The neon Yahoo billboard, which sits by the highway on the way to the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, is about to come down. It has been an iconic (and quite lovely) sign of the Internet boom that remade the city starting in the mid-nineties.
It’s been a San Francisco icon for more than a decade. It’s graced our skyline through the dot.com boom and bust. And it’s one of the most recognizable pieces of advertising the city has seen in a long time. But the San Francisco Egotist has learned that in two weeks, the Yahoo! billboard will be no longer. Jon Charles, Vice President and General Sales Manager for Clear Channel Outdoor in San Francisco confirmed, “Yes, the Yahoo! board will be available starting in December 2011.”
So how did such a distinctive board come about in the first place? Who created it? And what will San Francisco lose when it’s gone? Steve Stone was the Co-Creative Director and Robert Boyce was the Media Director at Black Rocket – the agency that brought the Yahoo! yodel into existence (among other memorable advertising). They told us the history of the Yahoo! billboard.
The end of an era: The Yahoo! billboard comes down.
(via JWZ)
(Image: Yahoo sign, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from jacob-davies's photostream)
