Well i'm back sooner than I thought.... Lycos' new advertising campain looks like it is SPECIFICALLY targeting the GO brand name recognition with "go get it" .... i'm just fascinated with commercials .... I think it could hurt both Lycos & SEEK...it will cause confusion among some people first getting on the net...
Company Press Release
Lycos Launches "Go Get It" National Brand Building Advertising Campaign
"Lycos" the Sleek Labrador Retriever to Personify the New Lycos, Fastest and Easiest Way to Navigate the Internet
WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 2, 1998-- Lycos, Inc., (NASDAQ: LCOS - news) ''Your Personal Internet Guide,'' today launched a national advertising campaign aimed at getting new and experienced Internet users to visit the new Lycos.com and make it their start page and hub for Internet activity. The goal of the year long brand building campaign -- telling users to ''Go Get It'' -- is to dramatically inform consumers that Lycos is the fastest and easiest way to find what they are looking for on the Web.
The broad-reaching national campaign, which promotes Lycos' new streamlined user interface and enhanced directory, will be heavily supported in 11 high-indexing Internet markets. The campaign integrates heavy national cable television, drive-time spot radio, direct mail, and three-dimensional outdoor, print and online advertising to tell consumers that Lycos provides the fastest and easiest way to find things on the Web. The first radio ads aired the week of October 19 and the first television ads aired on October 28.
Created in conjunction with Bozell Worldwide/New York and Bozell creative guru Rich Levy, the campaign is a natural extension of Lycos' previous campaign, which emphasized the notion of Lycos as the ''Personal Internet Guide.'' According to KRC Research, the initial campaign was responsible for elevating Lycos to the number two awareness spot behind rival Yahoo in less than four months. The ''Personal Internet Guide'' theme remains in the new campaign and is now represented by ''Lycos,'' a black Labrador retriever who finds anything that the user is looking for at speeds that make searching easy and fun. The personable young retriever ''Lycos'' not only is smart enough to read search queries, but he then happily dashes to parts of the world within seconds to bring back the results to his beloved owner.
''Our initial campaign, which began in the spring of 1997, was successful because it addressed people's fears of getting online and getting lost on the Web,'' said Jan Robert Horsfall, vice president of marketing for Lycos. ''Our latest consumer research -- both qualitative and quantitative -- showed that users are not afraid anymore about getting lost, they are simply getting annoyed by it. Users want to find what they are looking for quickly and easily without getting a ton of dead links and distractions. They want performance in terms of screen speed and relevance. They want their search results delivered quickly and seamlessly, and they don't care how you do it. They don't care about power or push or gadgetry. They just want the experience to be simple and fast and to produce highly relevant results. The campaign and the new Lycos site speak to the results of that research.''
Lycos has spent the past eight months researching and redefining the service's infrastructure in detail to create the screen performance and ease of use that people want. In concert with MIT, Lycos studied thousands of users' navigational habits through hands-on user testing and eye tracking studies to recreate a site that not only loads fast, but also is based upon how people search for things on the Web.
''In essence, our users created the new Lycos,'' Horsfall added. ''We realized the immense value of this consumer-focused approach when our two-week beta leading up to the final launch provided user feedback that was loaded with accolades from users experimenting with the new version. They kept coming back to us with two things. They said it was fast, and they said it was easy. That's music to our ears given that we've created objectively a tremendous campaign that has been positively tested at the consumer level to support the speed and ease of use of the new Lycos. Further, our overall media buy focusing on adults 18-49 with an emphasis on 18-34 year olds is the perfect way to reach this audience.''
About Lycos, Inc.
Founded in 1995, Lycos, Inc. (NASDAQ:LCOS - news) owns The Lycos Network, the second most visited hub on the Internet, combining all aspects of community, leading Web navigation resources and cutting-edge business and consumer e-commerce solutions. The Lycos Network, a unified set of properties that delivers mass reach and diversity of audience and programming, is composed of best-of-breed services: Lycos.com, Tripod, WhoWhere, Angelfire, MailCity, Guestworld, HotBot, HotWired, Wired News, Webmonkey and Suck.com. Located at lycos.com, Lycos.com -''Your Personal Internet Guide''-is dedicated to helping each individual user locate, retrieve and manage information tailored to his or her personal interests. Headquartered near Boston in Waltham, Mass., Lycos, Inc. maintains U.S. offices in New York City, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mountain View, Calif. and Williamstown, Mass. International offices are located in Germany, Italy, France, Japan, the UK, Spain and The Netherlands.
(c)1998 Lycos, Inc. -- Lycos(R) is a registered trademark of Carnegie Mellon University. All other product or service marks mentioned herein are those of Lycos or their respective owners. All rights reserved.
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Contact:
Lycos, Inc.
Michele Perry, 781\370-2678
Mperry@lycos.com
or
Schwartz Communications
Bill Keeler or Sean Audet
781\684-0770
Billk@schwartz-pr.com
Saudet@schwartz-pr.com
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