In a shift that is sure to be much commented on by the advertising industry, Yahoo has tapped Goodby, Silverstein & Partners to take the lead for creative, advertising, digital marketing and strategic planning efforts.

The San Francisco-based Goodby, which is owned by the Omnicom Group (OMC), is known for its innovative ideas and has done such memorable campaigns as the Slowsky turtles for Comcast (CMCSA), the weird folk of Emerald Nuts, owned by Diamond Foods (DMND)–as well as campaigns for tech companies such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Adobe Systems (ADBE) and Netflix (NFLX).

Also, of course, the terrifically memorable “Got Milk?” campaign.

Perhaps a “Got Yahoo?” campaign is in the future?

Until now, the top job of goosing Yahoo’s tarnished brand, as part of a recently launched $100 million marketing push, has been helmed by Ogilvy & Mather, a unit of the WPP Group (WPPGY).

While Goodby will lead on creative initiatives worldwide, Ogilvy will remain in the mix, Integrated Marketing and Brand Management SVP Penny Baldwin told BoomTown in an interview this afternoon, focusing on international marketing efforts, including all upcoming brand launches in France, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Brazil and Indonesia.

And, via it Neo and Mindshare units, Yahoo said, Ogilvy will also run all media buying for the Internet giant globally.

Yahoo (YHOO) is also keeping strategic branding firm Landor & Associates.

Goodby, Ogilvy and Landor will apparently form a Brand Advisory Board at Yahoo, run by Baldwin.

Baldwin stressed that the move was a broadening of its outside marketing advisers and was not a replacement of Ogilvy, or any indication that the current new marketing campaign needed to change.

She said internal reports on the effectiveness of the overall big theme, “It’s Y!ou,” launched last month, have been strong.

Nonetheless, Baldwin added that the new agency is sure to bring more ideas to the mix in the massive effort, which has included television, print, outdoor and online ads.

And, she noted, the location of Goodby’s HQ in San Francisco, not far from Yahoo’s Sunnyvale digs, was also a plus.

“Goodby has the caliber to serve worldwide needs,” said Baldwin. “And with the way the Web moves so fast, we thought it was also important to have deep resources locally.”

Up next, she added: to “root our brand strategy with more hard-hitting” messages about Yahoo.

“This is far more than just an advertising effort,” said Baldwin of Yahoo’s efforts to revitalize itself in the eyes of consumers–and, while she did not say so, to the digerati of Silicon Valley. “This is a business transformation.”

Here is Baldwin’s boss, Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele talking about the company’s marketing efforts of late in a video interview with Nicki Dugan on the company’s Yodel Anecdotal blog in a new feature called Yodelcast (sorry, Nicki, but it is simply too professional and unjiggly for BoomTown’s seal of approval):

And here are two examples of Goodby’s creatives–Comcast’s Slowskys and Robert Goulet for Emerald Nuts:

My favorite anecdote collected so far about new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is the one in which she recently called together two separate groups of execs who were direct reports of former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker.

Bartz, several sources recounted, went around the table and asked them one by one what they actually did, making various outspoken comments along the way.

Two execs, for example, were a “two-in-one box,” meaning they did the same thing to her mind. And she had to get well around the room until she could find someone who made some dough. “Finally, revenue,” Bartz reportedly joked.

Stories about Bartz’s take-charge style have been ricocheting through Yahoo (YHOO) and outside it too, which is probably just what the tough-talking veteran exec has been aiming for as she navigates the troubled company to come up with a plan to revive it.

And despite all the jokes about Yahoo’s proclivity to constantly rearrange deck chairs, most expect Bartz to launch a significant reorganization as soon as she is up to speed. Which might be very soon indeed.

But of all the various things many employees I have talked to hope she does first is dump the “matrix” and replace it with a much simpler management system where top execs are more directly responsible for their P&L and less with complicated cross-functional corporate hairballs.

Ah, the dreaded matrix of Yahoo–that much maligned organizational structure that was instituted at the company under the reign of then-CEO Terry Semel and complexified drastically under Yang and Decker.

How to explain the matrix, whose goal was to simplify the huge global behemoth that is Yahoo by having a lot of managers over employees working on similar products?

Simply put, shared ownership, presumably, would make the troops of Yahoo work better across geographies.

There are pluses explained one exec: “The theory behind all of this is that if you centralize the functions you can share resources across various projects….Some degree of centralization is absolutely appropriate at big companies. You don’t want each business unit having its own finance or legal people, for example.”

But that also removes a lot of critical tools from line managers, many said, putting them into a larger pot where many are cooking.

Thus, the matrix has come to symbolize a drastic lack of accountability at Yahoo.

And, more to the point, a horrible gridlock in decision-making, which has stopped it from moving quickly in the face of more nimble and, let’s be honest, more dictatorially-run companies–think Apple’s (AAPL) Steve Jobs or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and you have a good idea what I mean.

Said one exec who has left the company about the downside of the matrix: “The great people leave because they don’t feel they have the tools and authority to be successful with what they are notionally responsible for. Or because there are so many people who think they are in charge, they can’t get anything done. The mediocre people stay as they are protected and not held accountable.”

Said another still there, in what is the more prevalent opinion of more than a dozen people I spoke to: “I hope Bartz takes the blue pill and we can forget all about the matrix.”

It’s a reference to the movie, “The Matrix,” in which the hero, Neo, is given a choice by Morpheus between a red and blue pill.

Says Morpheus: “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Many at Yahoo, by contrast, are hoping the days of rabbit holes are finally over.

In any case, until Bartz acts, here’s the cool red pill/blue pill scene from “The Matrix”: