Poor AOL. All it wants in this cold, harsh, and loveless world full of bigger, stronger brands like Yahoo and Google is for customers to start caring for them again. Ad Age got its hands on a request-for-proposal sent out by AOL to ad agencies it wants to hire to rebrand itself and win back customers, and while we only get a tease from the request (we'd love to read the entire thing), at the very least it gives a glimpse into the thinking of a tech company that realizes it's lost relevance over the past decade:

People familiar with a request-for-proposal sent out by AOL said the company is looking to refresh its image and get the word out on "why people should care about AOL again" noting that consumers don't know "what we're up to today" or "what value we deliver." It's understood that the company is looking to award the assignment to an agency by early March.

Ad Age adds that "AOL is looking to tell its story in a way that 'captures emotions," leading us to infer that AOL wants the same sort of fanfare for its products that other tech companies like Google and Apple often receive. But we're not sure how much a new ad campaign can do for toward that goal, since its old ones didn't seem that effective.

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