Why can't Yahoo control its image like Angelina Jolie?
In these troubled days for journalism, it was, for some, uplifting to read that Angelina Jolie is able to control her image to a pre-Botox level of startle.
The New York Times reported this week that Jolie allegedly offers exclusive pictures of her latest offspring in exchange for guaranteed positive coverage in venerable publications such as People magazine.
This surely leads one to thinking about Yahoo.
Here's a company that seems to enjoy more barbs than British teeth. Allegations of indecision, myopia, and even collusion with the Chinese government are tossed like pungent confetti at the company on a far too frequent basis.
And yet it's not as if Yahoo is the worst company in the world. It's not as if it doesn't make money. It's not as if its brand doesn't have some residual positive associations. And it's not as if it took a major role in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow or the entirely seminal Gone in Sixty Seconds.
Image or reality?
(Credit: Beowulfmovie.com)Yet while Jolie appears to have contrived an image for herself that has now allowed her to participate in half-decent works of entertainment such as Changeling and The Good Shepherd, Yahoo struggles for respect.
It's relatively easy to point to strategies Yahoo might have adopted or management changes it might have made, but it is also easy to point to Jolie's interesting declaration at the 2000 Academy Awards that: "I'm so in love with my brother right now."
One might argue that entertainment journalists are less rigorous than those in the business sphere. One might also argue that some other companies--does Apple come to mind, anyone?--manage to control their images in a far more productive way than Yahoo.
Perhaps Apple executives study the way Jolie's expert publicist steers her public persona.
Might it therefore be an idea for Yahoo to get some guidance from the extraordinary publicist who appears to be solely and uniquely responsible for the Jolie Image Enterprise?
She's called Angelina Jolie.
Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
shut up, we have free healthcare here in the UK, including dentist!
Please don't get me wrong. I don't condone the barbs. But in the US, there are so very many biting comments about the color and alignment of British teeth.
Chris
Americans (the ones that live in the USA) tend to have great looking teeth because veneers are more widely used, even though they come with more dental problems and recurring dental bills. In the UK veneers are seen as cosmetic dentistry and are unlikely to be available on the NHS. Instead, UK dentists focus on fixing the underlying problems rather than superficial results. (Which says a lot about the US...!)
"Six percent of those questioned in a survey of 5,000 patients admitted they had resorted to self-treatment using pliers and glue, the UK's Press Association reported."
NHS includes dentist?
"But more than three-quarters of those polled said they had been forced to pay for private treatment because they had been unable to find an NHS dentist... One respondent in Lancashire, northern England, claimed to have extracted 14 of their own teeth with a pair of pliers. Others said they had fixed broken crowns using glue to avoid costly dental work. Where NHS dental services are available, people are happy with the quality of treatment provided but many find the NHS fee system confusing and expensive" -
"Brits resort to pulling own teeth" - CNN Article
SOURCE: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/10/15/england.dentists/index.html
If you want to write an article about Jolie, fine. If you want to write an article about Yahoo, that is fine as well. But please, don't write such utter garbage as this to basically "trick" people into reading it by tossing in a name that makes people click on the article just to find out what the heck someone is talking about. Which in this case, is nearly incoherent babbling.
I want the last 10 minutes of my life back!
Now can we have some serious journalism for once?
- by kbw62 November 23, 2008 7:29 AM PST
- ...and it is all a lie!!!! ......her HUMANATARIAN , mother earth image...whata joke. no class ..trashy actress, who uses her looks and innocent kids to get what she wants.
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(13 Comments)her and her big donation -making,- to -your- own -charity/pay- yourself- back- in -your -kids- names- tax write off...DO GOODING.
i would worry about all that "controlling interest"... she is buying up ,in those poor third world countries...with all her previous mental instabilities..she can RAISE a whole new REGIME.