What a struggle. For the last 10 years, interactive agencies have tried to convince advertisers it’s reasonable to do branding online. It’s been a tough road for two big reasons. First, we never really had a good definition of “brand,” let alone consensus on what a brand strategy comprises. Second — let’s face it — we turned to branding as a fallback position when the bubble began to burst: “Well, no one is clicking, sure… but the real value comes from what the consumer does later.” It was a tough sell; clearly we were treading water, looking to protect a dwindling revenue stream.

We’ve turned the proverbial corner in our industry, and we can comfortably service clients and drive value for them. Now, we can talk about branding. But let’s do it right. Let’s start at the beginning, with definitions.

What is a brand? Most of the time, “brand” is defined in pretty fuzzy terms, but we need something more practical and pragmatic:

Brand (n): A set of beliefs about a company held by a consumer that compels an action.
You could swap out a few words there (like “product” for “company” and “shareholder” for “consumer”), but the idea behind the definition should be consistent. The big thing is this set of beliefs is constantly shifting, which means the actions being compelled are constantly shifting.

Next, we need to define “strategy.” Too often, strategy is described as a clever observation or insight (especially at agencies). That’s great, but it’s not enough. Try this:

Strategy (n): A plan to transform a situation from its current state to a desired state.
This definition presupposes a few things. Specifically, before the plan is written you must have a clear (and agreed upon) understanding of the current state, as well as the desired state. If you know these two things, you can craft the plan to move from one to the other.

With these two definitions, actual branding can happen, if for no other reason than the fact that you can describe, in detail, what you plan to do in your branding campaign. Here are a few steps you can follow.

Define the Situation
The biggest mistake in undertaking a brand campaign is assuming the work needs to operate on a global level, raising overall product awareness. With the exception of Super Bowl ads, this is way too lofty a goal. It’s a recipe for failure.

The best way to avoid this trap is to create a much tighter definition of current and desired states. If you define the desired state as “great awareness” or “increased purchase intent,” you don’t have enough to truly develop a strategy. Instead, to look for pockets of opportunity. That means achieving a finer level of understanding about product perception and what, in particular, will help move the needle.

The best way to do this is through consumer research. There’s no real shortcut to this. You either have to talk to consumers directly or at least tune in to their conversations online. Ultimately, this will help you find the specific messages consumers want to hear.

Isolate Pockets of Good Consumers
The next mistake brand builders make is to view their consumer base monolithically. For broadcast media that’s fine, maybe even necessary. But online, we have the fantastic ability to target individual groups. Online branding strategies should be built around targeting very specific groups that will be interested in hearing your message and can have a real effect on your overall success. These groups can be defined by demographics or behaviour. Isolate them in some way, so you can specifically measure effectiveness at reaching them and having them take an action or hold a belief.

Your strategy shouldn’t just talk about consumers, but “business travellers,” “teens who visit theme parks,” “cat owners,” and so on.

Prioritize Features and Benefits
The last mistake brand builders make is to shortcut the creative. Online, we have a tendency to see logos slapped on top of all sorts of things in the name of branding. That’s not a real strategy, and a real strategy is necessary. The “plan” part of strategy’s definition means you must determine what about the product will help catalyze a change in attitude or behaviour among consumers.

To do this, create a list of all the product’s features. Then, develop a list of benefits for each feature. Are you marketing a new computer with a faster start-up process (feature)? Talk about how it saves the consumer time (benefit).

Choose which benefits will most effectively change the situation in the way you want. Once you have those, talk with the creative team about bringing those benefits to life online.

This isn’t really hard work. It’s a structured process, not drastically different from the one brand managers go through across all media. Online marketers must remember our technology, although cool, is the means, not the end. Once, simply being online said something about a brand. It was forward-thinking and wanted to have a dialogue with consumers. That’s not true anymore. To continue the medium’s evolution, we must show it can work in all aspects of advertising and marketing. To do that, we must do the real work of branding, and not just adopt the vocabulary.

By Gary Stein

Does design really matter from a business perspective? The answer, according to a study by the U.K.-based Design Council, is a resounding “yes.”

 In a study published in February 2004, the Design Council took a look at the Financial Times and London Stock Exchange (FTSE) stock market performance of companies that placed an emphasis on design. It then tracked the performance of these stocks from 1994 to 2003. The results are astounding.

After weeding out companies that were de-listed during that period, the Design Council discovered 166 “design-lead” companies that outperformed the market by 200 percent during the study’s span. Even 2000-2003’s bear market, companies that emphasized design (and won design awards) performed better than those that didn’t. They lost less value when times were tough and recovered more when things got better. There’s more detail available in the study.

 What does this have to do with Web development and marketing? Everything.

One of the biggest changes over the past decade, after the Internet industry really got going, has been a move toward commoditization. In the early days, when new technologies were developed at an amazing pace, the industry changed daily, and money flew in at historic rates, most of us in this biz were just beginning to figure out what we were doing. Consumers were new to the industry, too. They used to be excited about the Internet simply because it was the Internet. Remember Web surfing?

 Today the Internet is a fact of life for nearly everyone. It’s ceased being a novelty in its own right. No one sits down to randomly surf anymore (who’s got the time?). Instead, people have figured out how the Web fits into their lives and how they need to use it. The shift in behaviour is toward the functional: Users go online to get stuff done (even if that “stuff” is entertainment).

The crash changed everything. It popped both economic and emotional bubbles. It made everyone step back and think about what they were really excited about in the first place. Over time, most people (especially consumers) have become blas about the whole thing. We use the Web because we have to, but using it is no longer an activity in and of itself. It’s a coming of age: When you’re underage, acquiring booze is the activity, which makes it all a lot more exciting. Turn 21, and drinking ceases to become the exciting activity once was. (At least, that’s what people tell me.)

 So far as Web development goes, things have gone the same way. In the early days, we had to create all the tools we sold our clients from scratch. There was little off-the-shelf software of note. Everything from content management systems to databases to e-mail marketing systems was home-grown. Differentiation stemmed from the ability to do absolutely everything: design, market, develop, engineer. Investment in companies that could do this ran high.

Things are no longer the same. The industry has matured and fragmented into specialized disciplines. Few Web development firms do everything anymore. Almost no one rolls his own e-mail systems, CMS’s, registration tools, or other fixtures of contemporary Web sites. We buy them off the shelf, selecting from a pool of basically similar products (within different price ranges), integrate them, and switch everything on. There’s little in the way of innovation when it comes to Web applications these days; we all know what to expect, where to get it, and what it’s going to do.? All but the most naive clients understand this. Most companies, if they know what they’re doing, expect the Web companies they hire will be able to do everything, from SEO (define), e-mail, and online advertising to application development, content management, and design. They understand the various services are often integrated and brought to them via partnerships or managed independently in a vendor pool.

Performance matters, obviously, but the playing field is becoming increasingly more level as consolidation occurs and more companies turn to a mature base of off-the-shelf products.
Need an HTTP server? You’re probably going to use Apache or Internet Information Services (IIS), or (if you’re a bit wacky) Apple’s X server.
Need e-mail marketing? You’re probably going to turn to one of the four or five vendors most of us can name. Need a CMS? Your choices are limited there, too. You get the point. As companies that struggle to differentiate ourselves in the marketplace, where do we turn? Design.

I mean design in its broadest sense: “Design” as a synonym for a process that provides high value and superior experience to the audiences we’re communicating with. This could mean graphic design, interactive design, even the design of a campaign that ties multiple media together in a creative fashion.

Design and creativity — innovation through creative thinking first — will keep the pipeline full and make us (no matter what our specialty) stand out from the competition.

Unless agencies learn to embrace creativity’s value, they’re not going to fit in anywhere. Those of us in the agency biz have seen our roles go from the CEO’s right-hand consultant to vendor over the past couple of decades, a process accelerated by the Internet’s growth and the increasing number of specializations needed to service clients in a rapidly expanding media field.

 I’ve written about this before. I believe unless agencies return to their roots and become the creative force behind the brand, they risk becoming completely irrelevant. There’s a measurable economic value in design. It’s time we embraced that value and became its champions before we slide into irrelevance.

By Sean Carton

Two weeks ago, Macromedia’s Flash, a core technology in Web development, became a verb in our company, in the same way “Google” has become a household term. As a powerful and flexible tool for creating rich online experiences, Flash gives marketers equal portions of opportunity and responsibility.

 In one of our regular internal e-mail threads about what constitutes an exceptional online experience, a designer flagged a new automotive site because a significant part of it is built in Flash. The internal debate turned into one of “to Flash or not to Flash?” Our entire staff, from graphic designers to Flash coders, information architects to copywriters, other technology engineers to client service people, all chimed in on Flash compared to other implementation methods. What does Flash offer other methods don’t?

We debated whether some combination of other implementation methods could work equally as well, and whether there’s a business case to be made for using Flash instead of some competing set of technologies.

Highlights from the debate clearly articulate the tradeoffs marketers must address among form, function, and accessibility when crafting online experiences. Flash enables very rich and compelling online experiences, with sound and dynamic moving images, which engage users intimately with a brand. The intention is more engaged; users spend more quality time with the brand. That, in turn, increases preference and, hopefully, revenue.

Many argued Flash experiences are measurably better in a few critical ways. Flash can present highly complex data in innovative ways that are only now being explored. It’s a powerful tool to create efficient and user-friendly applications that help customers retrieve and interact with information, solve problems, and make decisions (especially with elegant product configuration or comparison engines). It has become more robust and is now used more extensively and successfully for complex Web application development.? We marketers must provide our customers with the right information within the context of a useful framework. We must evaluate the appropriateness of using Flash for particular projects, considering a number of practical and technical matters: Flash penetration in the target market, file size and available bandwidth for downloading ever-increasing amounts of data (and images, sounds, and animations), and whether these constraints would present a business case against a Flash implementation.

Given Flash’s penetration rate, the growth of broadband to the home, and the increasing strength of computing power, who is really Flash-challenged? Consider:

• Most of the U.S. population have computers that can deliver an optimal Flash experience.
• Half of the U.S. population has a broadband connection. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, broadband penetration, including ISDN, cable modems, and DSL, jumped from 38 percent in July 2003 to 51 percent in July 2004. And these are just home numbers. Fat pipes are commonplace at work.

Nearly all users have the Flash plug-in. According to Macromedia and NPD Online, the plug-in, necessary to display Flash sites, currently enjoys 98.2 percent penetration globally. Also, the plug-in penetration (as standard with browsers since IE 3.0 and Netscape 3.0) has cemented Flash as a prominent and potentially permanent fixture among Web users.

Note, however, these numbers apply to the general population and might not apply to your target demographic. For example, 18-20 year olds have a higher broadband penetration than the general population, with 59 percent connecting to the Internet via a high-speed connection.

Finally, consider the return on investment (ROI) on a Flash implementation compared to that of competing technology sets. If a dynamic HTML (DHTML) solution can be found, why would a business choose Flash? The obvious reasons against DHTML solutions come to mind, such as cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility. But as a client recently observed, many traditional IT organizations can more readily adapt to DHTML than the proprietary language of Flash, which requires highly specialized and well-trained (or experienced) resources that may be expensive to retain.

Let me leave you with a few last thoughts. Start with the user. Do your homework so you can make an informed decision. Understand how, when, and why users access the experience and design accordingly. Many marketers maintain two versions of a site (Flash- and non-Flash-based sites) to side step this problem. Track results closely, and validate whatever decision you make.

Undeniably, Flash will continue to play a major role creating increasingly more sophisticated Web applications and brand experiences that will ultimately propel online marketing further. So when your market is ready, you may want to Flash, too.

By Mark Kingdon