawless execution maintaining individual accountability. We
and don't take shortcuts on quality. We seek the encourage the best ideas to surface from anywhere
best talent and promote its development. We are within the organization. We appreciate the value of
flexible and learn from our mistakes. multiple perspectives and diverse expertise.
Innovation: Community:
op
We thrive on creativity and We share an infectious sense of
ingenuity. We seek the innovations mission to make an impact on
and ideas that can change the society and empower consumers in
world. We anticipate market trends ways never before possible. We are
and move quickly to embrace them. committed to serving both the
We are not afraid to take informed, Internet community and our own
responsible risk. communities.
tC
Customer Fixation: Fun:

We respect our customers above all else and never We believe humor is essential to success. We
forget that they come to us by choice. We share a applaud irreverence and don't take ourselves too
personal responsibility to maintain our customers' seriously. We celebrate achievement. We yodel.
loyalty and trust. We listen and respond to our
customers and seek to exceed their expectations.
No

Do
Exhibit 5
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Guide2Paying@Yahoo!
os
rP
Destination Interactive Map
•“How to”guide
• Gets you where you’re going
Zoom In
[ 1 ]
2
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[ 3 ]
[ 4 ]
[ 5 ]
Full Route [ 6 ]
•Total Comp Philosophy
•Salary Ranges
[ 7 ]
•FLSA (exempt/non-exempt) [ 8 ]
[ 9 ]
[ 10 ]
Zoom Out
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Source: Information provided by Yahoo!.
tC
No
Do
Exhibit 6
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Yahoo! External Customer Site
os
rP
yo
op
tC

No
Do
Exhibit 7
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Yahoo Backyard
os
rP
yo
op
tC

No
Do
Exhibit 8
t
2003 Yahoo! Yodel Challenge
os
rP
yo
op
tC
No

Do
Exhibit 9
t
Life Engine Ad Campaign
os
rP
yo
op
tC

No
Do
Exhibit 10
t
Internal Life Engine Messaging
os
rP
yo
op
tC
No
Do
Exhibit 11
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Sartain’s Customized License Plate
os
rP
yo
op
tC

No
Do
Exhibit 12
t
Branded HR Products
os
rP
MyLife:
MyBenefits
MyLife:
MyRewards yo
op
tC
No
Do
Exhibit 13
t
CFO Susan Decker at Life Engine Contest
os
rP
yo
op
tC

No
Do
Exhibit 14
t
Sample Employee Write-in to Life Engine Contest
os
Yahoo! is my Giants engine…my Barry-just-hit-another-one engine, my Jack-
Clark-throwback-jersey-for-less-than-retail engine, my I-can-still-be-a-fan-down-
in-Socal engine. It’s also my surf report engine, my will-I-need-sunblock? engine,
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my where-can-I-get-a-good-burrito-in-San-Clemente? engine. It’s my mail
engine, my keep-in-touch-with-friends-and-family-while-traveling-engine, my
stock engine, my election engine, my news engine, my boy-that’s-a-great-picture-
of-Britney-Spears engine. It’s my movie engine, my music engine, my sold-my-
car-in-a-week engine (my “engine” engine, if you will), my keep-in-touch-with-old-
coworkers-on-Groups engine, and even my hey-bro-check-out-this-girl-on-
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personals-she’s-cute-and-lives-by-you-why-don’t-you-send-her-an-Icebreaker?
engine. Yahoo! is also my job engine. It’s my purple and yellow engine, my flip-
flops at work engine, my free coffee engine, my who-picked-out-all-Krackles-and-
just-left-the—original-flavor-Trident? engine, my getting-chased-by-geese-on-the-
trails engine, my standing-next-to-Filo-ordering-Pacific-Rim engine, my 6-years-
of-ups-and-downs-but-mostly-ups-from-98-to-2004-can-you-believe-it’s-been-
op
that-long? engine. Yahoo! is my home engine, my home-away-from-home
engine, my friend engine, my first-thing-in-the-morning-and-last-thing-at-night-
engine, and my-only-damn-engine-since-1996...engine.
tC

No
Do

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t

To Sartain, there was only one way to find out.

Culture & Values

The Employee Value Proposition

In assessing the company’s value proposition, employees considered multiple factors:

compensation, company culture and the opportunity to work on a well-known product in a

• A beautiful campus-like environment (especially at the company’s Sunnyvale

Policies and Processes

Here Come the Guides

Reviews & Recognition

Backyard was the team’s solution (see Exhibit 7).

INTERNAL BRANDING TAKES OFF

Partnership with Marketing

gathering at Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale headquarters. As hundreds of startled Yahoos looked on, a

efforts had been successful.

PUTTING THE ENGINE IN HIGH GEAR…

Source: Company Web site.

the board of directors for the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute.

initiatives. A seasoned executive with nearly 20 years of marketing experience, Dunaway

powerful Yahoo! brand.

Source: Company Web site (as of July 2005).

Sloth Bad apples

Micromanaging All bark

Source: Company Web site.

Customer Fixation: Fun:

Source: Company Web site.

Source: Company Web site.

Source: Information provided by Yahoo!.

Source: Information provided by Yahoo!.

Source: Information provided by Yahoo!.

Source: Information provided by Yahoo!.

Source: Information provided by Yahoo!.

Source: Information provided by Yahoo!.

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